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THE SUPREMACY OF THE ENGLISH JACK.

A.D. 871–1606.

While it is true that flags and banners had grown up on land from the necessity of having some means of identifying the knights and nobles, whose faces were encased and hidden from sight within their helmets, yet it was at sea that they attained to their greatest estimation. There the flag upon the mast became the ensign of the nation to which the vessel belonged, and formed the very embodiment of its power. To fly the flag was an act of defiance, to lower it an evidence of submission, and thus the motions of these little coloured cloths at sea became of highest importance.

The supremacy of one nation over another was measured most readily by the precedence which its flag received from the ships of other nationalities. National pride, therefore, became involved in the question of the supremacy of the flag at sea, and in this contest the English were not behindhand in taking their share, for the supremacy of the sea meant to England something more than the mere precedence of her flag. It meant that no other power should be allowed to surpass her as a naval power; not that she desired to carry strife against their countries, but esteemed it more for the protection of her own shores at home, and the preservation of peace along the confines of her island seas.

This faith in the maintenance of the Supremacy of the Seas remains potent to this present day, as is shown by the demand of the British people that their navy shall be maintained at a two-power standard, and so be equal in strength to the navies of any other two of the nations which sail the oceans. It is no new ardour, nor the outcome of any modern development or exigency, but is the outgrowth of the determination of the nation from its earliest days to maintain the supremacy of its flag, and is strengthened by the lessons learned in those centuries.

Alfred the Great of England (871–901) was the first to establish any supremacy for the English flag, and to him is attributed the first gathering together of a Royal navy, the creation of an efficient force at sea being a portion of that sea-policy which he so early declared, and which has ever since been the ruling guide of the English people. The true defence of England lay, Alfred considered, in maintaining a fleet at sea of sufficient power to stretch out afar, rather than in trusting to fortifications for effective land resistance when the enemy had reached her shores; that it was better to beat the enemy at sea before he has a chance to land, and thus to forestall invasion before it came too near—a policy which in these days of steam is simply being reproduced by the creation of "Dreadnoughts," swift and strong, to hit hard on distant seas. The bulwarks of England were considered in his time, as they are still considered, to be her ships at sea rather than the parapets of her forts on land.

"Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep."[27]

Introducing galleys longer and faster than those of the Danes,[28] Alfred kept his enemies at a respectful distance, and, dwelling secure under the protection of his fleet, was thus enabled to devote himself with untrammelled energy to the establishment of the internal government of his kingdom.

His successors followed up his ideas, and under Athelstane (901) the creation of an English merchant navy was also developed. Every inducement was offered to merchants who should engage in maritime ventures. Among other decrees then made was one that, "if a merchant so thrives that he pass thrice over the wide seas in his own craft he was henceforth a Thane righte worthie."[29] Thus honours were to be won as well as wealth, and in pursuit of both the merchants of England extended their energies to wider traffic on the seas.

King Edgar (973–75), by virtue of his navy, won and assumed the title of "Supreme Lord and Governor of the Ocean lying around about Britain." Thus did the English flag, carried by its navies, sail the seas. But Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, instead of maintaining his ships in equipment and fitness to protect his shores, allowed them, for want of adequate provisions, to be dispersed from their station behind the Isle of Wight, and so, forgetting the teachings of Alfred, left his southern coasts unguarded and let the Norman invader have opportunity to land, an opportunity which was promptly seized.

The Norman monarchs of England held in their turn to the supremacy which the early Saxon kings had claimed for her flag at sea.

When the conquest of England, in 1066, had been completely effected by the Norman forces, the shores on each side of the "narrow seas" between England and Normandy were combined under the rule of William the Conqueror, communication by water increased between the two portions of his realm, and the maritime interests of the people were greatly extended and established.

Richard I. showed England to the other nations, during the Crusades, as a strong maritime power. King John followed in his footsteps, and in 1200, the second year of his reign, issued his declaration directing that ships of all other nations must honour his Royal flag:

"If any lieutenant of the King's fleet in any naval expedition, do meet with on the sea any ship or vessels, laden or unladen, that will not vail and lower their sails at the command of the Lieutenant of the King or the King's Admiral, but shall fight with them of the fleet, such, if taken, shall be reported as enemies, and the vessels and goods shall be seized and forfeited as the goods of enemies."

The supremacy which King John thus claimed, his successors afterwards maintained and extended, so that under Edward I., Spain, Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Norway, being all the other nations, except France, which bordered on the adjacent seas, joined in according to England "possession of the sovereignty of the English seas and the Isles therein,"[30] together with admission of the right which the English had of maintaining sovereign guard over these seas, and over all the ships of other Dominions, as well as their own, which might be passing through them.

Edward II. was given, in 1320, the title of "Lord of the Seas."[31]

Edward III., himself a sailor-king and commander of his fleets, was fully imbued with the force of the Alfred maxim, so that when invasion threatened England he said, "he deemed it better with a strong hand to go seek the enemy in his own country than wait ignobly at home for the threatened danger."[32] Putting his maxim into action he led his fleet across the Channel, and his victory over the French fleet at Sluys, off Flanders, on the 24th June, 1340, was the Trafalgar of its day, and the resulting supremacy of the English Jack on the narrow seas enabled him to land his forces on the foreign shores, when he subsequently invaded France to establish his claim to the French throne.

The prowess of himself and of his seamen in their victory over the French and Spanish fleets won for Edward the proud title of "King of the Seas," in token of which he was represented upon his gold coinage standing in a ship "full royally apparelled."[33]

During the Wars of the Roses less attention was given by the nation to maritime matters, and while the English were so busily engaged in fighting amongst themselves, the Dutch of the Netherlands, under the Duke of Burgundy, developed a large carrying trade, and so increased their fleets that, in 1485, at the accession of Henry VII., they had become a formidable shipping rival of England, and were a thorn in the side of France. Over the ships of the French the Dutch so lorded it on the narrow seas that, to quote Philip de Commines, their

"navy was so mighty and strong, that no man durst stir in these narrow seas for fear of it making war upon the King of France's subjects and threatening them everywhere."

Two flags, the striped standard of the Dutch and the red cross Jack of the English, were now rivalling each other on the adjacent seas and on the Atlantic. The contest for the supremacy which had begun was continued for nearly two hundred years thereafter.

In the time of Henry VII. more attention was given to merchant shipping and foreign adventure. Cabot carried the English flag across the Atlantic under the license which he and his associates received from Henry VII., empowering them

"to seek out and find whatsoever isles, countries, regions, or provinces of the heathen and infidels, whatsoever they might be; and set up his banner on every isle or mainland by them newly found."

With this authority for its exploits the red cross of St. George was planted, in 1497, on the shores of Newfoundland and Florida, and the English Jack thus first carried into America formed the foundation for the subsequent British claim to sovereignty over all the intervening coasts along the Atlantic.

Under Henry VIII. England began to bestir herself in making provision for a regular navy. A drawing in the Pepysian Library gives the details of the Henri Grace à Dieu (11), built in 1515 by order of Henry VIII., which was the greatest warship up to that time built in England, and has been termed the "parent of the British Navy." At the four mastheads fly St. George's ensigns, and from the bowsprit end and from each of the round tops upon the lower masts are long streamers with the St. George's cross, very similar in form to the naval pennants of the present day. The castellated building at the bow, and the hooks with which the yards are armed, tell of the derivation of the nautical terms "forecastle" and "yard arm" still in use.

With such improved armament the cross of St. George continued to ruffle its way on the narrow seas, and widened the scope of its domain.

The supremacy claimed for the English Jack never lost anything at the hands of its bearers, and an event which occurred in the reign of Queen Mary gives a vivid picture of the boldness of the sea-dogs by whom it was carried, and of how they held their own over any rival craft:

11. The "Henri Grace À Dieu," 1515.

(From the Pepysian collection.)

The Spanish fleet, of one hundred and sixty sail, was escorting Philip II., of Spain, when coming to his marriage with the English Queen, in 1554. It was met off Southampton by the English fleet, of twenty-eight sail, under Lord William Howard, who was then "Lord High Admiral in the narrow seas." The Spanish fleet, with their King on board, was flying the Royal flag of Spain, and was proceeding to pass the English ships without paying the customary honours. The English admiral promptly fired a shot into the Spanish admiral's ship, and the whole fleet was obliged to strike their colours and lower their topsails in homage to the English flag. Not until this salute had been properly done would Howard permit his own squadron to salute the Spanish King.[34]

Under Elizabeth seamanship mightily increased. Her merchant fleets, from being mere coasters, extended their ventures to far distant voyages, in some of which the Queen herself was said to have had an interest; and while before her time soldiers had exceeded seamen in numbers, the positions were now reversed.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, was one of the crowning achievements of the supremacy of the English Jack, yet it would almost seem as though the glorious flag had, in the never-to-be-forgotten action of the undaunted Revenge, kept for the closing years of its single cross period the grandest of all the many strifes in which it had been engaged.

England and Spain were then at open war. The English fleet, consisting of six Queen's ships, six victuallers of London, and two or three pinnaces, was riding at anchor near the island of Flores, in the Azores, waiting for the coming of the Spanish fleet, which was expected to pass on its way from the West Indies, where it had wintered the preceding year. On the 1st September, 1591, the enemy came in sight, numbering fifty-three sail, "the first time since the great Armada that the King of Spain had shown himself so strong at sea."[35]

The English had been refitting their equipment, the sick had all been sent on shore, and their ships were not in readiness to meet so overwhelming an armament. On the approach of the Spaniards, and to save the fleet from being penned in by them along the coast, five of the English ships slipped their cables, and together with the consorts sailed out to sea. Sir Richard Grenville, in the Revenge, was left behind to collect the men on shore and bring off the sick, and so, after having done this duty, came out alone to meet the enemy, which was marshalled in long extended line outside the port. He might have sailed around their wing, but this would have been an admission of inferiority, and, bold to recklessness, he thrust his little ship right through the centre of their line. Rather than strike his flag, he withstood the onset of all the Spanish fleet, which closed in succession around him, and thus this century of the red cross Jack closed with a sea-fight worthy of its story, and one which has been preserved by a Poet Laureate in undying verse, whose lines ought to be known by every British boy:

"He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. 'Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die! There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set,' And Sir Richard said again: 'We be all good English men. Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet.'

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and fifty-three. Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk, and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more— God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?"[36]

In such way, audacious in victory and unconquered in defeat, the English sailors, beneath their English Jack, held for the mastery of the oceans from Alfred to Elizabeth, and laid the foundations of that maritime spirit which still holds for Great Britain the proud supremacy of the seas.