The first Sir Richard de Grenville, “near kinsman to the Conqueror,” sheathing his sword after the Conquest of South Wales, settled on the borders of Devon and Cornwall beside the Severn Sea. Concerning any feats of arms achieved by his immediate descendants the chronicles are silent. We have only their frequent summonses “to go with the King beyond the seas for their honour and preservation and profit of the Kingdom”; but another Sir Richard was Marshal of Calais under Henry VIII., and in the quaint language of Carew, “enterlaced his home magistracy with martial employments abroad”; whilst his son, Sir Roger, a sea captain, and the father of the future hero of the Revenge, after fighting the French off the Isle of Wight in 1545, went down in the Mary Rose off Portsmouth, when that ill-fated vessel, like the Royal George, two centuries later, capsized and sank with all on board.
His son, Richard, was then but two years old. The story of his boyhood has yet to be discovered, but he first gave vent to his fierce fighting spirit when, a stripling of some eighteen summers, he took service under the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks, obtaining therein the commendation of foreign historians for his intrepidity and early knowledge of the art of war. Next we find him taking part in suppressing the Irish rebellion, and though after this he settled for a while on his English estates, his restless spirit and natural thirst for distinction led him to participate in the perils and glories of the brilliant engagement at Lepanto in 1572, when Don John of Austria, with the combined squadrons of Christendom, defeated the Ottoman fleet. On his return to England he was knighted.
One of the features of the Elizabethan era was the zeal for colonization which pervaded the West of England. In common with Gilbert, Raleigh, and many others, Grenville petitioned the Queen to allow an enterprise for the discovery of “sundry ritche and unknowen landes.” Their request was granted, and in 1584 two ships, provided by Raleigh and Grenville, discovered Virginia; and the following spring, Sir Richard took command of seven ships fitted with the first colonists of that country. On his return journey he sighted a Spanish vessel of 300 tons, and his ship, the Tiger (which was but 140 tons), out-sailing the rest of his little squadron, had nearly overhauled the chase, when the wind suddenly dropped, and the little Tiger and her big quarry lay becalmed. Sir Richard’s boats had all been carried away in a gale of wind, but, determined not to lose his prize, he “boarded her,” says Hakluyt, “with a boat made with the boards of chests, which fell asunder and sank at the ship’s side as soon as ever he and his men were out of it.” The Spaniard proved richly laden, and Grenville’s dare-devilry won him £50,000 in prize money.
But his δαιμονίη ἀρετὴ (as Froude calls it) was soon to be exemplified in a still more striking manner in that last great service for his Queen and country, in which he so nobly sacrificed his life, and which has been told by Raleigh and Tennyson in “Letters of Gold.” To his great mortification, he had been prevented from sharing in the glories of the defeat of the Armada, having received the Queen’s special commands not to quit Cornwall during the peril; but in the summer of 1591 he was appointed Vice-Admiral, under Lord Thomas Howard, and despatched to the Azores to intercept an unusually rich treasure fleet, which was lying at Havannah ready for the homeward voyage. Grenville’s ship was the Revenge, a second-class galleon, carrying twenty-two heavy guns, twelve light ones, and twelve small pieces used for repelling boarders. She had carried Drake’s flag against the Armada three years before, and was considered one of the best types of a fighting ship.
On the 31st of August, Lord Thomas Howard’s squadron, consisting of six men of war and nine or ten victuallers and pinnaces, was riding at anchor in the bay of Flores; many of the crews were ashore digging for ballast, filling water casks, and obtaining fresh provisions and fruit for the sick, who numbered nearly half the strength of the fleet, for fever and scurvy had made havoc among the ships’ companies. Suddenly an English pinnace, the Moonshine, swept round a headland into the bay with the alarming intelligence that an armada of twenty Spanish men-of-war and over thirty transports and smaller craft were close at hand, despatched by Philip II. to protect his treasure ships.
Howard at once determined that he was in no condition to fight a force so superior, and accordingly made signal to weigh anchor instantly. All obeyed but the Revenge, Grenville being delayed, according to Raleigh, in getting his sick men brought on board from the shore; and when at last she got under way, she had lost the wind, and was unable to follow the other vessels as they ran past the Spanish fleet to windward. A second line of retreat was still open to him: by cutting his mainsail, he could run before the wind, pass the Spaniards to leeward, and rejoin the flag in the open sea. But to pass an enemy to leeward was a confession of inferiority to which Grenville would not stoop, and, though urged to this course by his officers and crew, he scornfully and passionately refused, and, sword in hand, drove his men to their posts, swearing that he would hew his way single-handed through the whole Spanish fleet, or perish in the attempt.
For a while he prevailed, compelling several of the foremost to give way, who sprang their luff and fell under the lee of the Revenge. But his success was short-lived; the Revenge, coming under the lee of the great San Philip, of 1,500 tons, was becalmed. This was about three o’clock in the afternoon; and while the Revenge was hotly engaged with this gigantic adversary, four more Spanish ships-of-war ranged alongside, and, after a furious cannonade, attempted to board her, but in vain; and the San Philip, after receiving from the lower tier of guns of the Revenge an especially deadly salvo, “discharged with cross-bar shot, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment.” But her place was at once taken by another Spaniard, and, indeed, through the twelve or fifteen hours during which the battle lasted, Grenville’s ship was constantly fighting against overwhelming odds. All through the August night the fight continued under the quiet stars, ship after ship washing up on the Revenge like clamouring waves upon a rock, only to fall back foiled and shattered amidst the roar of artillery:—
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle-thunder and flame,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame,