Drake, Nelson and Napoleon | Page 7

these living heroes. It is after they are dead that they become abiding examples of human greatness, not so much to their contemporaries as to those generations that follow them. The historian has a great deal to do with the manner in which the fame of a great man is handed down to posterity, and it should never be forgotten that historians have to depend on evidence which may be faulty, while their own judgment may not always be sound. It is a most difficult task to discipline the mind into a perfectly unbiased condition. The great point is to state honestly what you believe, and not what you may know those you are speaking to wish you to say. The contemporaries of Hawkins and Drake unquestionably regarded them with high admiration, but I question whether they were deified then as they are now. The same thing applies to Nelson and Collingwood, of whom I shall speak later on, as the historian has put the stamp upon their great deeds also.
Drake and Hawkins attracted attention because of their daring voyages and piratical enterprises on Spanish property on sea and land. Every obstacle was brushed aside. Danger ever appealed to them. They dashed into fortified ports filled with warships fully equipped, silenced the forts, sank and set fire to Philip's vessels, and made everything and everybody fly before them in the belief that hell had been let loose. To the superstitious Spanish mind it seemed as though the English must be under Satanic protection when they slashed their way undaunted into the midst of dangers which would inevitably spell death for the mere mortal. These corsairs of ours obviously knew and took advantage of this superstition, for cannon were never resorted to without good reason, and never without effect. The deliberate defiance of any written or unwritten law that forbade their laying hands on the treasure they sought so diligently, and went far and near to find, merely increased public admiration. Elizabeth pretended that they were very trying to her Christian virtues. But leave out of count the foregoing deeds--which no one can dispute were prodigious, and quite equal to the part these men played in the destruction of the Armada--what could be more dashingly brilliant in naval warfare than Drake's raids on San Domingo, Carthagena, Cadiz, and other ports and cities of old and new Spain, to which I have already briefly alluded? It was their great successes in their great undertakings, no matter whether it was "shocking piracy" or not, that immortalized these terrible creators of England's greatness all the world over!
Thomas Cobham, a member of a lordly and Protestant family, became a sailor, and soon became fascinated with the gay life of privateering. Once when in command of a vessel, eagerly scouring the seas for Spanish prizes, one was sighted, bound from Antwerp to Cadiz. Cobham gave chase, easily captured her in the Bay of Biscay, and discovered there were forty Inquisition prisoners aboard. After rescuing the prisoners, the captain and crew of the Spanish vessel were then sewn up in their own mainsail and tossed into the sea, no doubt with such sententious expressions of godliness as was thought befitting to sacred occasions of that period. This ceremony having been performed, the vessel was scuttled, so that she might nevermore be used in trading with British sailors or any one else for Inquisition purposes. When the story became known, the case was discreetly inquired into, and very properly the gallant Cobham was never punished, and was soon running here and there at his old game.
It may be taken for granted that there was no mincing matters when an opportunity for reprisals occurred. The Spaniards had carried barbarism to such a pitch in seizing our ships and condemning their crews to the galleys, that Queen Elizabeth was never averse to meeting murder and plunder by more than the equivalent in retaliation, except when she imagined that Philip was showing signs of overpowering strength; she then became timid and vacillating. She was never mentally disturbed by the moral side of the great deeds that brought her vast stores of plunder. Moreover, she could always find an accommodating bishop to put her qualms (if she ever had any, except those of consequence to herself) at rest on points of conscience. One noted personage, who held high ecclesiastical office, told her that it was a virtue to seize treasure when she knew it would otherwise be used for the purpose of murdering her Protestant subjects. Sir Arthur Champernowne, a noted vice-admiral of Elizabeth's reign, in writing to Cecil of the vessel that had put into Plymouth through stress of weather with the needy Philip's half-million of ducats on board, borrowed, it is said, from a Genoa firm of financiers, said it