[26]. This told in the Naval Chronicle.
The politeness of Howe as an example of spirit is not quite so common in the annals as illustrations of heroic bluntness. I find a specimen in the narrative of the action with the squadrons under Jonquierre and St. George off Finisterre, when the Bristol, Captain Montagu, began to engage l’Invincible. Captain Fincher, in the Pembroke, tried to get in between her and the enemy, but not finding room, he hailed the Bristol, and requested Montagu to put his helm a starboard, or the Pembroke would run foul of his ship. Montagu answered, “Run foul of me and be, etc.; neither you nor any man in the world shall come between me and my enemy.” Similar bluntness is exhibited in a story told of Admiral Sir Richard King. During an action a shot struck the head of his captain and blew his brains over King, then commodore, who never flinched.[[27]] On being told by the master, towards the close of the fight, that two more of the enemy’s ships appeared to be coming up, and asked what he would do with the ship, “Do with her!” he exclaimed contemptuously, “Fight her, sir! fight her till she sinks.” This is as good as Howe’s memorable answer to the lieutenant who told him that the fire was extinguished and that he need no longer be afraid. “Afraid!” exclaimed Howe; then, fixing his eyes on the lieutenant, “Pray, sir, how does a man feel when he is afraid? I need not ask how he looks.”
[27]. “Captain Scott of the cutter told me a singular story of what occurred during the action between the Constitution and Macedonian—he being powder-monkey aboard the former ship. A cannon shot came through the ship’s side, and a man’s head was struck off, probably by a splinter, for it was done without bruising the head or body, as clean as by a razor. Well, the man was walking pretty briskly at the time of the accident; and Scott seriously affirmed that he kept walking onward at the same pace, with two jets of blood gushing from his headless trunk, till, after going twenty feet without a head, he sunk down at once, with his legs under him.” Hawthorne Note Books. One seems to hear Mr. Burchell’s “fudge!” here.
The charm of British naval biography lies in its modesty and accuracy. A pity as much cannot be said for the marine records of other countries. There is an excellent example of impudent and deliberate lying in the Memoirs of M. du Gué-Trouin, chief of a squadron in the French navy, in the time of Louis XIV. The book is scarce. It was translated in 1732, by “A Sea Officer,” who in his dedication writes, after commenting on the Frenchman’s account of an action with the English, “But this is scarce anything to the wonders you will find wrought by Du Gué, his people, and his consorts. For my part, I had scarce gone through his book before I expected to hear he had attempted to run away with the Land’s End of England.... No ’tis in France, and France alone, where you must meet with these men who can do anything, no matter what stands in the way, no matter for the difficulties; nay, no matter whether they know what it is they are to do, they’ll do it.” But the Spanish and Dutch annals are too full of lies also to suffer us to consider the French singular in this way. As to the Yankees, one should read James’ “Naval Occurrences” to appreciate their amazing capacity as romancers.
Lord Bacon amused his leisure by collecting the witty sayings of others; Horace Walpole delighted in ana; there is no choicer reading than the Menagiana, Selden’s Table-Talk, and Spence’s anecdotes. In the face of such precursors no apology can be felt needful from any one who should think proper to attempt an anecdotal history of the British Navy.
WOMEN AS SAILORS.
A young lady of Plymouth, having illustrated her able-seamanlike capacity by diving from the masthead of a vessel at anchor in the Sound, proceeded some time afterwards to justify her marine enthusiasm by swimming from the Breakwater to the Hoe in a tumbling sea, the distance being three miles and the time occupied within an hour and a quarter. Now, if this young lady took it into her head to start away to sea, for what aforemast capacity, from boatswain down to boy, would she not be fit? Even as a skipper might she not excel after a proper course of ogling the sun through a sextant and a well-digested commitment of Norie or Raper to heart? A girl capable of measuring three miles of turbulent surges in seventy odd minutes ought to be equal to a weather top-sail ear-ring in a whole gale; whilst the lungs that could defy a league of flying spume should be able to wake some dancing silver pipings out of a boatswain’s whistle.
A good many ladies have gone to sea as sailors since the first chapters of the world’s maritime history were written, and the majority of them not only made excellent seamen, but fought their countries’ enemies with pike, cutlass, and pistol with a courage and determination equal to any exhibition of the same qualities in the bravest of their pig-tailed shipmates. And yet women are deemed unlucky at sea! A French tradition affirms that the ocean near Cape Finisterre swells at the sight of a woman. Possibly the old fear originated with the witches. Hideous crones who wrecked ships for lucre and drowned mariners to gratify their own spleen or that of others would necessarily taint Jack’s view of “the sex” in their maritime relations. An American writer[[28]] quotes from Sandy’s Ovid: “I have heard of seafaring men, and some of Bristol, how a quartermaster in a Bristol ship, then trading in the Streights, going down into the hold saw a sort of women, his own neighbours, making merry together, and taking their cups liberally; who having espied him, and threatening that he should report their discovery, vanished suddenly out of sight; who thereupon was lame for ever after. The ship having made her voyage, nowe homeward bound, and neere her harbour, stuck fast in the deep sea before a fresh gaile, to their no small amazement, nor for all they could doe, together with the help that came from the shore, could they get her loose, until one (as Cynothea, the Trojan ship) shoved her off with his shoulder.” For bewitching the ship the ladies who had been seen taking their cups liberally in the hold were convicted and executed.
[28]. Mr. Bassett, of the United States Navy, who has collected much interesting information in this and the like superstitions in his work, “Legends of the Sea,” New York, 1886.