A. Hilliard Atteridge

“ The English came in with wind and tide helping them, several ships abreast, the rest following each as quickly as she might, like a great flock of sea-birds streaming towards the shore. There could be no long ranging fire to prelude the close attack. At some sixty yards, when men could see each other's faces across the gap, the English archers drew their bows, and the cloth-yard arrows began to fly, their first target the "Great Cristopher" on the flank of the line. ”

“ Still, Lissa will always count among the famous sea-fights of the world, for it was the first conflict in which the armoured sea-going ship took a leading part. But there is another reason: it proved in the most startling way—though neither for the first time nor the last—that men count for more than machines, that courage and enterprise can reverse in the actual fight the conditions that beforehand would seem to make defeat inevitable. "Give me plenty of iron in the men, and I don't mind so much about iron in the ships," was a pithy saying of the American Admiral Farragut. ”

“ Some of these sank as the fire reached the water's edge, and the waves lapped into the hollow hull, or the weight of half-consumed upper works capsized them. Others drifted ashore in the shallows, and reddened sea and land with the glare of their destruction far into the night.
For the men who had fought, the victory, complete as it was, had an element of disappointment. They had hoped to secure as a prize the treasures of Cleopatra, but these had been spirited away on the Egyptian fleet. ”

“ Even those who had fought best in the Asiatic armada were now losing heart and taking to flight. Queen Artemisia, with her five galleys of Halicarnassus, had fought in the front line among the ships of the Ionian squadron. She was now working her way out of the mêlée, and in the confusion rammed and sank a Persian warship. Xerxes, watching the fight from his throne on the hillside, thought it was a Greek ship that the Amazon had destroyed and exclaimed: "This woman is playing the man while my men are acting like women!" ”

“ Spars and rigging were badly cut up, shots between wind and water were letting the sea into the huge hulls. Just as the English thought the "San Juan de Sicilia" had been put out of action and would be their prize, the galleon heeled over and went to the bottom. Soon the fight was only sustained by the rearward ships, the rest trying to extricate themselves from the mêlée, not for any lack of courage, but because all their ammunition was gone, their decks were encumbered with wreckage from aloft, and the men were toiling at the pumps to keep them afloat. ”

“ Then, to the dismay of Antony's veterans who watched the battle from the headland of Actium, it was seen that the Egyptians were unfurling their sails from the long yards. The signal had been given from Cleopatra's stately vessel, which as the battle began had rowed out to a position in the midst of the Egyptian squadron, and now shook out her purple sails to the breeze, silken fabrics of fiery red, that seemed at first glance like a battle-signal. But in battle sails were never used and ships trusted entirely to the oar, so to set the sails meant plainly that the fight was to be abandoned. ”

“ The Venetian soldiers were sent on board the Turkish galleys and chained to their oars as slaves. Bragadino saw his officers beheaded before the Pasha's tent. He might have saved his life by becoming a renegade, but he was incapable of such apostasy and treason. The barbarian, in whose power he was, invented new torments for his victim. Bragadino had his ears and nose cut off, and thus mutilated he was paraded round the Turkish army, and then rowed in a boat through the fleet, and everywhere greeted with insult and mockery. Then Mustapha sentenced his prisoner to be flayed alive. ”

“ On sea, as on land, there are times in the crisis of a war when the highest prudence is to throw all ordinary rules of prudence aside, and take all risks.
The admiral had resolved from the outset that, whatever might be the result, the Austrian fleet should not lie in safety under the protection of shore batteries, leaving the Italian command of the Adriatic unchallenged. He felt that it would be better to sink in the open sea, in a hopeless fight against desperate odds, rather than ingloriously to survive the war, without making an effort to carry his flag to victory. ”

“ For a few moments it seemed that already the Persians were assured of victory, for, seeing the enormous mass of the ships of Asia crowding the strait from shore to shore, and stretching far away on the open sea outside it, not a few of the European leaders lost heart for a while. The rowers began to backwater, and many of the ships of the first line retired stern foremost into the narrows. The rest followed their example, each one fearing to lose his place in the line, and be exposed in isolation to the attack of a crowd of enemies. ”

“ We pass, then, over a thousand years to a record of naval war waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages by northern races—people who had, independently of Greek or Roman, evolved somewhat similar types of ships, but who were better sailors, though for all that they still used the ship not so much as an engine of war as the floating platform on which warriors might meet in hand-to-hand conflict. ”

“ If it was to escape famine it must keep in touch with the ships that crossed and recrossed the narrow seas, bringing heavy cargoes of food and forage from the ports of Asia, and escorted by squadrons of long war galleys.
Every Greek city had been warned of the impending danger. Even those who remembered Marathon, the day when a few thousand spearmen had routed an Asiatic horde outnumbering them tenfold, realized that any force that now could be put in the field would be overwhelmed by this human tide of a million fighting men. ”

“ The first shots were fired by the four galleasses, as the long line of Ottoman galleys came sweeping on into range of their guns. Heavy cannon, such as they carried, were still something of a novelty in naval war, and the Turks had a dread of these tall floating castles that bristled with guns, from which fire, smoke, and iron were now hurled against them. One of the first shots crashed into the deck of Ali Pasha's flagship, scattering destruction as it came. The Turkish line swayed and lost its even array. Some ships hesitated, others crowded together in order to pass clear of the galleasses. ”

“ Sixty thousand men-rowers and warriors were crowded on board the Greek fleet. At least twice as many must have been borne on the decks and rowers' benches of the Persian armada. Midway in the opening of the straits the Persians had occupied the rocky island of Psytalia. Its ledges and its summit glittered with arms, and beside it some light craft had taken post to assist friendly vessels in distress. Past the islet the great fleet swept in four successive divisions driven by the measured stroke of tens of thousands of oars. ”

“ So he steamed through the night, followed by his strange array of ships that another leader might well have considered as little better than useless encumbrances, and in front the handful of inferior ironclads that might well be regarded as equally doomed to destruction when they met the more numerous and more heavily armed ships of the enemy. But he had put away all thoughts of safety. He was staking every ship and every man and his own life against the faint chance of success. The coming day might see his fleet destroyed, but such a failure would be no disgrace. ”

“ The prizes were taken in tow. Sails were set. Weary men tugged at the oar, knights and nobles taking their places among them. As the October night deepened into darkness, amid driving rain and roaring wind-squalls, the fleet anchored in the sheltered bay.
The gale that swept the Adriatic was a warning that the season for active operations was drawing to a close, and the admirals reluctantly decided that no more could be done till next spring. The swiftest ships were sent off to carry the good news of Lepanto to Rome and Messina, Venice and Genoa, Naples and Barcelona. ”

“ His paper plans for destroying an enemy were no doubt open to the criticism that they would work out beautifully if the enemy stuck to the old-fashioned ways and attempted no counter-stroke. But the essence of Clerk's theories was that parallel orders of battle meant only indecisive cannonading; that to crush an enemy one must break into his line, bring parts of it under a close fire, not on one side, but on both, and decide the fate of the ships thus cut off by superior numbers and superior gun power before the rest could come to their help. ”

“ Yet it is a notable fact that whole races of men who navigate river, lake, and sea, successfully and boldly, never hit upon the principle of the oar till they were taught it by Europeans, and could of themselves get no further than the paddle. The oar, with its leverage, its capacity for making the very weight of the crew become a motive power, became in more senses than one the great instrument of progress on the sea. It gave the ship a power of manœuvring independently of the wind, the same power that is the essence of advantage in steam propulsion. ”

“ On the poop also were the King's trumpeters bearing the "war horns"—long horns of the wild ox, which now sounded the signal for battle. The droning call was taken up by ship after ship, as the shouting sailors sent down sails and yards on deck. The ships closed on each other side by side, and drew in their oars, forming in close line abreast, and then under bare masts the long array of war galleys, with their high bows carved into heads of beasts and birds and dragons, drifted with the current towards the hostile fleet. ”

“ Officers and men were in high spirits and confident of victory, Rupert as eager as when in his younger days he led his wild charges of cavaliers, Monk impatient with prudent counsels urged by timid pilots, and using sharp, strong language to encourage them to take risks which he as a landsman did not appreciate. Not a ship touched ground. Some Dutch ships were sighted on the look-out off the edge of the Gunfleet, but they drew off when Captain Elliot, in the "Revenge," led a squadron of nine ships-of-the-line and some fireships to attack them. ”

“ There is an old story that men feared to tell King Philip the news of the disaster, and the Court jester broke the tidings with a casual remark that the French must be braver than the English, for they jumped into the sea by scores, while the islanders stuck to their ships. The defeat at sea prepared the way for other defeats by land, and in these campaigns there appeared a new weapon of war—rudely fashioned cannon of short range and slow, inaccurate fire—the precursors of heavier artillery that was to change the whole character of naval warfare. ”

“ Themistocles in the centre with the picked ships of Athens was forcing his way, wedge-like, between the Phœnician and Ionian squadrons into the dense mass of the Persian centre. The bronze beaks ground their way into hostile timbers, oars were swept away, rowers thrown in confusion from their benches stunned and with broken limbs. Ships sank and drowning men struggled for life; the Asiatic archers shot their arrows at close quarters, the spearmen hurled their javelins ”

“ Where the stroke of the ram failed, the ships were jammed together in the press, and men fought hand to hand on forecastles and upper decks. Here it was that the Greeks, trained athletes, chosen men in the prime of life, protected by their armour and relying on the thrust of the long and heavy spear, had the advantage over the Asiatics. Only their own countrymen of the Ionian squadron could make any stand against them, and the Ionians had to face the spears of Sparta, in the hands of warriors all eager to avenge the slaughter of Thermopylæ. ”

“ In the night of the 8th the English fleet passed Martinique. Next morning it was off the west coast of Dominica, making good speed, and away to the northward a far-spreading crowd of sails showed that Rodney had guessed rightly. The French fleet and convoy were in sight.
Dominica is a mass of volcanic ridges, falling to the seaward in precipitous cliffs, rising landward tier above tier and shooting up into rocky spires that culminate in the towering peak of the Morne Diablotin, five thousand feet high. ”

“ They fought furiously and sold their lives dearly; but soon the armed bow of the "Iron Beard" drove between their ship and the next, the lashings were cut, and the Norwegian drifted out of the line, with her deck heaped with dead. Erik let her drift and attacked the next ship in the same way. He was eating up Olaf's left wing ship by ship, while the Danes and Swedes kept the centre and right busy.
It was the bloodiest fight that the North had ever seen, a fight to the death, for though there was now small hope of victory, the Norse battle madness was strong in Olaf and his men. ”

“ Soldiers and sailors, veterans of many wars, and the chief pilots of the fleet sat round his cabin table, and there was anxious debate. No one could say how long it would be before Parma's army was ready; ammunition and provisions were short, men falling sick, ships badly damaged, though only a dozen had been actually lost. The wind was increasing from the south-south-west, and the pilots urged that the best course was to run up the North Sea, round the north of Scotland, reach the open Atlantic, and so return to Spain without further fighting. ”

“ In our days, in the hours before such a decisive struggle a people watches the newspapers, and waits for tidings of the fight in a turmoil of mingled hopes and fears. But whatever may be the result the individual, who is thus a spectator at a distance, runs no personal risks. It was otherwise in those days of merciless heathen warfare, and here all would see for themselves the changing fortunes of the fight on which their own fate depended.
The Greek fleet had been formed in two divisions of unequal strength. ”

“ A no less effective argument was the necessity of protecting their growing commerce. Athens looked upon the sea, and that sea at once divided and united the scattered Greek communities who lived on the coasts and islands of the Archipelago. It was the possession of the fleet thus acquired that enabled Themistocles and Athens to play a decisive part in the crisis of the struggle with Asia. ”

“ The modern specialization of offices and capacities which divides between different individuals the functions of political leader, general, and admiral was yet centuries distant in the future. Themistocles, who had advised the policy of naval war, was to be the foremost leader in the battle, and though purely naval tactics were to have some part in it, it was to be to a great extent a land battle fought out on floating platforms, so that one who had learned the art of war on land could act as an admiral on the sea. ”

“ The ships that first encountered were nearly all Roman vessels, for the Egyptian and Asiatic squadrons were not in the front line of Antony's fleet, and the brunt of the attack fell upon the sluggish giants that had been so elaborately fortified with booms in the water and towers and breastworks on their decks. ”