Sea Fights from Sluys to Navarino; A Popular Account of the Most Important Actions in Which the British Navy Has Been Engaged (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: barrel was now spent; all her pikes broken; forty of her best men slain; and the greater part of the remainder wounded. At the beginning of the fight she had, as we have said, only one hundred hands free from sickness, the remaining ninety lying powerless on the ballast. Hope had fled, no friendly sail was to be detected on the horizon. The Revenge was dismasted, " her tackle cut asunder; her upper works altogether erased," nothing remained for flight or defence: she lay a mere wreck upon the waters, surrounded by the mighty fleet of Spain. Then Sir Richard Granville called the master gunner to him, and bade him split and sink the ship, that England might see how, after so many hours' fighting, and with so great a navy, the Spaniards had been unable to take the Revenge. " Yield yourselves," he said, addressing the seamen, who gathered round their dying admiral, " to the mercy of God, rather than to that of men, and sully not the glory of your nation in order to prolong your lives for a few miserable hours or days." The master gunner grimly assented to his chief's will; but the captain and the master, who had perchance dear home ties, or at least took a wiser and more just view of their position, remonstrated; reminding Sir Richard that there were many brave men on board yet living who might do their country and their queen " acceptable service hereafter." Moreover they assured him that the Spaniard would never possess his glorious ship?for she had six feet of water in her hold already, and three shot holes under water, so weakly stopped that with her first roll in the sea she would assuredly sink. Still Sir Richard persisted in his despairing wish. But the master of the Revenge had in the meantime gone on board the General, Don Alfonso Bazan, to arrange the terms cf surrend...