Part 2
The _Dreadnought’s_ gun-ports should open some four feet clear of the water. People have not forgotten the horror of the _Mary Rose_; what happened to her; how she came to go down one summer’s day at Spithead. The waist bulwarks of the _Dreadnought_, if she swims as she ought, will be some twenty feet above the water-line. Nearly four hundred tons in burden is our new man-of-war—five tons heavier than the _Swiftsure_, than which ship too she is six feet longer, though the pair reckon as sister ships. Upwards of six thousand pounds out of Queen Elizabeth’s treasury (about £30,000 at present day value) will have been the cost of the _Dreadnought_ when she leaves Deptford dockyard.
We will go on board for a brief look round the _Dreadnought_ within. As we enter the ship we note how both the half-deck and the fore and aft castles are loopholed for both arrow-fire and musketry, so as to sweep the waist should an enemy board and get a footing amidships. Some of the lighter guns would be able to help. The heavier guns are mostly on the broadside, and are mounted on the decks below in a double tier. The _Dreadnought_ altogether carries forty-two guns. Sixteen of them are heavy guns: two “cannon-periers” of six-inch bore, hard hitters, firing twenty-four pounder stone shot; four “culverins,” seventeen and a half pounders, twelve feet long and five and half inches in the bore, firing iron shot, and able to throw a ball upwards of three miles—“random shot.” There are also ten “demi-culverins,” nine-pounders, firing four and a half inch iron shot. The lighter guns are six “sakers,” pieces nine feet long (five-pounders, of three and a half inch bore) and two “fawcons” (three-pounders). The heavier guns are all muzzle-loaders. Distributed over the upper decks are eighteen breech-loading guns, for fighting at close quarters and rapid firing: “port-pieces,” “fowlers,” and “bases,” as they are called. They are on swivel mountings, and fire stone and iron shot.
All told, the _Dreadnought’s_ armament weighs thirty-two tons. The guns are from Master Ralphe Hogge, “the Queen’s gunstone maker, and gunfounder to the Council.” They are of Sussex iron, from Master Hogge’s own foundry at Buxted. At this moment they are waiting at the Tower, together with the _Dreadnought’s_ supplies of iron shot and cannon balls of Kentish ragstone from Her Majesty’s quarries at Maidstone, stacked “in ye Bynns upon ye Tower Wharfe each side Traitor’s Gate.” When the _Dreadnought_ goes into battle she will carry some two hundred officers and men all told: a hundred and thirty “maryners”—“Able men for topyard, helme and lead,” and “gromets,” or boys and “Fresh men”; with twenty gunners and fifty soldiers. To keep her at sea will cost the Queen £303. 6s. 8d. a month for sea-wages and victualling. Three weeks provisions and water is the most that the ship can stow, owing to the space wanted for the ballast, the cables for the four anchors, and the ammunition and sea stores. That is why victualling ships have to attend Her Majesty’s fleets on service outside the Narrow Seas. The “cook room,” of bricks and iron and paving stones, is in the hold over the ballast. Two more notes may be made as we return on deck and quit the ship. The captain’s cabin, opening on the gallery aft, is neatly wainscoted and garnished with green and white chintz, and with curtains of darnix hung at the latticed cabin windows. There are three boats for the _Dreadnought_: the “great boat,” which tows astern at all times, the cock-boat and the skiff, both of which stow inboard. John Clerk, “of Redryffe, Shipwrighte,” built the “great boat,” being paid £24, in the terms of his bill, “For the Workmanshipp and makeinge of a new Boate for her Highness’ Shipp, the _Dreadnought_; conteyninge xi foote Di. in lengthe; ix foote Di. in Breadthe; and iij foote ij inches in Depthe.—By agrement.”
A brave show should our gallant _Dreadnought_ make when she goes forth to war, with her varnished sides and rows of frowning guns and painted top-armours (the handiwork, according to his bill, of Master Coteley, of Deptford), and all her wide spreading sails set (“John Hawkins, Esquire, of London,” supplied these), and at the masthead, high above all, her flag of St. George of white Dowlas canvas with a blood-red cross of cloth sewn on.
* * * * *
The appointed day has come, and the time for the sending afloat and formal naming of the _Dreadnought_: Tuesday afternoon, the 10th of November, 1573.
The ship lies ready for launching at the appointed moment, having been duly “struck” upon the launching ways a day or two before, under the supervision of Master Baker himself, in the dock where she has been building; shored up on either side, and with the lifting screws and “crabs” prepared to heave her off. The dockhead has been dug out and finally cleared at low tide on Monday, leaving the double gates free and in order, ready to be swung back and opened as soon as the tide begins to make on Tuesday morning.
We will imagine ourselves on the spot at the time and looking on at what took place. It is possible to do so, thanks to a manuscript left by Phineas Pett, Peter’s son and successor at Deptford royal yard.
All is ready for the day’s proceedings by a little after noon, when the important personages taking part at the launch, “by commandement of ye officers of Her Grace’s Maryn Causys,” and the invited guests and superior officials of the dockyard assemble for a light refection of cake and wine in the Master Shipwright’s “lodging,” preliminary to the ceremony.
Who named the _Dreadnought_ on that day? Unfortunately that one detail is not mentioned in any existing record, and the Navy Office book for the year, where the name would certainly have been found, together with the honorarium or fee, paid according to custom, is missing. Most probably it was Captain Stephen Borough himself, and we may imagine him there, apparelled for the day in crimson velvet and gold lace, in the full uniform of one entitled to wear “Her Maᵗⁱᵉˢ cote of ordinarie.” His rank and standing as one of the “Principall Masters of the Queen’s Maᵗⁱᵉˢ Navie in Ordinarie” qualified him for performance of so dignified a duty. The Principal Masters were often deputed by the Lord High Admiral to preside on his behalf at the launches of men-of-war and perform the name-giving ceremony.
While the high officers are having their refreshments in Master Shipwright Baker’s lodging, Boatswain Baxster and the assistant shipwrights are stationing the men on board and at the launching tackles. The customary “musicke” then makes its appearance, “a noyse of trumpetts and drums,” who post themselves on the poop and the forecastle of the ship. Next, a “standing cup” of silver-gilt, filled to the brim with Malmsey of the best, is set up on a pedestal fixed prominently on the poop, and the Queen’s colours are hoisted on board, together with the flag of St. George. At the same time pennons and streamers of Tudor green and white, and decorated with royal emblems and badges, are ranged here and there along the ship’s sides and on the forecastle.
All is ready ere long, and then, forthwith, word is sent to Master Shipwright Baker and the gentlemen of the company. Forthwith the procession forms itself and sets out in stately fashion to go on board.
With his grey hair unbonneted The old sea-captain comes; Behind him march the halberdiers, Before him sound the drums.
So escorted and attended the personage of the hour paces his way forth and proceeds on board the new ship, passing along the decks and ascending to the poop where the company group themselves according to precedence, near by the glittering silver-gilt wine cup. Master Shipwright Baker then gives the signal, and Boatswain Baxster’s whistle shrills out. At once the gangs of men standing ready at the crabs and windlasses heave taut, and a moment later, as the ship begins her first movement outwards, the trumpets and drums sound forth. So, at a leisurely rate at the outset, gliding off foot by foot into deeper water, the new man-of-war hauls gradually out and clears past the dock gates till well into the stream. The anchor is then let go and she brings up. Now it is for Captain Borough—allowing it to have been he—to do his part.
Stans procul in prorâ, pateram tenet extaque salsos Porricit in fluctus ac vina liquentia fundit.
The trumpets and drums cease as the “Principall Master” steps forward and takes up his position beside the standing cup. He raises the gleaming cup on high so that all around may see. Then, amid universal silence, he proclaims, in a clear resonant voice that every one may hear: “By commandment of Her Grace, whom God preserve, I name this ship the _Dreadnought_! God save the Queen!” As the Lord High Admiral’s representative utters the last word, he drinks from the cup, and a moment after ceremoniously pours out a portion of the wine upon the deck. The next moment, with a wide sweep of the arm, he heaves the standing cup, with a little wine left in it, into the river—a sacrifice, as it were, on behalf of the bride newly-wedded to the sea, or that the Queen’s cup might never be put to base uses—perhaps, indeed, as a sort of propitiatory act. So it was done, says Master Phineas Pett, “according to the ancient custom and ceremony performed at such times.” Again there is a blare of trumpets and a ruffle from the drums, with cheers afloat and ashore for Her Grace, and hearty congratulations to Master Matthew Baker on the occasion. After that the _Dreadnought_ is formally inspected between decks and below, and the crew’s health is drunk by the high officers in ship’s beer—sure to be of a good brew on a launching day.
By the time that all is over the ship has been warped back alongside the shore again, and the company adjourn thereupon to wind up the day’s proceedings with a good old English dinner, given to the Master Shipwright and the officials of the yard at the Lord High Admiral’s expense.
Such is a passing glimpse of the memorable scene—as far as one may venture to reconstruct it—on “Dreadnought Day” at Deptford Royal Dockyard, that Tuesday afternoon, in Tudor times, three hundred and thirty-three years ago. It is hard to fancy such doings, at Deptford of all places, now. Oxen and sheep for the London meat market nowadays stand penned in lairs on the site of the filled-in dock whence the _Dreadnought_ was floated out—the same dock whence the Armada _Victory_ had preceded her, whence Grenville’s _Revenge_ followed her. Master Shipwright Baker’s lodging is nowadays a cattle drovers’ drinking bar. The old-time navy buildings—their origin even now easily recognisable, at any rate externally—serve as slaughterhouses, and so forth, among which rough butcher lads, reeking of the shambles, jostle daily to and fro. On every side is bustle and clatter and hustling, the rumbling of Smithfield meat vans over the old-time cobble stones, the jargon of Yankee bullock-men, the bleating of sheep under sentence of death. Strange and hard is the fate that in these material times of ours has overtaken what was once the premier Royal Dockyard of England, this former temple, so to speak, of the guardian deity of our sea-girt realm:
This ruined shrine Whence worship ne’er shall rise again:— The owl and bat inhabit here The snake nests in the altar stone, The sacred vessels moulder near— The image of the god is gone!
Fallen indeed from its high estate of former days is the ancient royal establishment of “Navy-building town.” Where bluff King Hal used to walk and talk with Matthew Baker’s father, “old honest Jem”; where our sixth Edward paid a long-remembered visit, to be “banketted” (as the royal spelling has it) and see two men-of-war go off the ways; where Elizabeth knighted Francis Drake, and James and Charles rode down in state on many a gala day; where Cromwell paid his second naval visit—his “grandees” attending him, and escort of clanking Ironsides—to see the vindictively named _Naseby_ take the water; where our second Charles liked to saunter on occasion with Rupert at his side, and chattering Pepys and John Evelyn in his train; where James the Second, dull and morose of mood, for the sands of his monarchy were already running out, paid his last historic visit one gloomy autumn afternoon of 1688; where brave old Benbow liked best to spend the mornings of his half-pay life on shore, and Captain Cook set out on his last voyage; where George the Third drove down with Queen Charlotte to do honour to the naming of a _Prince of Wales_ man-of-war; where, too, Royalty of our own time has more than once visited—is now “a market for the landing, sale, and slaughtering of foreign cattle.” The glory has departed—the image of the god is gone!
* * * * *
The _Dreadnought_ and _Swiftsure_ and the two smaller ships were masted and rigged and completed for service during November and the early days of December, after which, with the help of a hundred and fifty extra hands, “prested in ye river of Theames for ye transportyngs about,” they set off on the twentieth of the month to join the fleet lying “in ordinary” in the Medway—an eight days’ voyage as it proved, owing to squally weather and an east wind. The Queen was to have seen the _Dreadnought_ and her squadron pass the palace at Greenwich and salute the royal standard with cannon and a display of masthead flags, as was the Tudor naval usage when the sovereign was in residence, but there had been a domestic misadventure at Placentia just a few days before. While talking with her maids of honour one afternoon, one of the Queen’s ladies—“the Mother of the Maids”—had suddenly dropped dead in the royal presence, and the Court had hastily removed to Whitehall. So the _Dreadnought_ had no royal standard to salute. Three days after Christmas the Deptford squadron took up their moorings in “Jillingham water.”
“Powerful vessels ... with little tophamper and very light, which is a great advantage for close quarters and with much artillery, the heavy pieces being close to the water,” reported, in a confidential letter now in the royal archives at Simancas, one of the King of Spain’s agents in England who saw the _Dreadnought_ and _Swiftsure_ not long after they had joined the Medway fleet. So too, indeed, some of King Philip’s sailors were destined to find out for themselves.
* * * * *
The Dons, indeed, were destined to taste something of the _Dreadnought’s_ quality more than once; beginning with the memorable event of the “Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard.” There, Drake’s right-hand man on many a battle day, commanded the _Dreadnought_, Captain Thomas Fenner, a sturdy son of Sussex and a seaman who knew his business.
How thoroughly Drake—“fiend incarnate; his name Tartarean, unfit for Christian lips; Draco—a dragon, a serpent, emblem of Diabolus; Satanas himself”—did his work among the Spaniards at Cadiz, burning eighteen of their finest royal galleons, and carrying off six more in spite of fireships and all the shooting of the Spanish batteries, is history. The _Dreadnought_, after experiencing a narrow escape from shipwreck off Cape Finisterre at the outset of her cruise, took her full share of what fighting there was. She was present, too, at the second act of the drama, which took place off the Tagus with so fatal a sequel for the hapless Commander-in-Chief designate of the Armada, the Marquis de Santa Cruz—the “Iron Marquis,” “Thunderbolt of War,” the real Hero of Lepanto, by reputation the ablest sea-officer the world had yet seen. First, the news that his flagship and the finest fighting galleons of his own picked squadron—all named, too, after the most helpful among the Blessed Saints of the Calendar—together with his best transports and victuallers, had been boarded and taken and sacrilegiously set ablaze to, burned to the water’s edge, one after the other, by those “accursed English Lutheran dogs.” Worse still. To be then defied to his face, he, Spain’s “Captain-General of the Ocean”; to be audaciously challenged to come out and fight and have his revenge then and there—Drake and the _Dreadnought_ and the rest openly waiting for him—in the offing. The shame of the disaster was enough to kill the haughty Hidalgo, to make him fall sick and turn his face to the wall and die, without Philip’s espionage and unworthy insults goading him to the grave. The _Dreadnought_ had a hand in shaping the destinies of England, for, in the words of the Spanish popular saying, “to the Iron Marquis succeeded the Golden Duke,” whose hopeless incompetence gave England every chance in the next year’s fighting.
In the opening encounter with the Spanish Armada that July Sunday afternoon of 1588, no ship of all the Queen’s fleet bore herself better than did the _Dreadnought_. Captain George Beeston, of an ancient Surrey family, held command on board the _Dreadnought_. He was a veteran officer of the Queen’s fleet—more than twenty-five years had gone by since he first trod the quarter-deck as a captain. Leading in among the enemy, after the first hour of long-range firing between the English van and the Spanish rear had brought both sides to closer quarters, the _Dreadnought_ with the ships that followed Drake’s flagship the _Revenge_, for nearly three hours fought first with one and then with another of the most powerful of the Spanish rear-guard ships. After that, forcing their way among the Spaniards as they gave back and began to crowd on their main body, she had a sharp set-to with the big galleons, led by Juan Martinez de Recalde, perhaps the best seaman in all King Philip’s navy, commander of the rear-division of the Armada. On the _Santa Ana_ and her consorts the _Revenge_ and _Dreadnought_ and the rest made a spirited attack, pushing Recalde so hard that eventually Medina Sidonia himself, the Spanish Admiral, had to turn back and come to the rescue with every ship at his disposal. It was enough; Drake and his men had played their part. Before Medina Sidonia’s advance in force, the _Revenge_ and _Dreadnought_ left the _Santa Ana_, and with the rest of the attacking English van drew off. They had done an excellent day’s work.
There was harder work for the _Dreadnought_ in the great battle of Tuesday off Portland Bill. First came the fierce brush in the morning, when Drake and Lord Howard and the leaders of the English fleet, after a daring attempt to work in between the Spanish fleet and the Dorset coast, had to tack at the last moment, baffled for want of sea room, and were closed with by the enemy in the act of going about. On came the galleons exultantly, their crews shouting and cheering, amid a blare of trumpets and ruffle of drums, in full confidence to run down and sink the lighter built English vessels. It was a moment of extreme peril:—but at the very last, suddenly, the fortune of the day changed. As the Spaniards seemed to be upon them the wind shifted, the English sails filled, ship by ship and all together, and then stretching out with bowsprits pointing seaward, the _Revenge_, _Victory_, _Ark Royal_, _Dreadnought_, and the others safely cleared the enemy, pouring in so fierce a fire as they passed that the Spanish ships had to sheer off. This was the first fight of the day. Later, when the wind, going round with the sun, shifted again and gave Drake and Howard the weather gage, came on the most desperate encounter with the Armada that our ships had yet seen. Lord Howard in the _Ark Royal_ and Drake in the _Revenge_, with the _Dreadnought_, the _Lion_, the _Victory_, and the _Mary Rose_ near at hand, driving ahead before the wind, pushed into the thick of the Spanish main body, and attacked the enemy, in a long and furious battle that lasted until the afternoon sun was nearing the horizon.
A third day of battle was yet to come—Thursday’s hot fight off the back of the Isle Wight, and here again the _Dreadnought_ took her full share of what was done, until the long summer day drew to its close and the Armada “gathered in a roundel,” sullenly stood off eastward, proposing to fight no more until the coast of Flanders had been made.
Next morning the _Dreadnought’s_ captain was summoned on board Lord Howard’s flagship, the _Ark Royal_. He returned “Sir George,” knighted by the Lord High Admiral on the quarter-deck, in the presence of the enemy.
Sunday night saw the fireship attack, so disastrous to the Armada, and next morning followed the crowning victory of the week’s campaign, the great fight off Gravelines of Monday, the 29th of July, “the great battle which, more distinctly perhaps than any battle of modern times, has moulded the history of Europe—the battle which curbed the gigantic power of Spain, which shattered the Spanish prestige and established the basis of England’s empire.” Here the _Dreadnought_ distinguished herself again, fighting in the thick of the fray from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, within pistol-shot of the enemy most of the time.
From six till nearly eight the ships of Drake’s squadron had to bear the brunt of the fight, with, for antagonists, Medina Sidonia himself and his chief captains, who had gathered to stand by their admiral. Trying to rally the Armada after the panic of the night, this gallant band had at first, from before daybreak, anchored in a group, to act as rear-guard to the Spanish fleet, firing signal guns to stop their flying consorts, and sending pinnaces to order the fugitives back. Then Hawkins in the _Victory_, with the _Dreadnought_, the _Mary Rose_, and _Swallow_, and other ships unnamed, came up and struck in. Now moving ahead through her own smoke to plunge into the mêlée and come to the rescue of some hard-pressed consort, now working tack for tack parallel with and firing salvo after salvo at short range into some towering galleon or huge water-centipede-like galleass—so the hours of that eventful forenoon wore through on the _Dreadnought’s_ powder-begrimed decks. “Sir George Beeston behaved himself valiantly,” records the official _Relation of Proceedings_, drawn up for the Lord High Admiral. In vain did the most formidable of the Spanish galleons try to close and board. Ship after ship was forced back with shattered bulwarks and splintered sides, and with their scuppers spouting blood, after each English broadside, as the round shot crashed in among the masses of Spanish soldiery, packed on board the galleons as closely almost as they could stand.
More Spaniards joined their admiral as Sidonia passed north, the Spanish rear and centre squadrons forming together a long straggling array, among the ships of which, from nine to after one o’clock, the _Revenge_, _Victory_, _Dreadnought_, _Triumph_, _Ark Royal_, and the rest charged through and through fighting both broadsides. Shortly after two o’clock, the English ships passed on, pressing forward to overtake the Spanish van group of galleons. By four o’clock the battle was won, but firing went on till nearly six, “when every man was weary with labour, and our cartridges spent and our ammunition wasted” (_i.e._ used up).