HMS Northumberland

“ Northumberland goes out, with my men, to-day. If the Foudroyant had not come as she did, Le Guillaume Tell would have beat all we had. The Penelope is the only effective ship; if she goes, we shall be badly off. Much credit is due to Captains Blackwood and Long; the latter, I beg your lordship to recommend to the commander in chief. Every thing shall be done, in my power. If the ships were here, I could soon refit them. My people begin to droop, from hard work; the prize still sticks to us. I long to get Diana and Justice to compleat the gang. ”

“ Even when the first ship-money fleet was cruising in 1635, coasters and Dover packet boats were stopped and pillaged while the royal fleet was riding in the Downs. Again, in September 1636, while Northumberland’s vessels were mostly in the North Sea forcing the Dutch fishermen to take licences, the shipowners of the western ports petitioned that the Channel was so full of Turks that they dared not send anything to sea, that seamen refused to sail or fishermen to fish. ”

“ A third ship of the Minotaur class, the Northumberland, was modified by the present writer at the bow and stern on his entering the Admiralty, the armor above water being there reduced, and an armored bow breastwork constructed. Within this armored breastwork were placed two heavy guns firing right ahead. With this exception, all these early ships, nine in number, were without any other protected guns than those of the broadside. ”

“ In some instances, owing to their defective build, they turned end over end when struck by a heavy sea, and, from want of the power to right themselves when capsized, the unfortunate men were encaged beneath them. To prevent the recurrence of such disastrous accidents, the Duke of Northumberland offered a premium for the production of a model life-boat, and the result was the exhibition of several respectable contrivances. ”

“ In merchantmen the keel was still only about two and a half times the beam. [1077] Although English ships were slow, they were strong. Nathaniel Butler, a naval captain, attributed their sluggishness as compared with the Dutch to [254] their being ‘so full of timber ... we building ours for seventy years, they theirs for seven;’ and Northumberland, in 1636, described some of them as ‘so clogged with timber’ that there was no room for stores. ”

“ Some six or seven weeks ago parcels began to be sent from this city addressed to a lieutenant in the Northumberland Fusiliers. There was nothing remarkable in that, for though we are some distance here from Northumberland, young officers are gazetted to regiments which need them irrespective of the part of the country to which the officers themselves belong. ”

“ The doings of Northumberland’s fleet at the Yarmouth fishing caused increased excitement in Holland. Van Beveren knowing, as he said, that the English ships had not gone northwards “to catch flies,” immediately sent intelligence of its departure to Admiral Van Dorp, so that he might extend his protection to the Dutch fishermen. Early in August the Admiral had been expressly instructed to guard the fishermen “from the Spanish and all others inclined to molest them”; and he had a fleet of fifty-seven sail under his command for this purpose.559 But Van 313 Dorp was too late. ”

“ But its ineffectiveness was due rather to the policy of Charles than to his admiral's fault (Gardiner, History of England, viii. 156; Strafford Letters, i. 524; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1635–6, pp. xx, 357) . Northumberland was full of zeal for the king's service, and presented to him in December 1636 a statement of the abuses existing in the management of the navy, with proposals for their reform; but, though supported by ample proof of the evils alleged, the commissioners of the admiralty took no steps to remedy them. ”

“ Lindsey mentioned in his journal that, in two days, eleven ships lost masts and topmasts, with only ‘strong winds’ blowing, but had not thought the circumstance deserved comment, although his vice-admiral, the old Elizabethan seaman, Sir William Monson, was not so reticent. Northumberland’s fleet was equally ill found, and on his return he charged the Principal Officers with giving him ships leaky and out of repair, fitted with defective masts and yards and bad cordage. Some, he said, were too old to be worth repairing, and the new ones required girdling to make them fit for sea. ”

“ Northumberland's dissatisfaction with Elizabeth's government now reached a crisis. Simple-minded by nature, he had no political ambitions, but he was devoted to the religion of his fathers, and had inherited a strong sense of his own and his family's importance in the border country. Had no efforts been made to thwart the peaceful exercise of his family's traditional authority, he would doubtless have spent his life in the sports of hunting and hawking, which he loved, and in exchanging hospitalities with his neighbours. ”

“ For the next three hundred years Northumberland was swept by successive waves of raid and reprisal, in the course of which occurred the two well-known events, the attack of William the Lion of Scotland on Alnwick Castle, and the more famous affair still, the struggle between Percy and Douglas known as the battle of Otterburn, which was fought in “Chevy Chase” (Cheviot Forest) . More important poetically than politically, it stands out more vividly in the records of the time than many other conflicts of larger import. ”

“ On the 4th of August we left Plymouth Sound in company with the Tonnant, bearing the flag of Admiral Lord Keith, and on the 6th we came to an anchor off Berryhead, there to wait the arrival of the Northumberland, which was hourly expected. She made her appearance in the course of the day, and after due salutes from both admiral's ships, in which noisy greeting we of course joined, for we are very polite at sea, in our own thundering way, she took up her station close by us. ”

“ At 2h 49’ P.M., the enemy bore up in close line a-head; and under every sail that could be set, favoured by a fresh breeze, made a bold and determined attempt to run between her and the shore, under cover of the numerous batteries with which it is lined in that part. Captain Hotham placed the Northumberland to meet them as close as he could to the Point de Pierre Laye, with her head to the shore, and the main-top-sail shivering, and made dispositions for laying one of them alongside ”

“ No officer but one who possessed great local knowledge, could, under such difficult circumstances, have ventured to undertake the service that Captain Hotham so bravely and so effectually performed. The loss sustained by the Northumberland amounted to 5 men killed and 28 wounded. ”

“ Of the seamen two-thirds were at sea, one-third at home, their favourite abiding place being Ratcliff. Yorkshire, [245] North Wales, Chester, and some parts of Sussex are omitted, and the figures for Northumberland cannot include the Newcastle coal traffic, which in 1626 employed 300 colliers; [1050] it may be, however, that their crews are reckoned in the London total.
In various ways, during the war time, Parliament showed its satisfaction with the work done by officers and men, and occasionally rewarded them by extra gratuities of a month’s pay, or presents of wine. ”

“ At the head of Northumberland Street, on the open space of the Haymarket, stands a beautiful winged Victory on a tall column, crowning “Northumbria” typified as a female figure at the foot of the column. This graceful and striking memorial is the work of T. Eyre Macklin, and is in memory of the officers and men of the North who fell in the Boer War of 1899-1902. Two other noteworthy statues in the town are those of Lord Armstrong, near the entrance to the Natural History Museum at Barras Bridge, and of Joseph Cowen, in Westgate Road. ”

“ Two years after this, a party of Scots under the next Douglas rode into Northumberland, coming nearly as far south as Newcastle. Hotspur set off from Bamburgh, of which castle he was Constable at the time, to intercept them. He awaited them on the banks of the Glen, near Wooler; and the archers of his force went out for forage meanwhile. When the Scots arrived, they found themselves in the presence of an enemy whom they had imagined to be behind them, and they immediately occupied Homildon Hill. ”

“ There is probably no circumstance connected with the English claims to the sovereignty of the seas that has been more frequently misrepresented by historians, pamphleteers, and writers 311 on international law than the operations of Northumberland’s fleet, and in particular the amount paid by the Dutch herring fishermen for the king’s licenses ”

“ On the 9th June, 1806, Jérome Buonaparte anchored in Fort Royal bay, Martinique, having narrowly escaped an encounter with the Northumberland, which ship arrived a few hours afterwards from Barbadoes, in consequence of information that the Veteran had been seen off the north end of that island. ”

“ The Northumberland was a target for the three of them. The men at the wheel were killed, and nobody thought of sending others to take their place. The captain was mad-drunk, the master a shivering coward, and the lieutenants unable or unwilling to take the command. The captain was mortally wounded ”

“ Northumberland had many misfortunes. He was constantly ill from a kind of ague. He was burdened with debt, and yet had to keep up a vast establishment and engage in much fighting on his own account. Wolsey treated him like a boy so long as he was in power. He was not often allowed to go to the court, nor even to his father's funeral. To add to his other distresses, he disagreed with his wife, who soon returned to her father, and hated her husband heartily for the rest of his short life. ”

“ There was no lifeboat at Cresswell then, and all the men of the village, except the old men who were past work, had gone northward, when the oncoming storm prevented their return. The women and girls heard the cries of the schooner’s crew, and mourned to each other their inability to help. But one gallant-hearted girl, named Peggy Brown, cried out, “If I thowt she could hing on a bit, I wad be away for the lifeboat.” But between them and Newbiggin, the nearest lifeboat station, the Lyne Burn runs into the sea, and spreads widely out over the sands ”

“ In gales of wind from the eastward, coasting vessels sometimes seek shelter in Holy Island harbour, and find good anchorage before the town in three fathoms at low-water.
The Staples and Farn islands, with the rocks and shoals between them and Holy Island, render the in-shore navigation of the coast of Northumberland, from North Sunderland point to the mouth of the Tweed, extremely intricate and hazardous; and the corporation of the Trinity House, London, caution all masters of ships, and especially strangers to the coast, not to attempt sailing within those islands and shoals ”

“ He was no sooner returned into Englande, then he seemed to be much reformed in those extravagancyes, and with his fathers approbation and direction marryed a Lady of a good family, and by his fathers creditt with the Earle of Northumberland, who was high Admirall of Englande, was joyned presently and joyntly with S'r William Russell in the office of Treasurer of the Navy, a place of greate trust, and profitt, which he æqually shared with the other, and seemed a man well satisfyed and composed to the goverment. ”

“ They had some misty notion that that admiral was not always considerate to his guest, and disliked his attentions to the officers and crew of the Northumberland, not one of which it is said could resist the magical influence of his actions and words. It was natural that the salient incidents of a voyage with such a man should be passed on and handed down to later generations of seamen.
The story of the passage of the line was an everlasting theme retailed in order to justify the goodness of Napoleon. The boatswain represents Neptune and becomes sovereign for a time. ”

“ The Northumberland was cut to pieces. Captain Watson received [120] first one wound and then a second. He staggered to the accommodation ladder, and stood holding to the railing and bleeding to death. The master, it was sworn, came on the quarter-deck “with his hands in his breeches and his hat on, seemingly in a surly mood.” He declared that there were no men to fight the ship, and indeed the crew were running from the guns, while all the marines on the poop who were not shot had escaped below. ”

“ When the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out four months later, Northumberland was the only nobleman in the power of the insurgents who refused to join in the rebellion. They threatened to kill him; but 'at that and all times the Earl was very earnest against the commons in the King's behalf and the Lord Privy Seal's.'—Confession of William Stapleton: Rolls House MS., A 2, 2. ”

“ Her length would take up the whole of one side of Trafalgar Square. Her width would exactly fill Northumberland Avenue, leaving only some half-dozen inches between the house fronts on either side and the outside of the hull. Two Victorys and a frigate of Nelson’s day, fully manned and rigged, could be packed away within the Dreadnought’s hull.
[Our Dreadnought of to-day: deck-plan to scale; showing the disposition of the 12-in. 58-ton turret-guns and their arcs of training. (Bows to the right.) ] [3]
Measured from end to end, from bows to stern, the ship’s hull extends 490 feet. ”

“ The Black Prince carried four 9-ton guns and twenty 61⁄2-ton guns, all muzzle-loaders. These ships were unquestionably most impressive from the spectacular point of view, and, compared with the wooden ships they [Pg 122] superseded, their fighting value was great. They were practically the forerunners of the class represented by the three iron sisters, Agincourt, Minotaur, and Northumberland. The last named, a ship-rigged, armoured, first-class cruiser, was begun in 1865, by the Millwall Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, and completed in 1868, the designs being prepared by the Admiralty. ”