The Rise of English Sea Power
And so it happened that in 1545 Henry
VIII, with a new-born modern fleet, was able to turn defiantly
on Francis. The English people rallied magnificently to his call.
What was at that time an enormous army covered the lines of advance
on London. But the fleet, though employing fewer men, was relatively
a much more important force than the army; and with the fleet went
Henry's own headquarters. His lifelong interest in his navy now bore
the first-fruits of really scientific sea power on an oceanic scale.
There was no great naval battle to fix general attention on one
dramatic moment. Henry's strategy and tactics, however, were new and
full of promise. He repeated his strategy of the previous war by
sending out a strong squadron to attack the base at which the
enemy's ships were then assembling; and he definitely committed the
English navy, alone among all the navies in the world, to
sailing-ship tactics, instead of continuing those founded on the
rowing galley of immemorial fame. The change from a sort of floating
army to a really naval fleet, from galleys moved by oars and
depending on boarders who were soldiers, to ships moved by sails and
depending on their broadside guns--this change was quite as
important as the change in the nineteenth century from sails and
smooth-bores to steam and rifled ordnance. It was, indeed, from at
least one commanding point of view, much more important; for it
meant that England was easily first in developing the only kind of
navy which would count in any struggle for oversea dominion after
the discovery of America had made sea power no longer a question of
coasts and landlocked waters but of all the outer oceans of the
world.
The year that saw the birth of modern sea power is a date to be
remembered in this history; for 1545 was also the year in which the
mines of Potosi first aroused the Old World to the riches of the
New; it was the year, too, in which Sir Francis Drake was born.
Moreover, there was another significant birth in this same year. The
parole aboard the Portsmouth fleet was "God save the King"! The
answering countersign was "Long to reign over us"! These words
formed the nucleus of the national anthem now sung round all the
Seven Seas. The anthems of other countries were born on land. "God
save the King"! sprang from the navy and the sea.
The Reformation quickened seafaring life in many ways. After Henry's
excommunication every Roman Catholic crew had full Papal sanction
for attacking every English crew that would not submit to Rome, no
matter how Catholic its faith might be. Thus, in addition to danger
from pirates, privateers, and men-of-war, an English merchantman had
to risk attack by any one who was either passionately Roman or
determined to use religion as a cloak. Raids and reprisals grew
apace. The English were by no means always lambs in piteous contrast
to the Papal wolves. Rather, it might be said, they took a motto
from this true Russian proverb: 'Make yourself a sheep and you'll
find no lack of wolves.' But, rightly or wrongly, the general
English view was that the Papal attitude was one of attack while
their own was one of defence. Papal Europe of course thought quite
the reverse.
Henry died in 1547, and the Lord Protector Somerset at once tried to
make England as Protestant as possible during the minority of Edward
VI, who was not yet ten years old. This brought every English seaman
under suspicion in every Spanish port, where the Holy Office of the
Inquisition was a great deal more vigilant and businesslike than the
Custom House or Harbor Master. Inquisitors had seized Englishmen in
Henry's time. But Charles had stayed their hand. Now that the ruler
of England was an open heretic, who appeared to reject the accepted
forms of Catholic belief as well as the Papal forms of Roman
discipline, the hour had come to strike. War would have followed in
ordinary times. But the Reformation had produced a cross-division
among the subjects of all the Great Powers. If Charles went to war
with a Protestant Lord Protector of England then some of his own
subjects in the Netherlands would probably revolt. France had her
Huguenots; England her ultra-Papists; Scotland some of both kinds.
Every country had an unknown number of enemies at home and friends
abroad. All feared war.
Somerset neglected the navy. But the seafaring men among the
Protestants, as among those Catholics who were anti-Roman, took to
privateering more than ever. Nor was exploration forgotten. A group
of merchant-adventurers sent Sir Hugh Willoughby to find the
Northeast Passage to Cathay. Willoughby's three ships were towed
down the Thames by oarsmen dressed in sky-blue jackets. As they
passed the palace at Greenwich they dipped their colors in salute.
But the poor young king was too weak to come to the window.
Willoughby met his death in Lapland. But Chancellor, his
second-in-command, got through to the White Sea, pushed on overland
to Moscow, and returned safe in 1554, when Queen Mary was on the
throne. Next year, strange to say, the charter of the new Muscovy
Company was granted by Philip of Armada fame, now joint sovereign of
England with his newly married wife, soon to be known as 'Bloody
Mary.' One of the directors of the company was Lord Howard of
Effingham, father of Drake's Lord Admiral, while the governor was
our old friend Sebastian Cabot, now in his eightieth year. Philip
was Crown Prince of the Spanish Empire, and his father, Charles V,
was very anxious that he should please the stubborn English; for if
he could only become both King of England and Emperor of Germany he
would rule the world by sea as well as land. Philip did his
ineffective best: drank English beer in public as if he liked it and
made his stately Spanish courtiers drink it too and smile. He spent
Spanish gold, brought over from America, and he got the convenient
kind of Englishmen to take it as spy-money for many years to come.
But with it he likewise sowed some dragon's teeth. The English
sea-dogs never forgot the iron chests of Spanish New-World gold, and
presently began to wonder whether there was no sure way in far
America by which to get it for themselves.
In the same year, 1555, the Marian attack on English heretics began
and the sea became safer than the land for those who held strong
anti-Papal views. The Royal Navy was neglected even more than it had
been lately by the Lord Protector. But fighting traders, privateers,
and pirates multiplied. The seaports were hotbeds of hatred against
Mary, Philip, Papal Rome, and Spanish Inquisition. In 1556 Sebastian
Cabot reappears, genial and prosperous as ever, and dances out of
history at the sailing of the "Serchthrift", bound northeast for
Muscovy. In 1557 Philip came back to England for the last time and
manoeuvred her into a war which cost her Calais, the last English
foothold on the soil of France. During this war an English squadron
joined Philip's vessels in a victory over the French off Gravelines,
where Drake was to fight the Armada thirty years later.
This first of the two battles fought at Gravelines brings us down to
1558, the year in which Mary died, Elizabeth succeeded her, and a
very different English age began.
Back to: English Exploration of America
