if ever the bold navigator arrived at home, he had done enough to talk on all his days, and needed no other diversion among his neighbours, than to give an account of the vast seas, mighty rocks, deep gulfs, and prodigious storms he met with in these remote parts of the known world: and this magnified by the poetical arts of the learned men of those times, grew into a received maxim of navigation. That these parts were so full of constant tempests, storms, and dangerous seas, that it was present death to come near them, and none but madmen and desperadoes could have any business there, since they were places where ships never came, and navigation was not proper in the place.
And Thule, where no passage was
For ships their sails to bear.
Horace has reference to this horrid part of the world, as a place full of terrible monsters, and fit only for their habitation, in the words before quoted.
Belluosus qui remotis
Obstrepit Oceanus Britannis.
Juvenal follows his steps;
Quanto Delphino Balaena Britannica major. — Juv.
Such horrid apprehensions those ages had of these parts, which by our experience, and the prodigy to which navigation in particular, and sciential knowledge in general, is since grown, appear very ridiculous.
For we find no danger in our shores, no uncertain wavering in our tides, no frightful gulfs, no horrid monsters, but what the bold mariner has made familiar to him. The gulfs, which frighted those early sons of Neptune, are searched out by our seamen, and made useful bays, roads, and harbours of safety. The promontories which running out into the sea gave them terrible apprehensions of danger, are our safety, and make the sailors’ hearts glad, as they are the first lands they make when they are coming home from a long voyage, or as they are a good shelter when in a storm our ships get under their lee.
Progress of Navigation.
Our shores are sounded, the sands and flats are discovered, which they knew little or nothing of, and in which more real danger lies, than in all the frightful stories they told us; useful sea-marks and land-figures are placed on the shore, buoys, on the water, lighthouses on the highest rocks; and all these dreadful parts of the world are become the seat of trade, and the centre of navigation: art has reconciled all the difficulties, and use made all the horribles and terribles of those ages become as natural and familiar as daylight.
The hidden sands, almost the only real dread of a sailor, and by which till the channels between them were found out, our eastern coast must be really unpassable, now serve to make harbours: and Yarmouth road was made a safe place for shipping by them. Nay, when Portsmouth, Plymouth, and other good harbours would not defend our ships in the violent tempest we are treating of, here was the least damage done of any place in England, considering the number of ships which lay at anchor, and the openness of the place.
So that upon the whole it seems plain to me, that all the dismal things the ancients told us of Britain, and her terrible shores, arose from the infancy of marine knowledge, and the weakness of the sailor’s courage.
Not but that I readily allow we are more subject to bad weather and hard gales of wind than the coasts of Spain, Italy, and Barbary: but if this be allowed, our improvement in the art of building ships is so considerable, our vessels are so prepared to ride out the most violent storms, that the fury of the Sea is the least thing our sailors fear: keep them but from a lee shore, or touching upon a sand, they will venture all the rest: and nothing is as great satisfaction to them, if they have a storm in view, than a sound bottom and good sea room.
From hence it comes to pass, that such winds as in those days would have passed for storms, are called only a fresh gale, or blowing hard. If it blows enough to fright a South country sailor, we laugh at it: and if our sailors bald terms were set down in a table of degrees, it will explain what mean.
Stark calm.
Calm weather.
Little wind.
A fine breeze.
A small gale.
A fresh gale.
A topsail gale.
Blows fresh.
A hard gale of wind.
A fret of wind.
A storm.
A tempest.
Just half these tarpaulin article, I presume, would have passed in those days for a storm; and what our sailors call a top sail gale would have drove the navigators of those ages, into harbours: when our sailors reef a topsail, they would have handed all their sails; and when we go under a main-course, they would have run afore it for life to the next port they could make: when our hard gale blows, they would have cried a tempest; and about the fret of wind they would be all at their prayers.
And if we should reckon by this account, we are a stormy country indeed, our seas are no more navigable now for such sailors than they were then: if the Japanesses, the East Indians, and such like navigators were to come with their thin cockle shell barks and calico sails; if Cleopatra’s fleet, or Caesar’s’ great ships with which he fought the battle of Actium, were to come upon our seas, there hardly comes a March or a September in twenty years but would blow them to pieces, and then the poor remnant that got home, would go and talk of a terrible country where there is nothing but storms and tempests; when all the matter is, the weakness of their shipping, and the ignorance of their seamen: and I make no question but our ships ride out many a worse storm than that terrible tempest which scattered Julius Caesar’s fleet, or the same that drove AEneas on the coast of Carthage.
And in modern times we have a famous instance in the Spanish Armada; which, after it rather frighted than damaged by Sir Francis Drake’s machines, not then known by the name of fire ships, were scattered by a terrible storm, and lost upon every shore.
The case is plain, it was all owing to the accident of navigation: they had, no doubt, a hard gale of wind, and perhaps a storm; but they were also on an enemy’s coast, their pilots out of their knowledge, no harbour to run into, and an enemy astern, that when once they separated, fear drove them from one danger to another, and away they went to the northward, where they had nothing but God’s mercy, and the winds and seas to help them. In all those storms and distresses which ruined that fleet, we do not find an account of the loss of one ship, either of the English or Dutch; the Queen’s fleet rode it out in the downs, which all men know is none of the best roads in the world; and the Dutch rode among the flats of the Flemish coast, while the vast galleons not so well fitted for the weather, were forced to keep the sea, and were driven to and fro till they had got out of their knowledge; and like men desperate, embraced every danger they came near.
This long digression I could not but think needful, in order to clear up the case, having never met with anything on this head before: at the same time it is allowed, and histories are full of the particulars, that we have often very high winds, and sometimes violent tempests in these northern parts of the world; but I am still of opinion, such a tempest never happened before as that which is the subject of these sheets: and I refer the reader to the particulars.
1Taken frequently for Britain.
Chapter III.
