ROBERT BLAKE.
“Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow,
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.”
An admiral sits writing at a table in the cabin of his dismasted flagship, the Triumph. He is a short, squat, ungainly man, but within that unprepossessing exterior there is one of the most heroic and purely patriotic souls that ever existed. His heavy face is clouded by deep depression. He is a beaten man, and he is even now inditing the frank and ungarnished story of his defeat to the Lords of the Council. “Your honours,” he writes, “I hope it will not be unreasonable for me to desire your honours that you would think of giving me, your unworthy servant, a discharge from this employment so far too great for me, that so I may be freed from that burden of spirit which lies upon me, arising from the sense of my own insufficiency.” He finishes his task, signs it “Robert Blake, Admiral,” strews the sand upon the wet ink, folds the missive, and dispatches it.
What is the meaning of this scene? You see a man of the sublimest courage and the most ardent patriotism humiliated and vexed with himself because he has failed to achieve the impossible. A little more than a month ago he met the Dutch fleet, and fought a furious battle which raged until nightfall, when the foe, too severely handled to continue the struggle, drew off and sailed for home. “Nothing in this to be ashamed of,” you will say; but you do not yet know the whole story.
After the victory—for such it was—the Commonwealth, feeling secure, dispersed the fleet either on various detached services or to refit, and left Blake with only thirty-seven ships to guard the Channel. The Dutchmen, on the other hand, flung themselves heart and soul into the work of preparing a fleet which should speedily cancel their reverse and restore that great prestige which they then enjoyed as the first of maritime nations. Yesterday this fleet of eighty ships of war, convoying three hundred merchantmen, appeared off the Goodwins, standing to the southward, and evidently about to force the strait in defiance of its guardian. As the vast and well-equipped fleet of the Dutchmen hove in sight Blake called a hasty council of war, and announced his determination of attacking it with the wholly inadequate forces at his command. It was a venture rash almost to the verge of madness, but Blake could not sit still and see the proudly defiant foe go by without attempting to chastise it. Twice before he had met the Dutchman and belaboured him; he would do so again.