“The Spanish inhabitants having collected along, and opened a fire from, the shore, and the prize having grounded too fast to be got off, Lieutenant Fitton took out of her what was most wanted for his own vessel, landed the prisoners (for whom, being without a ’tween-decks, he had no room) and even the dead, and then set the vessel on fire. Having effectually destroyed this Spanish guarda-costa, the Abergavenny’s tender sailed back to Jamaica, and on the fourth day reached Black River with scarcely a gallon of water on board.”—(James’s Naval History, vol. ii. p. 563.) These sea-tigers, swimming with their swords in their mouths—climbing in this fashion the steep sides of a defended vessel—assailing, taking it—then landing safely the conquered and their very dead, before they set fire to it—here is war in all its pristine ferocity, while the fight is forward, and in its most humanised and generous mood when the victory is won.
How the present writer, Sir Harris Nicolas, will acquit himself in the description of naval engagements, we can hardly judge, as the first volume only of his work is yet published, and this does not bring him into the era of broadsides, and “tremendous cannonading.” This volume addresses itself rather to the naval antiquarian than to the professional seaman, or the enthusiast in naval exploits. It contains much interesting material; and it is rather our object to give some account of its contents, than to pass an elaborate criticism, which would be somewhat premature, upon a work of which we have merely the commencement before us.
In a manly, distinct, and well written preface, the author gives a statement of the sources of his details, and of the course which he has prescribed for himself in the treatment of his subject. Our old chroniclers have hitherto, it seems, been the sole source from which historians have derived their accounts of the naval transactions of the earlier reigns of the Kings of England. Sir Harris Nicolas has illustrated, corrected, and enlarged the scanty and often precarious information which these old chroniclers afford, by a variety of details extracted from the public records. These details cannot be supposed to be always of an interesting or popular character, but their utility will not be questioned, and the industry which is here displayed in collecting them will meet with its due acknowledgment and undisputed praise.
In the treatment of his subject our author has made two great divisions.
“I. The civil history—containing the formation, economy, and government of the navy.
“II. The military history.
“To the first division belong the construction, the size, rig, appearance, tonnage, armament, stores, equipment, and expense of the various classes of vessels; the manner in which ships and seamen were obtained by the crown, and the number and description of the officers and crews, their pay, provisions, prize-money, and discipline. Under this division, every thing else relating to the navy has been noticed; namely the Cinque Ports, dock-yards, lighthouses, pilotage, maritime laws, the law of wreck, taxes and other contributions for naval subsidies, the Court of Admiralty, the right of England to the sovereignty of the seas, the invention of the compass and of the modern rudder, the national flag, &c. To these statements are added biographical notices of the admirals, and other persons, who have been eminently distinguished for their talents or prowess at sea.
“The second division treats only of active naval proceedings; that is to say, the employment of ships in piratical acts, military expeditions, remarkable voyages, and, of course, all sea-fights.”
Here, it will be observed, is a wide range of subjects on which information is promised, and so far as the work has advanced, the performance by no means belies the promise: on almost all these topics something is added, of more or less importance, to the stock of our knowledge. The classification, however, here adopted has this great inconvenience, it obliges the author to travel twice over the same epoch, first for his civil, and then for his military history of the navy. As the same public events are necessarily alluded to in both departments, an air of repetition is thrown over the book, and the reader finds himself on two or three occasions brought back to the commencement of some king’s reign,—an Alfred or a Richard Cœur-de-Lion,—whom he thought he had left long ago behind him. This repetition Sir Harris Nicolas is not unconscious of, but thinks it “inevitable;” we cannot help thinking that a little more pains bestowed on the arrangement of his materials might have obviated this disagreeable effect, produced by the retracing of his steps. With a little more labour of the artistic kind, with a little more attention to the subordinate toils of composition, he might, we imagine, have so kept his materials together as to have come down the stream of time in one voyage, with both civil and military equipage on board. This ascending again and descending a second time, with a cargo which to all appearance might have been stowed away on the first voyage, gives an unusual tediousness to our mode of progression. This want of a skilful arrangement, and dexterous blending of his materials, together with the dryness of some of the details—which many readers will think should have been relegated to an appendix—will operate against the popularity of the work. But a popular work it was not the ambition of Sir Harris Nicolas to produce: he has compiled one which will be highly useful to the laborious student of history. We must add, too, lest we should be creating a false impression, that the idlest of readers, allowing for a little skipping, may peruse it with interest. And in point of style, the work has one invariable charm: it is free from all affectation—simple, manly, straightforward—a charm which, next to that of the highest order of eloquence, is the greatest and the rarest.
Our history of the navy begins, as may be supposed, from the invasion of Cæsar, and with the scanty notices he has recorded of the maritime skill of these barbarian islanders whom he both discovered and conquered. From these notices it would appear that our British ancestors, at the time of the invasion of Cæsar, were more advanced in naval architecture than were the Anglo-Saxons, who, at the decline of the Roman Empire, took possession of the island. But the British navy, whatever it might have been, seemed to pass away with the Roman name and the Roman protection, and our history may be said to have its true commencement with the shipping of our northern invaders and settlers. There is no line of filiation between the Saxon and the British navy; it is the northmen we must regard as our direct naval ancestors. We open the work of Sir Harris at the description he gives of the Anglo-Saxon shipping.