THE REVENGE.
A BALLAD OF THE FLEET.
This tremendous story is told finely by
Walter Raleigh in his Report of the truth
of the fight about the Isles of Açores this
last summer, and by Froude — also by
Bacon. “The action,” says Froude, “struck
a deeper terror, though it was but the action of
a single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish
people; it dealt a more deadly blow upon
their fame and moral strength than the
Armada itself.” Sir Richard Grenville commanded
Sir Walter Raleigh's first colony
which went out to Virginia. He was always
regarded with superstitious reverence by the
Spaniards, who declared for instance that he
would carouse three or four glasses of wine,
and take the glasses between his teeth and
crush them to pieces and swallow them down.
The Revenge was the same ship of 500 tons
in which Drake had sailed against the Armada
three years before this sea-fight.
Florĕs is a dissyllable, Azórĕs a trisyllable.
I.
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away:
‘Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fiftythree!’
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ‘'Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fiftythree?’
II.
Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: ‘I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.’
III.
So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down below;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
IV.
He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
‘Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.’
And Sir Richard said again: ‘We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet.’
V.
Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea-lane between.
VI.
Thousands of their soldiers look'd down from their decks and laugh'd,
Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delay'd
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.
VII.
And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons
Pronounced like “allion” in
“medallion” (derived from galea).
drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
VIII.
But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.
IX.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more—
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
X.
For he said ‘Fight on! fight on!’
Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said ‘Fight on! fight on!’
XI.
And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,
And the spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting,
So they watch'd what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
And half of the rest of us maim'd for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,
Sir Richard “commanded the master gunner,
whom he knew to be a most resolute man,
to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing
might remain of glory or victory to the
Spaniards, seeing in so many hours they were
not able to take her, having had about fifteen
hours' time, fifteen thousand men, and fiftythree
sail of men of war to perform it withal”
(Raleigh).
‘We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die—does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!’
XII.
And the gunner said ‘Ay, ay,’ but the seamen made reply:
‘We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.’
And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
XIII.
And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
‘I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!’
“His exact words were: ‘Here die I, Richard
Greenfield, 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. Whereby my soul
most joyfully departeth out of this body, and
shall always leave behind it an everlasting
fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath
done his duty as he was bound to do.’ When
he had finished these or such other like words,
he gave up the Ghost with a great and stout
courage, and no man could perceive any true
sign of heaviness in him.” (Jan Huygen van
Linschoten, translated into English 1598.)
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
XIV.
And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,
And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep,
West Indies. “A fleet of merchantmen
joined the Armada immediately after the
battle, forming in all 140 sail; and of these
140 only 32 ever saw Spanish harbour.”
Gervase Markham wrote a poem entitled
The Most Honorable Tragedie of Sir Richard
Grenuile, Knight, in 1595, and in his postscript
to the poem writes: “What became of the
Revenge after Sir Richard's death, divers
report diversly, but the most probable and
sufficient proofe sayeth, that within fewe dayes
after the knightes death, there arose a great
storme from the West and North-West, that
all the Fleet was dispersed, as well the Indian
Fleet, which were then come unto them, as all
the rest of the Armada, which attended their
arivall; of which fourteen sayle, together with
the Revenge, and her two hundred Spanyards
were cast away uponn the Ile of St. Michaels;
so it pleased them to honour the buriall of
that renowned ship the Revenge, not suffering
her to perrish alone, for the great honour shee
atchieved in her life-time.”
And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,
And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain,
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.
