Sir Richard Grenville
With the sun of Drake's glory in eclipse at court and with Spain
and England resting from warfare on the grander scale, there were no
more big battles the following year. But the year after that, 1591,
is rendered famous in the annals of the sea by Sir Richard
Grenville's fight in Drake's old flagship, the "Revenge". This is
the immortal battle of 'the one and the fifty-three' from which
Raleigh's prose and Tennyson's verse have made a glory of the pen
fit to match the glory of the sword.
Grenville had sat, with Drake and Sir Philip Sidney, on the
Parliamentary committee which recommended the royal charter granted
to Sir Walter Raleigh for the founding of the first English colony
in what is now the United States. Grenville's grandfather, Marshal
of Calais to Henry VIII, had the faculty of rhyme, and, in a set of
verses very popular in their own day, showed what the Grenville
family ambitions were.
Who seeks the way to win renown, Or flies with wings to high desire,
Who seeks to wear the laurel crown, Or hath the mind that would
aspire--Let him his native soil eschew, Let him go range and seek a
new.
Grenville himself was a wild and roving blade, no great commander,
but an adventurer of the most daring kind by land or sea. He rather
enjoyed the consternation he caused by aping the airs of a pirate
king. He had a rough way with him at all times; and Ralph Lane was
much set against his being the commander of the 'Virginia Voyage' of
which Lane himself was the governor on land. But in action he always
was, beyond a doubt, the very "beau ideal" of a 'first-class
fighting man.' A striking instance of his methods was afforded on
his return from Virginia, when he found an armed Spanish treasure
ship ahead of him at sea. He had no boat to board her with. But he
knocked some sort of one together out of the ship's chests and
sprang up the Spaniard's side with his boarding party just as this
makeshift boat was sinking under them.
The last fight of the "Revenge" is almost incredible from the odds
engaged--fifty-three vessels to one. But it is true; and neither
Raleigh's glowing prose nor Tennyson's glowing verse exaggerates it.
Lord Thomas Howard, 'almost famished for want of prey,' had been
cruising in search of treasure ships when Captain Middleton, one of
the gentlemen-adventurers who followed the gallant Earl of
Cumberland, came in to warn him that Don Alonzo de Bazan was
following with fifty-three sail. The English crews were partly
ashore at the Azores; and Howard had barely time to bring them off,
cut his cables, and work to windward of the overwhelming Spaniards.
Grenville's men were last. The "Revenge" had only 'her hundred
fighters on deck and her ninety sick below' when the Spanish fleet
closed round him. Yet, just as he had sworn to cut down the first
man who touched a sail when the master thought there was still a
chance to slip through, so now he refused to surrender on any terms
at all. Then, running down close-hauled on the starboard tack, decks
cleared for action and crew at battle quarters, he steered right
between two divisions of the Spanish fleet till 'the mountain-like
"San Felipe", of fifteen hundred tons,' ranging up on his weather
side, blanketed his canvas and left him almost becalmed. Immediately
the vessels which the "Revenge" had weathered hauled their wind and
came up on her from to-leeward. Then, at three o'clock in the
afternoon of the 1st of September, 1591, that immortal fight began.
The first broadside from the "Revenge" took the "San Felipe" on the
water-line and forced her to give way and stop her leaks. Then two
Spaniards ranged up in her place, while two more kept station on the
other side. And so the desperate fight went on all through that
afternoon and evening and far on into the night. Meanwhile Howard,
still keeping the weather gage, attacked the Spaniards from the rear
and thought of trying to cut through them. But his sailing master
swore it would be the end of all Her Majesty's ships engaged, as it
probably would; so he bore away, wisely or not as critics may judge
for themselves. One vessel, the little "George Noble" of London, a
victualler, stood by the "Revenge", offering help before the fight
began. But Grenville, thanking her gallant skipper, ordered him to
save his vessel by following Howard.
With never less than one enemy on each side of her, the "Revenge"
fought furiously on. "Boarders away!" shouted the Spanish colonels
as the vessels closed. "Repel boarders!" shouted Grenville in reply.
And they did repel them, time and again, till the English pikes
dripped red with Spanish blood. A few Spaniards gained the deck,
only to be shot, stabbed, or slashed to death. Towards midnight
Grenville was hit in the body by a musket-shot fired from the
tops--the same sort of shot that killed Nelson. The surgeon was
killed while dressing the wound, and Grenville was hit in the head.
But still the fight went on. The "Revenge" had already sunk two
Spaniards, a third sank afterwards, and a fourth was beached to save
her. But Grenville would not hear of surrender. When day broke not
ten unwounded Englishmen remained. The pikes were broken. The powder
was spent. The whole deck was a wild entanglement of masts, spars,
sails, and rigging. The undaunted survivors stood dumb as their
silent cannon. But every Spanish hull in the whole encircling ring
of death bore marks of the "Revenge's" rage. Four hundred Spaniards,
by their own admission, had been killed, and quite six hundred
wounded. One hundred Englishmen had thus accounted for a thousand
Spaniards besides all those that sank!
Grenville now gave his last order: 'Sink me the ship,
Master-Gunner!' But the sailing master and flag-captain, both
wounded, protesting that all lives should be saved to avenge the
dead, manned the only remaining boat and made good terms with the
Spanish admiral. Then Grenville was taken very carefully aboard Don
Bazan's flagship, where he was received with every possible mark of
admiration and respect. Don Bazan gave him his own cabin. The staff
surgeon dressed his many wounds. The Spanish captains and military
officers stood hat in hand, 'wondering at his courage and stout
heart, for that he showed not any signs of faintness nor changing of
his colour.' Grenville spoke Spanish very well and handsomely
acknowledged the compliments they paid him. Then, gathering his
ebbing strength for one last effort, he addressed them in words they
have religiously recorded: '"Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a
joyful and quiet mind; for that I have ended my life as a true
soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, queen,
religion, and honour. Wherefore my soul most joyfully departeth out
of this body." ... And when he had said these and other suchlike
words he gave up the ghost with a great and stout courage.'
Grenville's latest wish was that the "Revenge" and he should die
together; and, though he knew it not, he had this wish fulfilled.
For, two weeks later, when Don Bazan had collected nearly a hundred
more sail around him for the last stage home from the West Indies, a
cyclone such as no living man remembered burst full on the crowded
fleet. Not even the Great Armada lost more vessels than Don Bazan
did in that wreck-engulfing week. No less than seventy went down.
And with them sank the shattered "Revenge", beside her own heroic
dead.
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