United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Captain Holt took a look at the sky, the aneroid and the wind not the arrow; old sea-dogs know which way the wind blows without depending on any such contrivance the way the clouds drift, the trend of the white-caps, the set of a distant sail, and on black, almost breathless nights, by the feel of a wet finger held quickly in the air, the coolest side determining the wind point.
Certainly the inveterate hostility with which the Englishman learned to regard the Spaniard in the latter half of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries found its most remarkable expression in the exploits of the Elizabethan "sea-dogs" and of the buccaneers of a later period.
Five days later he entered the Bay of Sea-Dogs upon the western coast of Australia; but he only found there a sterile soil, and met with neither water nor vegetation. Until the 31st August, he sailed along this coast without discovering what he sought. Once when he landed, he had a slight skirmish with some of the inhabitants, who seemed to be very thinly scattered over the country.
The Shannon took her prize to Halifax, and when the news came back that the captain of the Chesapeake lay dead in a British port, the bronzed sea-dogs of the Salem Marine Society resolved to fetch his body home in a manner befitting his end.
It is the romance of the past which attributes naval success mainly to superior seamanship or courage; the "little" Revenge was the super-Dreadnought of her time, and the victories of the Elizabethan sea-dogs were as surely won by superior weight of metal as those of Nelson or to-day.
It may startle some reader to be told that the foundations of modern electrical science were definitely established in the Elizabethan Age. The England of Elizabeth, of Shakespeare, of Drake and the sea-dogs, is seldom thought of as the cradle of the science of electricity.
First on the roll stands the name of John Hawkins greatest of the "sea-dogs" till his fame was surpassed by the mightiest of all, Francis Drake. In Henry's day his father, old William Hawkins, had won high repute, for himself as a sailor and for his countrymen as honourable dealers, by his voyages to the Guinea coast, where the Portuguese were in very evil odour, and to the Brazils.
Yet all this crude absurdity, 'from the courtier to the carter, was the glass reflecting the constantly increasing sea-borne trade, ever pushing farther afield under the stimulus and protection of the sea-dogs. And the Queen took precious good care that it all paid toll to her treasury through the customs, so that she could have more money to build more ships.
It is true that during these years there was almost constant war in Europe between the Emperor and France; yet this does not entirely explain the activity of the French privateers in Spanish America, for we find them busy there in the years when peace reigned at home. Once unleash the sea-dogs and it was extremely difficult to bring them again under restraint.
Well, perhaps, for the hero that the good hemp holds firm, and that Peribates and Eurylochus spring up to strengthen his bonds; well, that the wax seals fast the ears of those sturdy old sea-dogs who stretch to their oars till Ocean grows hoary behind the blades; or nobler bones might soon be added to the myriads that lie bleaching in the meadow, half hidden by its flowers.
Word Of The Day