He slays
the present-day sailor with virulent denunciation, and
implores divine interposition to take us back to the good
old days of Hawkins, Drake, Howard, Blake and the intrepid
Nelson. He craves a resurrection of the combined heroism and
piety of the sixteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
centuries. The seaman of those periods is, to his mind, a
lost ideal. And without doubt the men trained and
disciplined by Hawkins and Drake _were_ the glory of Britain
and the terror of other nationalities. Their seamanship and
heroism were matchless. They had desperate work to do, and
they did it with completeness and devotion. And the same
credit may be given to the sailors of still later times
under altered conditions. But Nelson's and Collingwood's men
did great deeds in different ways from those of Hawkins and
Drake. Both sets of seamen were brave and resourceful, but
they were made use of differently, and were drafted from
different sources. The latter were seamen and piratical
rovers by choice, and warriors very often by necessity.
They were willing, however, to combine piety, piracy, and
sanguinary conflict in the effort to open out new avenues of
commercial enterprise for the mutual benefit of themselves
and the thrifty lady who sat upon the throne, and who showed
no disinclination to receive her share of the booty
valiantly acquired by her nautical partners.
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