Part 2
The best ballad on the defeat of the Spanish Armada is Thomas Deloney’s _Joyful New Ballad declaring the happy obtaining of the great Galleazzo_, which is printed on p. 18. Deloney also wrote one on, _The strange and most cruell Whippes which the Spaniards had prepared to whippe and torment English men and women: which were found and taken at the overthrow of certain of the Spanish Shippes_; and another on _The Queene’s visiting of the Campe at Tilburie with her entertainment there_. Both may be found in _The Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. 387, 391, but since neither specially relates to the navy it was not thought necessary to reprint them. Mr. Ebsworth, in his introduction to these ballads, has brought together four or five ballads relating to the defeat of the Armada, written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (_Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. 378-383). Three of them are also to be found in Stone’s _Sea Songs and Ballads_, pp. 80-83.
The entries in the _Stationers’ Registers_ give the titles of several ballads which no longer survive, viz: _The English preparacion of the Spaniards Navigacion_; _The late wonderful Dystres which the Spanishe Navye sustayned yn the late fighte in the Sea and upon the West Coast of Ireland in this moneth of September 1588_; _A Ballad of Thanksgiving unto God for his mercy toward hir Majestie_; _England’s Joy and Delight, In the back Rebound of the Spanyardes Spyght_.
There were also ballads on the military preparations and the thanksgivings after the victory which have perished, and a number of ballads relating the exploits of squadrons or single ships, whose titles are entered in the _Stationers’ Registers_. Under November 14, 1588, appears _A Ditty of the Exploit of the Earl of Cumberland on the Sea in October 1588_; under August 5, 1590, a _Ballad made upon the late Fight at Sea between two Ships of Dunkirk and a small Ship of 80 ton appertaining to the Earl of Cumberland_ (Arber, ii. 236, 262). In July 1590 there was published _A Ditty of the Fight upon the seas the 4 of June last in the Straits of Jubraltare between the George and the Thomas Bonaventure against eight gallies with three Frigates_; in May 1591 followed a tract and a ballad on _The wonderful Victory obtained by the Centurion of London against five Spanish Gallies, the 4th of April being Easter Day 1591_; a year later came _The Seamans Carol for the taking of the great Carack_, and in July 1600 a ballad relating _how certain Merchants ships of England fought five Spanish ships of war in the Straits of Gibraltar on May 25, 1600_ (Arber, ii. 262, 274, 293; iii. 62). None of these survive.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century new enemies begin to take the place hitherto occupied by the Spaniards in the ballads. Piracy took a new shape after the close of the war with Spain. Captain John Smith devotes the last chapter of his _Travels_ to ‘The bad life and qualities, and conditions of pirates, and how they taught the Turks and Moors to become men of war.’ Because the peace threw them out of employment, and because ‘they grew hateful to all Christian princes,’ they retired to Barbary, and made its harbours their headquarters. Even before that the Barbary coast was a perilous one for richly laden merchantmen, and armed ships that met a likely prize did not always inquire whether their nations were at war. The ballad entitled _The Sailor’s Only Delight_ tells how two English merchantmen sailed for the coast of Barbary (p. 23). The Sweepstake was taken by a French man-of-war, but her consort the George-Aloe captured the French ship later, and made her crew suffer the fate they had inflicted on the crew of the Sweepstake.
‘We laid them aboard on the starboard side And threw them into the sea so wide.’
Two centuries before, Chaucer’s shipman, who had no very scrupulous conscience, as Chaucer owns, used to dispose of the crews of the ships he took in the same fashion.
‘If that he fought and hadde the heigher hand By water he sent hem hoom to every land.’
There are other references to this practice in early seventeenth century ballads, but it was now becoming confined to pirates.
Some of the English adventurers who took shelter in the Barbary ports gave up their trade after a time, made their peace, and returned to England: for instance, Sir Henry Mainwaring. Others became renegades and ended their days there. The two most famous were John Ward and a Dutchman called Simon Danzer or Danseker. Two pamphlets on their misdeeds were published in 1609, and also a tragedy by Robert Daborne called _A Christian turned Turk_ in 1612. The ballads upon them which are included in this collection (pp. 25-31) were registered on July 3, 1609. _The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow_ was written after Ward was dead and his exploits had become legendary, but its popularity requires its insertion.
From Ward, Danseker, and others, the native seamen of the Barbary States learnt much. When they established themselves there, says Captain Smith, ‘the Moors scarce knew how to sail a ship ... those were the first that taught the Moors to be men of war.’ Later still, after the deaths of their leaders, the European pirates in Barbary ‘became so disjointed, disordered, debauched and miserable, that the Turks and Moors began to command them as slaves, and force them to instruct them in their best skill, which many an accursed renegado or Christian turned Turk did, till they have made those Sallee men or Moors of Barbary so powerful as they be to the terror of all the Straits, and many times they take purchase in the main ocean, yea, sometimes even in the narrow seas.’
A modern writer, accepting the view that it was in this way the Barbary captains learned the new art of sailing warships, points out that the expulsion of the Moriscoes from Spain in 1609 led to a further result equally disastrous. ‘It led at once to the rise of Sallee as a pirate port, and its launch upon its sinister career’ (Corbett, _England in the Mediterranean_ i. 10-20). Year after year the losses of the English merchants grew greater, and the number of English captives in Barbary increased. In 1620 James I. sent Sir Robert Mansell’s fleet against them, and in May 1621 Mansell made his abortive attack on Algiers (_ib._ 110-133). In 1624 there was presented to the House of Lords ‘the humble and lamentable complaint of above 1,500 poor captive souls, now under the miserable oppression of the Turks in Argier, Tunis, Sally and Tituane.’ Parliament ordered a general collection throughout the whole of England for the redemption of the captives, and the King issued letters patent for that purpose. (_Lords’ Journals_, iii. 411-13; Bewes, _Church Briefs_, p. 117). The verses entitled, _The lamentable cries of at least 1500 Christians_, printed on p. 31, were evidently printed and circulated in 1624, when this general collection was made. Beyond raising money in this way for ransoming captives, James did nothing, and nothing was done by Charles till Rainborow was sent to Sallee in 1637. ‘The expedition of 1637, whereby 300 or 400 Englishmen were rescued from slavery, was, in design and execution, the solitary success of Charles’s naval administration’ (Oppenheim, _The Administration of the Royal Navy_, p. 277). Though a _True journal of the Sally Fleet, with the Proceedings of the Voyage_, written by John Dunton, mariner, was published in 1637, no ballad writer celebrated the achievement. When the reign of Charles I. began he was at war with Spain, and a ballad entitled _The Honour of Bristol_, better known as _The Angel Gabriel_, relates a fight between a Bristol privateer of that name and three Spanish ships (p. 34). The ballad was written by Laurence Price: the precise date of its publication is uncertain (_Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. 428). Neither Cecil’s expedition to Cadiz, nor Buckingham’s to the Isle of Ré, inspired anything but satires. A short ballad by ‘a gentleman who was present in all that service’ epitomises the history of the Cadiz voyage (_ib._ vi. 420). References to both may be found in the volume of _Poems and Songs relating to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham_, edited by Mr. Fairholt for the Percy Society, in 1850. One ironically sets forth the expectations excited when the Lord High Admiral put to sea in 1627:
‘He’ll cool France and Spain, and quiet the main, The Dunkirkers passage he’ll stop; To stay all commotion he’ll plough up the ocean: God send him a good harvest crop ... And then he will meet with the West India fleet, And of them will take fast hold, And bring them away for England a prey, And choke us with silver and gold.’ (Fairholt, p. 13.)
Buckingham’s part in the reorganisation of the navy was forgotten by satirists, but the king’s panegyrists exaggerated the effort of Charles I. to strengthen the fleet. His attempts to assert the sovereignty of the seas furnished them with a theme. Between 1632 and 1640 Charles built about a dozen new ships, eight of which were a considerable size. The greatest of them was the Sovereign of the Seas, which was over 1,500 tons in size, carried a hundred guns, cost 40,000_l._ to build and 25,000_l._ to arm. Mr. Oppenheim describes her as ‘the largest, most ornate and most useless ship afloat,’ but after being cut down by the navy board of the commonwealth she did good service. (Oppenheim, p. 252; Clowes, ii. 6.) Launched in October 1637, she was intended, as her name shows, to assert the sovereignty of the British seas, which since 1634 Charles had been endeavouring to maintain against the French and the Dutch. Selden’s _Mare Clausum_ was published in 1636, to prove his claim; the Earl of Lindsey’s fleet in 1635, and the Earl of Northumberland’s in 1636, were sent forth to enforce it. (Gardiner, _History of England_, vii. 358, 384; viii. 154.) Lindsey’s fleet consisted of nineteen ships of the royal navy and twenty-six merchant vessels. Northumberland’s contained twenty-seven king’s ships. This display of naval force inspired the poems printed on p. 36, the first a panegyric _On His Majesties Fleet_, the second an address from Neptune to England, which was probably derived from some masque played at Court during these years. The ballad _Upon the Great Ship_ clearly belongs to 1637 (p. 37). In that year Thomas Heywood published a prose pamphlet entitled _A true Description of his Majesties Royal Ship built this year at Woolwich in Kent_, upon which these verses seem to be partly based. Heywood also wrote a long poem called _An Epigram upon his Majesties Great Ship the Sovereign of the Seas_, which is reprinted in Mr. Masefield’s collection (_A Sailor’s Garland_, p. 94).
A few of the sea songs written during the reign can be traced from the entries in the Stationers’ registers. Ballads were entered _On the Kings Navye_ on June 19, 1625; _A narrative of a sea-fight by the Lyon of London against 6 Turkish ships_ on January 2, 1635; _A new relation of 4 Englishmen that brought into Saint Lucar’s Turkish Pirates and their Ship_ on December 10, 1638; a _Ballad of the Seafight with three Turkish piratts_ on July 13, 1640; _A noble and notable Seafight_ on July 17, 1640. All these have perished. Half a dozen ballads on the sea-fights between the Spaniards and Dutch in the Channel in September 1639, and on the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the Downs by Tromp on October 10, 1639, were published. Of these one survives, in Wood’s collection in the Bodleian, entitled _A New Spanish Tragedy or More Strange News from the Seas_. In addition there are two amatory ballads, one registered June 13, 1631, called _A Sayler new come over_; the other, registered on July 18, 1636, _A dainty new ditty of the Sayler and his Love_, which is possibly the _Pleasant new song betwixt the Sayler and his Love_ reprinted in the _Roxburghe Ballads_, ii. 470.
Yet the most famous of English naval ballads originated during this period. Martin Parker’s _Saylors for my Money_ is undoubtedly, as Mr. Ebsworth points out, the far back original of Campbell’s _Ye Mariners of England_ (_Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. 797). It has a rival in _The Jovial Mariner or the Seaman’s Renown_, by Lawrence Price (_ib._ vi. 639). _Neptune’s Raging Fury or The Gallant Seaman’s Sufferings_, which begins ‘You gentlemen of England,’ is an adaptation of Martin Parker’s ballad, written probably towards the end of Charles I.’s reign, or perhaps during the Protectorate (_ib._ vi. 431). All three are here reprinted (pp. 40-46). The third, _Neptune’s Raging Fury_, came to be known as _The Old Mariners_ to distinguish it from later adaptations, and an abridged version of it, consisting of the first, the eleventh, and the thirteenth verses, was current in Campbell’s time under the title of _The New Mariners_. Campbell borrowed from it his refrain, and the phrases, ‘roar on the shore’ and ‘sweep through the deep,’ and honestly entitled the verses he sent to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ in 1800, an _Alteration of the old ballad ‘Ye Gentlemen of England’_ (Beattie, _Life of Campbell_, i. 341).
During the Commonwealth and the Protectorate the English navy became the most powerful in Europe, and yet the naval victories of those ten years left hardly any trace in ballad literature. One reason for this was the rigid censorship of the press which existed during that period. In 1647 and 1648 a flood of abusive ballads and newspapers had appeared in print, directed against the Long Parliament and the army, and designed to further the cause of the King. The Parliament passed on September 20, 1649, an Act for the suppression of unlicensed books and pamphlets, and for the punishment of their authors and vendors. Hawkers of pamphlets, newspapers and ballads, and ballad-singers, were to be apprehended, conveyed to the House of Correction, and whipped as rogues. By this Act, and by an Act against vagrants passed in 1657, declaring that henceforth, ‘persons commonly called fidlers and minstrels’ should be proceeded against as ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars,’ the production and circulation of ballads was effectually checked. Consequently neither the naval commanders of that time nor their victories were commemorated in the usual way. There is indeed a ballad called _Admiral Deane’s Funeral_ describing his interment in Westminster Abbey in 1653 (_Rump Songs_, 1660, p. 308); but it is merely a Royalist satire, concluding with the statement that though the admiral’s body is solemnly interred ‘In the famous chapel of Henry the Seven,’ yet ‘His soul is scarce gone the right way to heaven.’ But the only ballad directly relating an incident in the wars of this period is one which describes the bombardment of Malaga by five of Blake’s frigates in July 1656, which is reprinted on p. 47. A long narrative poem on _The Life and Actions of that valiant Hero Robert Blake, Esq., General of the Fleets of the Commonwealth of England, from the year 1649 to 1657_, written during the Protectorate, has survived, but it is too worthless to reprint (_Poems on Affairs of State_, vol. i. part 2, pp. 274-290, ed.). Of more interest is the _Elegy on the Death of the Right Honourable Robert Blake_, written immediately after his death by one George Harrison, who appears to have been serving in some capacity in the fleet, since he dates it ‘on board the Dunbar, in the Downs.’ This is given on p. 48.
Poets of greater repute did not neglect the theme which the naval annals of the time afforded. Andrew Marvell, in a satirical poem against the Dutch, entitled _The Character of Holland_--obviously written about the beginning of 1653, though it was not published till 1665--concludes with some verses on the English navy and its three admirals, Deane, Monck, and Blake. He also wrote a poem on Blake’s victory at Santa Cruz. The address to his captains which he puts in Blake’s mouth breathes at all events Blake’s spirit, although it is fiction:
‘Of speedy victory let no man doubt, Our worst work’s past, now we have found them out. Behold their navy does at anchor lie, And they are ours, for now they cannot fly.’ (Marvell’s _Works_, ed. Aitken, i. 119; ii. 14.)
A greater poet, and more renowned than Marvell, Edmund Waller, celebrated Stayner’s capture of the Spanish galleons off Cadiz in his verses, _Of a war with Spain and a Fight at Sea_. That poem contains the famous lines,
‘Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the English make it their abode, Our oaks secure, as if they there took root, We tread on billows with a steady foot.’
These lines, inspired by Blake’s long blockade of the Spanish coasts during 1656 and 1657, helped in their turn to inspire a line in Campbell’s _Mariners of England_. Waller’s _Panegyric to my Lord Protector_, written in 1655, strikes the same note. ‘The present greatness of this nation’ he attributes in part to the wise head and strong hand of the Protector himself, in part to the ‘winged navy’ which makes the English ‘Lords of the world’s great waste, the ocean.’ This dominion, which Charles I. had claimed, the victories of the Protector’s admirals had re-established, and its outward sign was the honour paid to the red-cross flag.
‘The sea’s our own! and _now_ all nations greet With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet. Your power extends as far as winds can blow Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.’
The pride in the English navy which found its highest expression in these poems of Waller’s was sadly humiliated by the incidents of the second Dutch war. The first of the naval ballads of the new reign is called _The Valiant Seaman’s Congratulations to his Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second_ (p. 53). It is an expression of loyalty and devotion, protesting a willingness to go anywhere and fight anybody in the King’s cause. At the moment it was written, which was probably in 1662, France rather than Holland seemed the most likely adversary, for Louis XIV. was disputing the ceremonial honours due to the British flag. ‘If you will give commission to war with France we’ll go,’ say the seamen to Charles, promising ‘we will make their topsails unto our fleet shall bow.’ A couple of years later it became clear that the Dutch were to be the enemy, not the French. The next ballad in the series is _England’s Valour and Holland’s Terror_. It refers to Allin’s attack on the Smyrna fleet, which took place on December 19, 1664, and to De Ruyter’s proceedings in Guinea during the same year. ‘We’ll teach you better manners yet than ever did old Noll,’ it threatens. This ballad was probably published about January 1665, before war was actually declared. Much about the same date appeared Dorset’s famous song, _To all you ladies now at land_. A tradition handed down by Prior represents it as written ‘the night before the engagement with the Dutch in 1665,’ which has been interpreted to mean the night before the battle of June 3. But Pepys tells us that at an entertainment on the night of January 2, 1665, ‘I occasioned much mirth with a ballad I brought with me, made from the seamen at sea, to their ladies in town; saying Sir William Penn, Sir George Ayscue and Sir John Lawson made them’ (Pepys, _Diary_, ed. Wheatley, iv. 322). There is no reason to doubt that Dorset’s song was the ballad in question.
The naval battles which began in June 1665 and ended in the summer of 1666 are the subject of a series of ballads which have fortunately survived. The battle of June 3, 1665, is celebrated in _The Royal Victory_ (p. 58), while _The English Seaman’s Resolution_ clearly belongs to the spring of 1666, when Monck and Rupert had succeeded the Duke of York and the Earl of Sandwich as commanders (p. 61). _England’s Triumph and Holland’s Downfall_ is a narrative of the four days’ battle of June 1666. The writer has no doubt that it was a great victory, but is obliged to own ‘we can’t afford such brunts as these’ (p. 63). Hence the joy with which men welcomed the undoubted and decisive victory of St. James’s Day, July 25, 1666. On it there are three ballads: _The New Ballad of a famous German Prince and a renowned English Duke, England’s Royal Conquest_, and _Holland turned to Tinder_ (pp. 66-79). The series closes with _The Dutch Damnified, or the Butter-Boxes Bobbed_, which narrates the destruction of 160 Dutch merchantmen in their own harbours by Sir Robert Holmes on the eight and ninth of August, 1666 (p. 79).
The same tone of ferocious exultation marks them all; the populace liked to hear that, after one battle, the Dutch vessels ‘looked more like shambles than ships,’ that in another, six thousand Dutchmen were sent to feed their cousins the fish, and that in a third, thanks to the effect of the British fireships, you ‘might have had Dutchmen boiled or roast.’ A Dutch captain might be praised as a gallant fighter, but ‘he that caught fishes now fishes catch him’ was the sort of epitaph which pleased the man in the street. ‘Why should my nature or conscience repine at taking his life that fain would take mine?’ asks one writer. If one motive for the war was hatred for the ‘Butter-boxes’ and the ‘Hogan-Mogans,’ as the sailors call the Dutch, another was the desire for plunder. ‘We mean to have some of your dollars before that our fleets do part’ declares one writer, while a second rejoices over the store of plate taken on board the Dutch merchantmen, which makes the cabins of the English captains look “like goldsmiths” shops.’
On the British reverses the ballads are silent, but the poets of the period fill the gap. They, too, began by celebrating the successes of the British arms. Waller led off with a long poem of a new kind, _Instructions to a Painter for the drawing of the posture and progress of his Majesties forces at sea under the command of his Highness-Royal; together with the battle and victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3, 1665_ (_Works_, ed. Drury, p. 176). He described, one after another, ostensibly for the artist’s guidance, the early scenes of the war--the capture of the Dutch Bordeaux fleet, Allin’s attack on their Smyrna fleet, and finally the sea-fight off Harwich. It was to the courage and conduct of the Duke of York that Waller attributed the victory of the English, and accordingly he made James the centre of the battlepiece. Scorning defensive armour, such as most naval commanders wore in those days; James stands on his quarterdeck, exposed to every ball, but protected by some power unseen:
‘Fierce, goodly young! Mars he resembles when Heaven sends him down to scourge perfidious men.’
Waller had confined himself to the first year of the war. Dryden undertook to celebrate the second. His _Annus Mirabilis_ is an account of the events of the wonderful year 1666, which appeared early in 1667. ‘I am very much pleased,’ writes Pepys, on February 2, 1667, ‘with reading the poem I brought home with me last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden’s upon the present war, a very good poem’ (_Diary_, ed. Wheatley, vi. 156). There were reasons why it should please a man employed in the government of the navy, quite apart from its subject. Waller had treated naval warfare purely as a theme for rhetoric; Dryden attempted to understand it, and to make it intelligible. His description of the Loyal London, the vessel which the City presented to the King, and which Pepys commends as ‘the best ship in the world,’ gives a good picture of a first-rate of the period:
‘With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves; Deep in her draught and warlike in her length, She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.’
In another passage he contrasts the naval architecture and the naval tactics of the English and the Dutch: