They were the representative men of their time, the creation in a great measure of the national spirit. They were the offspring of long generations of seamen and lovers of the sea. They could not have been great but for the nation which gave them birth, and imbued them with their worth and spirit. The great sailors, for instance, could not have originated in a nation of mere landsmen. They simply took the lead in a country whose coasts were fringed with sailors. Their greatness was but the result of an excellence in seamanship which prevailed widely around them. The age of English maritime adventure only began in the reign of Elizabeth. England had then no colonies--no foreign possessions whatever. The first of her extensive colonial possessions was established in this reign. "Ships, colonies, and commerce" began to be the national motto--not that colonies make ships and commerce, but that ships and commerce make colonies. Yet what cockle-shells of ships our pioneer navigators first sailed in! Although John Cabot or Gabota, of Bristol, originally a citizen of Venice, had discovered the continent of North America in 1496, in the reign of Henry VII., he made no settlement there, but returned to Bristol with his four small ships. Columbus did not see the continent of America until two years later, in 1498, his first discoveries being the islands of the West Indies. It was not until the year 1553 that an attempt was made to discover a North-west passage to Cathaya or China. Sir Hugh Willonghby was put in command of the expedition, which consisted of three ships,--the Bona Esperanza, the Bona Ventura (Captain Chancellor), and the Bona Confidentia (Captain Durforth),--most probably ships built by Venetians. Sir Hugh reached 72 degrees of north latitude, and was compelled by the buffeting of the winds to take refuge with Captain Durforth's vessel at Arcina Keca, in Russian Lapland, where the two captains and the crews of these ships, seventy in number, were frozen to death. In the following year some Russian fishermen found Sir John Willonghby sitting dead in his cabin, with his diary and other papers beside him. Captain Chancellor was more fortunate. He reached Archangel in the White Sea, where no ship had ever been seen before. He pointed out to the English the way to the whale fishery at Spitzbergen, and opened up a trade with the northern parts of Russia. Two years later, in 1556, Stephen Burroughs sailed with one small ship, which entered the Kara Sea; but he was compelled by frost and ice to return to England. The strait which he entered is still called "Burrough's Strait."