| | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The phrase “lay upon the lee” is just another way of saying they hove-to. “A leake of 500 strokes in a watch” was identical with saying that they had to work the pumps to that number in such a period. It should be added, further, that by “elevation of the pole” is, of course, meant the ship’s latitude. Some of the vessels of the sixteenth century were terribly slow creatures. There was a nickname given to those lethargic coasters which, because they could not do much against the current and had to proceed from one roadstead to another and there anchor till the tide turned, were known as “roaders.” No one who has made himself familiar with their long and trying voyages could ever accuse the Elizabethan seamen of cowardice in bad weather. Once, Davis relates, when his ship was fighting her way through a storm, her mainsail blew right out of her; whereupon the master of the ship crept along the mainyard, which had now been lowered down to the rails, and gathering the sail as it was hauled out of the sea, gallantly fought with it and succeeded in bending it again to the yard, “being in the meane while oft-times ducked over head and eares into the sea.” The reader will remember just now in the extract from Smith the expression “she lusts” for “she lists.” Among hundreds of our English seamen in this twentieth century “lust” is still used to mean “list.” Smith, as we saw, also wrote “spoune before the wind.” Davis, too, related that “we spooned before the sea,” the exact meaning being that they drove before the gale under bare poles. The latter also uses the expression “a mighty fret of weather” to mean “a mighty squall.” Those who are familiar with the language of the fishermen on the north-east coast of England will call to mind their word “sea-fret” to denote a fog approaching the land. [Illustration: SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SEAMEN STUDYING THE ART OF NAVIGATION. After a Contemporary Artist. Notice the compass, the hour-glass, globes, cross-staff, charts, etc.]