Stories of Elizabethan heroes : $b Stirring records of the intrepid bravery and boundless resource of the men of Queen Elizabeth's reignGilliat, Edward
History
Stories of Elizabethan heroes : $b Stirring records of the intrepid bravery and boundless resource of the men of Queen Elizabeth's reign
Gilliat, Edward
Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603
In his will Drake left all his lands to the son of his brother,
Thomas. His widow, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir George
Sydenham of Devon, afterwards married William Courtenay of Powderham
Castle. He had no children, and nine of his eleven brothers also
died childless. He had been twice returned to Parliament for
Bossiney or Tintagel, and for Plymouth.
"So Francis Drake be dead!" we may fancy a Devon friend bewailing,
when the fleet returned without their admiral; "ah, we may never see
his like again! He had his faults, 'tis true; his temper was passing
quick, but he was a true friend, a pure bull-dog; tenacious both
ways, in hate and in love. Eloquent and fond of proving it to his
crew; ambitious and somedeal vain, and so open to flattery; as he
grew older, he believed more stoutly in his own opinions, and would
hurt a fool's feelings by telling him home truths. But for genius in
ocean warfare, I doubt if England has known half his worth--those
ninnies at Court did not; but we men of Devon loved him only just
this side of idolatry. God keep his soul!"
CHAPTER XI
SIR RICHARD HAWKINS, SEAMAN AND GEOGRAPHER
Richard Hawkins was born in 1562, the son of Sir John, who bred his
son from an early age to the service of the sea, while his education
in geography, history, and mathematics was carefully and thoroughly
carried out. He went to the West Indies with his uncle William in
1582, and was with Drake in 1585. He served against the Armada as
captain of the _Swallow_, and afterwards was bitten by the prevailing
ambition to search the far-off shores of a new world.
So, with his father's counsel and help, he planned a voyage to Japan,
the Philippines and Moluccas, China and the East Indies by the way of
the Straits of Magellan and the Pacific. At their own expense father
and son had a ship built on the Thames of about 400 tons. "She was
pleasing to the eye," Richard says in his "Observations"; "profitable
for storage, good of sail and well-conditioned."
But Lady Hawkins craved the naming of the ship, and called it the
_Repentance_, for she said, "Repentance was the safest ship we could
sail in to purchase the haven of Heaven." Richard much misliked the
name, as though it were of ill omen, and he says, "Well I know she
was no prophetess, though a religious and most virtuous lady: yet too
prophetical it fell out by God's secret judgments." So he sold his
share to his father and was going to give up the enterprise.
But it so fell out that when the _Repentance_ was finished, and was
riding at anchor near Deptford, the Queen in her barge was passing by
on her way to Greenwich Palace, and having ever an eye for a good
ship, asked, "What ship is yon, and to whom does she belong?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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