Great Ralegh

by Hugh De Sélincourt

In these words Ralegh tells how he saved England from a great disaster. It is not known to whom he wrote this account, but it was found and printed by his grandson, Philip Ralegh, just one hundred and three years later. Probably Lord Howard took a negative attitude; he found, no doubt, a grim satisfaction in seeing the impetuous young fool, Essex, send the land force which he commanded to its inevitable destruction. He would think that he could easily set matters right again with his fleet, and Essex would be once for all humiliated, if not slain. Ralegh saved the situation. He had the moral courage to disdain the charge of cowardice, and the ability to prove in words the complete wrongness of the plan of attack. That was not all. The situation was still perilous to a degree. The day was drawing to a close; boats were filled in disorder with men from different ships. They were an attacking force with whom time was of the utmost value, and they were without a plan of attack. Ralegh was indefatigable. All his powers were called into play—his influence over men, his capacity of managing affairs, his knowledge of tactics in sea-fighting and land-fighting—and he mastered the crisis.

The men were disposed to their ships, and the ships were anchored at the very mouth of the harbour, and probably Ralegh was at the pains to prove to them that this retirement was no disgrace. Order was not restored until ten o'clock at night, and then Ralegh drew up a full account of the manner in which the attack should be conducted, full in every detail of the arrangement of the ships and the precedence of the commanders. His plan was accepted, and at his own request he was allowed the post of honour, much coveted, as leader of the van. Lord Thomas Howard especially coveted the foremost position; "he pressed the Generals to have the service committed unto him, and left the Meer Honour to Mr. Dudley, putting himself in the Nonpareill. For mine own part, as I was willing to give honour to my Lord Thomas, having both precedency in the army, and being a nobleman whom I much honoured, so yet I was resolved to give and not take example for this service; holding mine own reputation dearest, and remembering my great duty to her Majesty. With the first peep of day, therefore, I weighed anchor, and bare with the Spanish fleet, taking the start of all ours a good distance."

Within the harbour the enemy were waiting in readiness and in force. Great galleons and galleys, manned with oarsmen, were drawn up in front of the forts, which opened fire upon Ralegh's ships; the men in the galleys gripped their oars in readiness to row out and board any ship which the cannon from the forts or the galleons might disable. Ralegh sailed right into the harbour, disdaining to answer the fire from the forts and the curtain with anything but a contemptuous blare from a trumpet, and leaving the ships that followed him to scatter with their fire the galleys. Ralegh sailed right into the harbour; "the St. Philip, the great and famous Admiral of Spain, was the mark I shot at, esteeming these galleys but as wasps in respect of the powerfulness of the other; and being resolved to be revenged for the Revenge, or to second her with mine own life." For on the Revenge had perished his gallant friend and kinsman, Sir Richard Grenville; and many times through that day Grenville's dying words must have thrilled his mind, those words that are the most illustrious requiem of a dying soldier, spoken in the Spanish of his conquerrors, "Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, having ended my life like a true soldier that has fought for his country, his Queen, his religion, and his honour." For three hours Ralegh, at anchor, kept up an incessant cannonade against the galleons and the forts; the volleys of cannon and culverin came as thick as if it had been a skirmish of musketeers. On one side lay Lord Thomas Howard's ship, the Lyon; on the other lay the Mary Rose and the Dreadnaught. When Essex heard the tremendous roar of the cannon he could no longer stop outside the harbour, but sailed in the Swiftsure as far to the van as he was able, regardless of battle order. But "always I must without glory say for myself that I held single in the head of all." At last the cannonade became too heavy. Ralegh had been told not to board until fly-boats came from the fleet; and no fly-boats came. Accordingly, in a little skiff, he was rowed to the Swiftsure and besought Essex to let him board with his own ship—"for it was the same loss to burn or sink, for I must endure the one." He convinced Essex, who promised upon his honour to second him in whatsoever he did. Ralegh had been away from his ship for a quarter of an hour; but during that quarter of an hour Sir Francis Vere, the Marshal, and Lord Thomas Howard had pushed their ships quietly in front of the Warspite. This Ralegh could not brook. "At my return, finding myself from being the first to be but the third, I presently let slip anchor, and thrust in between my Lord Thomas and the Marshal, and went up further ahead than all them before and thrust myself athwart the channel, so as I was sure none should outstart me again, for that day." But though the battle continued to rage furiously and at close quarters, Sir Francis Vere and Lord Thomas Howard could not rest content with second places. Sir Francis Vere secretly caused a rope to be fastened to the Warspite that he might draw his ship ahead of her. But sailors told Ralegh of this, and he ordered the rope to be severed.

Then Ralegh started to board. He laid out a warp by the side of the Philip "to shake hands with her," and the other English ships followed suit. Fear seized the Spaniards. "They all let slip, and ran aground, tumbling into the sea heaps of souldiers, so thick as if coals had been powred out of a sack in many ports at once: some drowned and some sticking in the mud.... The spectacle was very lamentable on their side; for many drowned themselves; many, half-burnt, leapt into the water; very many hanging by the ropes' ends by the ship's side under the water even to the lips; many swimming with grievous wounds, strucken under water and put out of their pain: and so huge a fire, and such tearing of the ordnance in the great Philip and the rest, when the fire came to them, as, if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured."

Then followed the capture and sack of Cadiz. In the assault Ralegh received "a grievous blow in the leg interlaced and deformed with splinters." But he was carried on shore on men's shoulders until a horse was forthcoming, when he mounted. For an hour he remained in the town, but then the pain of the wound became intolerable; the streets were filled with jostling tumultuous soldiers, and they pressed against his leg in their disorder, do what he would to prevent them. So he returned to his ship to rest, while the sack raged in the town.

The plunder taken was immense in quantity and value: and as was invariably the case, there was much ill-feeling as to its distribution. The Queen quarrelled with the generals, thinking that they had much held back, and the generals with each other, thinking that the share of each was disproportionate. Ralegh especially fared ill. "For my own part I have gotten a lame leg and a deformed. For the rest either I spake too late, or it was otherwise resolved. I have not wanted good words, and exceeding kind and regardful usance. But I have possession of naught but poverty and pain." Ralegh was better able to win a first place in the fighting-line, than in the prize list. This he resented with absolute candour: but to deduce from his resentment that he cared only for gain is totally to misunderstand the nature of the man.

The results of the victory, for which Ralegh was chiefly responsible, were far-reaching and decisive. It crippled Spain's power more effectually even than the Armada. Cadiz was razed to the ground; as the Council of State decided that to raze the town was safer than to garrison it for English purposes.

Ralegh gained the respect of his fellow soldiers for his genius and his bravery; even men who, like Sir Anthony Standen, were hostile to him, wrote in enthusiastic praise of his conduct. "Sir Walter Ralegh did (in my judgment) no man better: and his artillery most effect. I never knew the gentleman till this time, and I am sorry for it, for there are in him excellent things, beside his valour. And the observation he hath in this voyage used with my Lord of Essex hath made me love him." But at the Court little had changed. Essex remained arrogant and hostile, and for the time his influence appears to have been dominant.

Immediately on his return Ralegh busied himself in the preparation and despatch of another ship to Guiana, to keep in touch with the natives whose alliance he had on his own visit obtained. Mr. Thomas Masham sailed in a pinnace called the Wat on the 14th of October from Limehouse upon the Thames. Ralegh never ceased from ardour in this great enterprise of his; nothing drove it from his mind; he was convinced of its ultimate success, believing in it as he believed in himself. But he could not go in person, the time was not yet ripe. So he with his wounded leg was glad to retire to Sherborne for a season to the quiet of his Dorsetshire garden. In Sherborne was brought him the news of the death of Lady Cecil, to whom Sir Robert was much devoted, and Ralegh's letter of sympathy is beautiful in thought and expression, though, such is the interesting divergency of human opinion, there are those who think the letter crude, sententious and laboured.

"Sir,

"Because I know not how you dispose of your sealf, I forbeare to visitt you, preferringe your plesinge before myne owne desire. I had rather be with you now then att any other tyme, if I could thereby ether take off frome you the burden of your sorrows, or lay the greater part thereof on myne owne hart.... There is no man sorry for death it sealf, butt only for the tyme of death; every one knowing that it is a bonnd never forfeted to God.... If then we know the same to be certayne and inevitable, wee ought withall to take the tyme of his arrivall in as good part as the knowledge; and not to lament att the instant of every seeminge adversity, which we ar asured have byn on ther way towards us from the begininge.... I beleve it that sorrows are dangerus companions, converting badd into yevill and yevill into worse, and do no other service then multeply harms. They ar the treasures of weak harts and of the foolishe. The minde that entertayneth them is as the yearth and dust whereon sorrows and adversetes of the world do as the beasts of the field, tread trample and defile. The minde of man is that part of God which is in us, which, by how mich it is subject to passion, by so mich it is farther from Hyme that gave it us. Sorrows draw not the dead to life, butt the livinge to deathe...."