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
The troublesome adviser was off quicker than he had come; and if it
had been Sir Francis Drake instead of Richard Hawkins, he would have
winced under the hearty laugh of that boisterous rover.
But Richard had a quieter way of gentle sarcasm, though both could be
very freezingly polite if the occasion called for it. Sir Francis,
indeed, was thought by Spanish Dons to be the most courteous of
English seamen.
In ten days' time, with the help of his wife's father, Hawkins was
able to put all in as good state as before the storm. "Once again,"
he says, "in God's name, I brought my ships out into the Sound and
began to take leave of my friends, and of my dearest friend, my
second self, my wife, whose unfeigned tears had wrought me into
irresolution, and sent some other in my room, had I not considered
that he that is in the dance must needs dance on, though he do but
hop, except he will be a laughing-stock to all."
On the afternoon of the 12th of June 1593, he says: "I looft near the
shore to give my farewell to all the inhabitants of the town, whereof
the most part were gathered together upon the Howe, to show their
grateful correspondency to the love and zeal which I, my father and
predecessors have ever borne to that place, as to our natural and
mother-town. And first with my noise of trumpets, after with my
waytes, and then with my other music, I made the best signification I
could of a kind farewell. This they answered with the waytes of the
town, and the ordnance on the shore, and with shouting of voices,
which with the fair evening and silence of the night, were heard a
great distance off."
We can see that Richard Hawkins had a greater gift of imagination and
of love of nature than his father John; in fact his "Observations" on
his voyage to the South Seas are well worth reading even in these
days of common travel. When the three ships were near the equator,
his men began to fall sick of the scurvy, as was usual; for they had
no means in those days of counteracting the flesh food by stores of
canned fruit and vegetables. "I wish," he writes, "some learned man
would write of this disease, for it is the plague of the sea and the
spoil of mariners; ... in twenty years, since I have used the sea, I
dare take upon me to give account of 10,000 men consumed by the
scurvy."
He had found by practical experience that sour oranges and lemons
were most profitable; the "oil of vitry," too, was beneficial, if one
took two drops of it mingled in a draught of water with a little
sugar. Then he spoils his scientific accuracy by a general statement
which is on a par with the theory that nature abhors a vacuum. "But
the principal of all is the air of the land, for the sea is natural
for fishes, and the land for men."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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