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A name through all the world renown’d,

A name that rouses as a trumpet sound.

The “Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day”—on the 24th of August, 1572—was directly the cause of the coming into existence of our first Dreadnought.

Startled and horrified at the terrible news, as the details of the ghastly story crossed the channel, Queen Elizabeth replied by instantly calling the forces of England to arms. John Hawkins, at the head of twenty ships of war, was sent to cruise off the Azores. The rest of the fleet was ordered to mobilize and be ready to concentrate in the Downs. Instructions were issued for the beacons to be watched. The militia were ordered to muster and march to the coast. A subsidy was sent over to the Protestants in Holland, and a rush of volunteers followed to join those from England already in the field. Huguenot refugees in this country were given leave to fit out vessels to help their co-religionists at La Rochelle. Four men-of-war for the Royal Navy were ordered to be laid down forthwith. They comprised the most important effort in shipbuilding that England had made for ten years.

To facilitate rapidity of building, the work on the four vessels was divided between the two chief master-shipwrights—or, as we should say, naval constructors—of the day: two ships to Matthew Baker, two ships to Peter Pett. Both men were at the top of their profession. Peter Pett was a distinguished member of the great family of naval shipwrights, whose fame has come down to our own times. Baker, who was also of a family of naval shipwrights of repute, was considered by many of the naval officers of the day as the better man. “Mr. Baker,” wrote one, “for his skill and surpassing grounded knowledge in the building of the ships advantageable to all purposes hath not in any nation his equal.” Pett and Baker were keen business rivals, and their rivalry came into play on the present occasion.

The names of the new ships were announced in due course, and represented Her Majesty’s mood on the occasion. She herself selected and appointed them with intention. It was Queen Elizabeth’s way to give her ships “telling” names. “The choice of energetic names for the ships of her Royal Navy,” it has been said, “was one of the means employed by the heroic and politic Elizabeth to infuse her own dauntless spirit into the hearts of her subjects, and to show to Europe at large how little she dreaded the mightiest armaments of her enemies.” More than that, however, needs to be said. As a rule, in the cases of her bigger ships, the Queen chose names that carried, in addition, an underlying meaning, that bore direct allusion to some national event of the hour. According to one who lived at the time, writing about the first ship launched by the Queen, to which, in accordance with old custom, the sovereign’s name was given: “The great Shipp called the Elizabeth Jonas was so named by Her Grace in remembrance of her owne delyverance from the furye of her Enemys, from which in one respect she was no less myraculously preserved than was the prophet Jonas from the Belly of the whale.” In like manner our first Victory and our first Triumph were given those ever famous names, in the first place, of set intention to commemorate the historic double-event of the year in which they both joined the Queen’s fleet. The Aid, or Ayde, another Elizabethan man-of-war, was so called to commemorate Elizabeth’s first expedition to help the Huguenots of Normandy in their forlorn hope struggle for liberty of conscience, which was just setting out when the Aid went off the stocks. Our first Revenge, of immortal renown, did not receive that name at haphazard in the year of Don John of Austria’s insolent threat to invade England and depose Elizabeth by force of arms. Our first Repulse was appointed that name—extant to this day in the Royal Navy for one of our older battleships—in memory of the defeat of the Spanish Armada:—Dieu Repulse was the earlier form of the name as the Queen gave it. And to take at random two other names from the list, it was to commemorate the same overthrow of the arch-enemy of England in those times that Queen Elizabeth chose the names Defiance and Warspite—in curious reference, this latter name, to an incident during the fighting with the Armada—for two others of her men-of-war.

It was of set purpose that Queen Elizabeth, in the year of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, chose the name Dreadnought for one of her ships of war. The intentions of the Catholic League towards England were an open secret in every council chamber of Europe. The papal Bull, excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth, had been nailed on the doors of Lambeth Palace. It was at their disposal. Alva’s butcheries in the Netherlands were fresh in the recollection of the world, and the memory of other dark doings came still more closely home to our own people; how Englishmen had been “seized in Spain and the New World to linger amidst the tortures of the Inquisition or to die by its fires.” Burghley and Walsingham, and others as well, had fully understood the menace for England and the warning of Lepanto only two years before. Their secret agents had supplied them with a copy of De Spes’ confidential report to Alva and King Philip to the effect that the ports of England were poorly fortified, and that only eleven at most of Queen Elizabeth’s twenty ships of war were worth taking into account. They had not forgotten what had happened three years before, when, under the guise of an escort for the new Queen of Spain from Flanders to the Tagus, an extremely formidable Spanish fleet, fully equipped for war, had come north and lain for some weeks in the Scheldt, acting throughout in a very suspicious way. That was a twelvemonth before Lepanto. Now the situation seemed even more menacing for England. The Queen’s so-called Agreement with Spain, lately come to, for practical purposes was hardly worth the paper it was drafted on. There was Mary Stuart and her partizans to be reckoned with also; the restless intriguing of the Roman Catholics all over England; open rebellion in Ireland. What might not the consequences of the Paris massacre involve in the near future? It was at such a moment that the name Dreadnought was first appointed to an English man-of-war, and the Queen’s choice in the circumstances partook of the nature almost of an Act of State, specially designed to express the temper of the nation. In the same spirit of exalted patriotism in which, at a later day, Elizabeth, from Tilbury camp, with proud scorn bade King Philip and the Prince of Parma and all other enemies of the realm do their worst, the great Queen, of her own royal will and pleasure, named for the Royal Navy its first Dreadnought.

Swiftsure was the name given to the second ship of the set. “Swift-suer” was the way the Queen Elizabeth spelled it—“Swift-pursuer,” that is—not an inappropriate name for the sister ship of a Dreadnought. The pair were intended as ships of the line, to use a later day term. The other two ships of the group were smaller vessels of the light cruiser class of the period, intended for service as scouts, as the “eyes and ears of the fleet” at sea. Their names were the Achates and the Handmaid, expressive names both in their way.

Matthew Baker’s men had the Dreadnought and Handmaid to build; Pett’s men the Swiftsure and the Achates. They all started work within three weeks, and Pett’s men won the race by just a month. The Swiftsure and the Achates were both sent afloat on the 11th of October, 1573; the Dreadnought and the Handmaid on the 10th of the following month.

An Arctic explorer of those times, whose name lives on our maps—the man, indeed, who named the North Cape for us, Captain Stephen Borough (or Borogh, as he himself usually wrote it), one of “ye foure Principall Masters in Ordinarye of ye Queene’s Maᵗⁱᵉˢ Navye Royall,” by special appointment also the Master of the Victory, and a son of North Devon in her proudest day—had naval charge and supervision over the building of the Dreadnought and the other ships at Deptford. He lodged meanwhile at Ratcliffe, across the river, and his “traveylinge chardges,” with the waterman’s receipt for rowing him to and fro on his weekly visits of inspection, signed “Richard Williams of Ratcliff, Whyrryman,” is still in existence.

The marshmen and labourers at the dockyard began their digging, “working upon ye opening of ye dockhedde for ye launchynge,” during the first days of November. That was the first of the preliminaries, necessitated by the primitive arrangements of those times. The dock at Deptford in which the timbers of the Dreadnought were put together was of the crudest type: practically an oblong excavation in the river bank, the sides and inner end of which were shored up and kept from falling in by wooden planks. The outer end, or river end, was closed and sealed when a ship was inside by a water-tight dam of brushwood-faggots, clay, and stones filled in and rammed down between the overlapping double gates of the dock. An “ingyn to drawe water owte of ye dokke,” worked by relays of labourers, pumped out the water inside the dock after it was closed. Before the dock could be re-opened the stones, faggots, etc. of the “tamping” or stopping had to be dug up and removed. Then at low water the gates would be swung back, and the water from the river flow in as the tide rose for the launch or float-out of the ship into the river.

On board the Dreadnought, meanwhile, the finishing touches were being put by the contractors’ workmen—Thomas Hodges, of “Parris Garden,” and Thomas Wells, of Chatham, and their men seeing to the ironwork fittings, “ye workmanshipp and making of lockes and boltes, keyes and haidges [sic] for ij newe cabbons, as also for hookes, and stockelockes, porthaidges [sic], revetts and countre-revetts, shuttynges with rings, greate dufftayles and divers other necessaries”; joiners sent by “Jullyan Richards of London, widdow,” who had a contract for certain other fittings; other joiners from Lewys Stocker, also of London, seeing to “ye sellynges [sic] and formysling ye cabbins and makyng casements for windows, seelings, awmeryes [sic], cupboards, settes, bedsteddes, formes, stools, trisstelles, tables,” etc. “for her Grace’s newe shippe ye Dreadnaughte.” Hard by, alongside Deptford creek, were lying the masts for the ship, ready to be put in place after she was afloat; with “toppes greate and small, mayne-tops, ffore-toppe, mizzen-toppe, and toppe-galantes;” besides barge loads from Richard Pope, of “Ereth,” of “gravaille for ye ballistynge of hur highness Shipe called ye Dreadnaughte at iiijᵈ every time.” Prest-master Thomas Woodcot was meanwhile hard at work elsewhere, “travailling about the presting of marynnars within the River of Theames for ye Launchynge and Rigging of Hur highnes’ ij newe shippes at Deptfordstraund [sic] by the space of viii daies at iijs iiijd per diem.”

The future “nucleus crew” of the Dreadnought, who were to act as ship-keepers on board when the ship went round to moor with the rest of the fleet laid up in the Medway, had been warned to be at Deptford by the morning of the 10th of November. They were drawn apparently from the ships lying off Gillingham, just below Chatham, or “Jillingham Ordinarie”—the “Fleet Reserve,” as we say nowadays—and numbered, all told, ten men and a boy. These were the names of our original “Dreadnoughts” of three hundred and thirty-three years ago, and their quarterly pay, according to “The Accompte as well Ordinarie as Extraordinarie of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of ye Quene’s Majestie’s Maryn cawses,” 1574, a quaint, bulky, ponderous, parchment covered volume, of massive proportions, laced with faded green silk, and bound with leather straps, now well worn and in parts frayed nearly away:

THE “DREADNAUGHTE.”

MARYNERS.
Robarte Baxster, boteson:—xij wekes vj daies	xxxvijˢ	vjᵈ
Richard Boureman, cooke: xij wekes vj daies	xxixˢ	vᵈ
John Awsten: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
Nicholas Francton: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
Christofer Parr, gromett: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	jᵈ
Henry Osbourne: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
James Laske: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
Richard Shutt: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
Robartt Woodnaughtt: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
William Appleford: xij wekes vj daies	xxjˢ	vᵈ
John Huntt, master gonner: xij wekes vj daies	xxxijˢ	ijᵈ

This is what the Dreadnought looked like as she lay in the dock on the Tuesday morning that saw the ship take the water. Imagine a solid-looking heavily-timbered hull, round bowed, with long, raking forward prow or beak, reaching out some ten or twelve yards ahead of the actual vessel, and with at the after-end a lofty towering poop with shallow overhanging balustraded gallery. Amidships the vessel is of a width equal to nearly a third of her length. From the “greate beaste,” the figure-head—a dragon—“gilded and laid with fine gold,” representing one of the supporters of the Queen’s arms, set up on the tip of the beak, away aft to the stern gallery is a distance of, over all, about a hundred and twenty feet. The body of the hull itself has a keel length of some eighty feet—from rudder post to fore-foot. Along the water-line the bends are all tarred over, with varnished side planking above, tough oak timber from the Crown lands of the Sussex Weald by Horsham. The topsides above are varnished to the bulwarks, where a touch of colour shows; ornamental carved and painted work in royal Tudor green and white, laid on in “colours of oil” and garnished with Her Majesty’s family badges in gold, and with here and there, on the balustrades of the quarter-rails and stern gallery, an additional touch of red. On the stern, “painted in oils,” are the arms of England, with the Lion and the Dragon, the Queen’s royal supporters, and below, on a scroll, Her Majesty’s motto, Semper Eadem.

OUR FIRST DREADNOUGHT

From a Contemporary Print kindly lent by Mr. Wentworth Huyshe. (The “Dreadnought” is shown as she appeared when serving in the “Ship Money” Fleet of Charles the First:—circ. 1637).

These are other things about the ship that would strike the Deptford visitor of that day. The square-headed forecastle is low and squat in appearance, compared with the piled-up, narrow poop right aft, looking over from which a foreign visitor to the Queen’s fleet once declared that “it made one shudder to look downwards.” The bottom of the ship is coated with “tallow and rosin mingled with pitch.” The square-cut, wide portholes, out of which the guns will point when they are on board—the Tower lighters will bring them down for mounting in a week or two—were the idea, they say in the yard, of Master Shipwright Baker’s father, old James Baker, many years ago King Harry’s shipwright, improving on the original French style. It was old Baker too, they say, who “first adapted English ships to carry heavy guns.” The Reformers wanted to send the old man to the stake for “being in the possession of some forbidden books”; but King Harry could not afford to let them burn England’s best naval architect even for the benefit of Protestantism.

The Dreadnought’s gun-ports should open some four feet clear of the water. People have not forgotten the horror of the Mary Rose; what happened to her; how she came to go down one summer’s day at Spithead. The waist bulwarks of the Dreadnought, if she swims as she ought, will be some twenty feet above the water-line. Nearly four hundred tons in burden is our new man-of-war—five tons heavier than the Swiftsure, than which ship too she is six feet longer, though the pair reckon as sister ships. Upwards of six thousand pounds out of Queen Elizabeth’s treasury (about £30,000 at present day value) will have been the cost of the Dreadnought when she leaves Deptford dockyard.

We will go on board for a brief look round the Dreadnought within. As we enter the ship we note how both the half-deck and the fore and aft castles are loopholed for both arrow-fire and musketry, so as to sweep the waist should an enemy board and get a footing amidships. Some of the lighter guns would be able to help. The heavier guns are mostly on the broadside, and are mounted on the decks below in a double tier. The Dreadnought altogether carries forty-two guns. Sixteen of them are heavy guns: two “cannon-periers” of six-inch bore, hard hitters, firing twenty-four pounder stone shot; four “culverins,” seventeen and a half pounders, twelve feet long and five and half inches in the bore, firing iron shot, and able to throw a ball upwards of three miles—“random shot.” There are also ten “demi-culverins,” nine-pounders, firing four and a half inch iron shot. The lighter guns are six “sakers,” pieces nine feet long (five-pounders, of three and a half inch bore) and two “fawcons” (three-pounders). The heavier guns are all muzzle-loaders. Distributed over the upper decks are eighteen breech-loading guns, for fighting at close quarters and rapid firing: “port-pieces,” “fowlers,” and “bases,” as they are called. They are on swivel mountings, and fire stone and iron shot.

All told, the Dreadnought’s armament weighs thirty-two tons. The guns are from Master Ralphe Hogge, “the Queen’s gunstone maker, and gunfounder to the Council.” They are of Sussex iron, from Master Hogge’s own foundry at Buxted. At this moment they are waiting at the Tower, together with the Dreadnought’s supplies of iron shot and cannon balls of Kentish ragstone from Her Majesty’s quarries at Maidstone, stacked “in ye Bynns upon ye Tower Wharfe each side Traitor’s Gate.” When the Dreadnought goes into battle she will carry some two hundred officers and men all told: a hundred and thirty “maryners”—“Able men for topyard, helme and lead,” and “gromets,” or boys and “Fresh men”; with twenty gunners and fifty soldiers. To keep her at sea will cost the Queen £303. 6s. 8d. a month for sea-wages and victualling. Three weeks provisions and water is the most that the ship can stow, owing to the space wanted for the ballast, the cables for the four anchors, and the ammunition and sea stores. That is why victualling ships have to attend Her Majesty’s fleets on service outside the Narrow Seas. The “cook room,” of bricks and iron and paving stones, is in the hold over the ballast. Two more notes may be made as we return on deck and quit the ship. The captain’s cabin, opening on the gallery aft, is neatly wainscoted and garnished with green and white chintz, and with curtains of darnix hung at the latticed cabin windows. There are three boats for the Dreadnought: the “great boat,” which tows astern at all times, the cock-boat and the skiff, both of which stow inboard. John Clerk, “of Redryffe, Shipwrighte,” built the “great boat,” being paid £24, in the terms of his bill, “For the Workmanshipp and makeinge of a new Boate for her Highness’ Shipp, the Dreadnought; conteyninge xi foote Di. in lengthe; ix foote Di. in Breadthe; and iij foote ij inches in Depthe.—By agrement.”

A brave show should our gallant Dreadnought make when she goes forth to war, with her varnished sides and rows of frowning guns and painted top-armours (the handiwork, according to his bill, of Master Coteley, of Deptford), and all her wide spreading sails set (“John Hawkins, Esquire, of London,” supplied these), and at the masthead, high above all, her flag of St. George of white Dowlas canvas with a blood-red cross of cloth sewn on.

The appointed day has come, and the time for the sending afloat and formal naming of the Dreadnought: Tuesday afternoon, the 10th of November, 1573.

The ship lies ready for launching at the appointed moment, having been duly “struck” upon the launching ways a day or two before, under the supervision of Master Baker himself, in the dock where she has been building; shored up on either side, and with the lifting screws and “crabs” prepared to heave her off. The dockhead has been dug out and finally cleared at low tide on Monday, leaving the double gates free and in order, ready to be swung back and opened as soon as the tide begins to make on Tuesday morning.

We will imagine ourselves on the spot at the time and looking on at what took place. It is possible to do so, thanks to a manuscript left by Phineas Pett, Peter’s son and successor at Deptford royal yard.

All is ready for the day’s proceedings by a little after noon, when the important personages taking part at the launch, “by commandement of ye officers of Her Grace’s Maryn Causys,” and the invited guests and superior officials of the dockyard assemble for a light refection of cake and wine in the Master Shipwright’s “lodging,” preliminary to the ceremony.

Who named the Dreadnought on that day? Unfortunately that one detail is not mentioned in any existing record, and the Navy Office book for the year, where the name would certainly have been found, together with the honorarium or fee, paid according to custom, is missing. Most probably it was Captain Stephen Borough himself, and we may imagine him there, apparelled for the day in crimson velvet and gold lace, in the full uniform of one entitled to wear “Her Maᵗⁱᵉˢ cote of ordinarie.” His rank and standing as one of the “Principall Masters of the Queen’s Maᵗⁱᵉˢ Navie in Ordinarie” qualified him for performance of so dignified a duty. The Principal Masters were often deputed by the Lord High Admiral to preside on his behalf at the launches of men-of-war and perform the name-giving ceremony.

While the high officers are having their refreshments in Master Shipwright Baker’s lodging, Boatswain Baxster and the assistant shipwrights are stationing the men on board and at the launching tackles. The customary “musicke” then makes its appearance, “a noyse of trumpetts and drums,” who post themselves on the poop and the forecastle of the ship. Next, a “standing cup” of silver-gilt, filled to the brim with Malmsey of the best, is set up on a pedestal fixed prominently on the poop, and the Queen’s colours are hoisted on board, together with the flag of St. George. At the same time pennons and streamers of Tudor green and white, and decorated with royal emblems and badges, are ranged here and there along the ship’s sides and on the forecastle.

All is ready ere long, and then, forthwith, word is sent to Master Shipwright Baker and the gentlemen of the company. Forthwith the procession forms itself and sets out in stately fashion to go on board.

With his grey hair unbonneted

The old sea-captain comes;

Behind him march the halberdiers,

Before him sound the drums.

So escorted and attended the personage of the hour paces his way forth and proceeds on board the new ship, passing along the decks and ascending to the poop where the company group themselves according to precedence, near by the glittering silver-gilt wine cup. Master Shipwright Baker then gives the signal, and Boatswain Baxster’s whistle shrills out. At once the gangs of men standing ready at the crabs and windlasses heave taut, and a moment later, as the ship begins her first movement outwards, the trumpets and drums sound forth. So, at a leisurely rate at the outset, gliding off foot by foot into deeper water, the new man-of-war hauls gradually out and clears past the dock gates till well into the stream. The anchor is then let go and she brings up. Now it is for Captain Borough—allowing it to have been he—to do his part.

Stans procul in prorâ, pateram tenet extaque salsos

Porricit in fluctus ac vina liquentia fundit.

The trumpets and drums cease as the “Principall Master” steps forward and takes up his position beside the standing cup. He raises the gleaming cup on high so that all around may see. Then, amid universal silence, he proclaims, in a clear resonant voice that every one may hear: “By commandment of Her Grace, whom God preserve, I name this ship the Dreadnought! God save the Queen!” As the Lord High Admiral’s representative utters the last word, he drinks from the cup, and a moment after ceremoniously pours out a portion of the wine upon the deck. The next moment, with a wide sweep of the arm, he heaves the standing cup, with a little wine left in it, into the river—a sacrifice, as it were, on behalf of the bride newly-wedded to the sea, or that the Queen’s cup might never be put to base uses—perhaps, indeed, as a sort of propitiatory act. So it was done, says Master Phineas Pett, “according to the ancient custom and ceremony performed at such times.” Again there is a blare of trumpets and a ruffle from the drums, with cheers afloat and ashore for Her Grace, and hearty congratulations to Master Matthew Baker on the occasion. After that the Dreadnought is formally inspected between decks and below, and the crew’s health is drunk by the high officers in ship’s beer—sure to be of a good brew on a launching day.

By the time that all is over the ship has been warped back alongside the shore again, and the company adjourn thereupon to wind up the day’s proceedings with a good old English dinner, given to the Master Shipwright and the officials of the yard at the Lord High Admiral’s expense.

Such is a passing glimpse of the memorable scene—as far as one may venture to reconstruct it—on “Dreadnought Day” at Deptford Royal Dockyard, that Tuesday afternoon, in Tudor times, three hundred and thirty-three years ago. It is hard to fancy such doings, at Deptford of all places, now. Oxen and sheep for the London meat market nowadays stand penned in lairs on the site of the filled-in dock whence the Dreadnought was floated out—the same dock whence the Armada Victory had preceded her, whence Grenville’s Revenge followed her. Master Shipwright Baker’s lodging is nowadays a cattle drovers’ drinking bar. The old-time navy buildings—their origin even now easily recognisable, at any rate externally—serve as slaughterhouses, and so forth, among which rough butcher lads, reeking of the shambles, jostle daily to and fro. On every side is bustle and clatter and hustling, the rumbling of Smithfield meat vans over the old-time cobble stones, the jargon of Yankee bullock-men, the bleating of sheep under sentence of death. Strange and hard is the fate that in these material times of ours has overtaken what was once the premier Royal Dockyard of England, this former temple, so to speak, of the guardian deity of our sea-girt realm:

This ruined shrine

Whence worship ne’er shall rise again:—

The owl and bat inhabit here

The snake nests in the altar stone,

The sacred vessels moulder near—

The image of the god is gone!

Fallen indeed from its high estate of former days is the ancient royal establishment of “Navy-building town.” Where bluff King Hal used to walk and talk with Matthew Baker’s father, “old honest Jem”; where our sixth Edward paid a long-remembered visit, to be “banketted” (as the royal spelling has it) and see two men-of-war go off the ways; where Elizabeth knighted Francis Drake, and James and Charles rode down in state on many a gala day; where Cromwell paid his second naval visit—his “grandees” attending him, and escort of clanking Ironsides—to see the vindictively named Naseby take the water; where our second Charles liked to saunter on occasion with Rupert at his side, and chattering Pepys and John Evelyn in his train; where James the Second, dull and morose of mood, for the sands of his monarchy were already running out, paid his last historic visit one gloomy autumn afternoon of 1688; where brave old Benbow liked best to spend the mornings of his half-pay life on shore, and Captain Cook set out on his last voyage; where George the Third drove down with Queen Charlotte to do honour to the naming of a Prince of Wales man-of-war; where, too, Royalty of our own time has more than once visited—is now “a market for the landing, sale, and slaughtering of foreign cattle.” The glory has departed—the image of the god is gone!

The Dreadnought and Swiftsure and the two smaller ships were masted and rigged and completed for service during November and the early days of December, after which, with the help of a hundred and fifty extra hands, “prested in ye river of Theames for ye transportyngs about,” they set off on the twentieth of the month to join the fleet lying “in ordinary” in the Medway—an eight days’ voyage as it proved, owing to squally weather and an east wind. The Queen was to have seen the Dreadnought and her squadron pass the palace at Greenwich and salute the royal standard with cannon and a display of masthead flags, as was the Tudor naval usage when the sovereign was in residence, but there had been a domestic misadventure at Placentia just a few days before. While talking with her maids of honour one afternoon, one of the Queen’s ladies—“the Mother of the Maids”—had suddenly dropped dead in the royal presence, and the Court had hastily removed to Whitehall. So the Dreadnought had no royal standard to salute. Three days after Christmas the Deptford squadron took up their moorings in “Jillingham water.”

“Powerful vessels ... with little tophamper and very light, which is a great advantage for close quarters and with much artillery, the heavy pieces being close to the water,” reported, in a confidential letter now in the royal archives at Simancas, one of the King of Spain’s agents in England who saw the Dreadnought and Swiftsure not long after they had joined the Medway fleet. So too, indeed, some of King Philip’s sailors were destined to find out for themselves.

The Dons, indeed, were destined to taste something of the Dreadnought’s quality more than once; beginning with the memorable event of the “Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard.” There, Drake’s right-hand man on many a battle day, commanded the Dreadnought, Captain Thomas Fenner, a sturdy son of Sussex and a seaman who knew his business.

How thoroughly Drake—“fiend incarnate; his name Tartarean, unfit for Christian lips; Draco—a dragon, a serpent, emblem of Diabolus; Satanas himself”—did his work among the Spaniards at Cadiz, burning eighteen of their finest royal galleons, and carrying off six more in spite of fireships and all the shooting of the Spanish batteries, is history. The Dreadnought, after experiencing a narrow escape from shipwreck off Cape Finisterre at the outset of her cruise, took her full share of what fighting there was. She was present, too, at the second act of the drama, which took place off the Tagus with so fatal a sequel for the hapless Commander-in-Chief designate of the Armada, the Marquis de Santa Cruz—the “Iron Marquis,” “Thunderbolt of War,” the real Hero of Lepanto, by reputation the ablest sea-officer the world had yet seen. First, the news that his flagship and the finest fighting galleons of his own picked squadron—all named, too, after the most helpful among the Blessed Saints of the Calendar—together with his best transports and victuallers, had been boarded and taken and sacrilegiously set ablaze to, burned to the water’s edge, one after the other, by those “accursed English Lutheran dogs.” Worse still. To be then defied to his face, he, Spain’s “Captain-General of the Ocean”; to be audaciously challenged to come out and fight and have his revenge then and there—Drake and the Dreadnought and the rest openly waiting for him—in the offing. The shame of the disaster was enough to kill the haughty Hidalgo, to make him fall sick and turn his face to the wall and die, without Philip’s espionage and unworthy insults goading him to the grave. The Dreadnought had a hand in shaping the destinies of England, for, in the words of the Spanish popular saying, “to the Iron Marquis succeeded the Golden Duke,” whose hopeless incompetence gave England every chance in the next year’s fighting.

In the opening encounter with the Spanish Armada that July Sunday afternoon of 1588, no ship of all the Queen’s fleet bore herself better than did the Dreadnought. Captain George Beeston, of an ancient Surrey family, held command on board the Dreadnought. He was a veteran officer of the Queen’s fleet—more than twenty-five years had gone by since he first trod the quarter-deck as a captain. Leading in among the enemy, after the first hour of long-range firing between the English van and the Spanish rear had brought both sides to closer quarters, the Dreadnought with the ships that followed Drake’s flagship the Revenge, for nearly three hours fought first with one and then with another of the most powerful of the Spanish rear-guard ships. After that, forcing their way among the Spaniards as they gave back and began to crowd on their main body, she had a sharp set-to with the big galleons, led by Juan Martinez de Recalde, perhaps the best seaman in all King Philip’s navy, commander of the rear-division of the Armada. On the Santa Ana and her consorts the Revenge and Dreadnought and the rest made a spirited attack, pushing Recalde so hard that eventually Medina Sidonia himself, the Spanish Admiral, had to turn back and come to the rescue with every ship at his disposal. It was enough; Drake and his men had played their part. Before Medina Sidonia’s advance in force, the Revenge and Dreadnought left the Santa Ana, and with the rest of the attacking English van drew off. They had done an excellent day’s work.

There was harder work for the Dreadnought in the great battle of Tuesday off Portland Bill. First came the fierce brush in the morning, when Drake and Lord Howard and the leaders of the English fleet, after a daring attempt to work in between the Spanish fleet and the Dorset coast, had to tack at the last moment, baffled for want of sea room, and were closed with by the enemy in the act of going about. On came the galleons exultantly, their crews shouting and cheering, amid a blare of trumpets and ruffle of drums, in full confidence to run down and sink the lighter built English vessels. It was a moment of extreme peril:—but at the very last, suddenly, the fortune of the day changed. As the Spaniards seemed to be upon them the wind shifted, the English sails filled, ship by ship and all together, and then stretching out with bowsprits pointing seaward, the Revenge, Victory, Ark Royal, Dreadnought, and the others safely cleared the enemy, pouring in so fierce a fire as they passed that the Spanish ships had to sheer off. This was the first fight of the day. Later, when the wind, going round with the sun, shifted again and gave Drake and Howard the weather gage, came on the most desperate encounter with the Armada that our ships had yet seen. Lord Howard in the Ark Royal and Drake in the Revenge, with the Dreadnought, the Lion, the Victory, and the Mary Rose near at hand, driving ahead before the wind, pushed into the thick of the Spanish main body, and attacked the enemy, in a long and furious battle that lasted until the afternoon sun was nearing the horizon.

A third day of battle was yet to come—Thursday’s hot fight off the back of the Isle Wight, and here again the Dreadnought took her full share of what was done, until the long summer day drew to its close and the Armada “gathered in a roundel,” sullenly stood off eastward, proposing to fight no more until the coast of Flanders had been made.

Next morning the Dreadnought’s captain was summoned on board Lord Howard’s flagship, the Ark Royal. He returned “Sir George,” knighted by the Lord High Admiral on the quarter-deck, in the presence of the enemy.

Sunday night saw the fireship attack, so disastrous to the Armada, and next morning followed the crowning victory of the week’s campaign, the great fight off Gravelines of Monday, the 29th of July, “the great battle which, more distinctly perhaps than any battle of modern times, has moulded the history of Europe—the battle which curbed the gigantic power of Spain, which shattered the Spanish prestige and established the basis of England’s empire.” Here the Dreadnought distinguished herself again, fighting in the thick of the fray from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, within pistol-shot of the enemy most of the time.

From six till nearly eight the ships of Drake’s squadron had to bear the brunt of the fight, with, for antagonists, Medina Sidonia himself and his chief captains, who had gathered to stand by their admiral. Trying to rally the Armada after the panic of the night, this gallant band had at first, from before daybreak, anchored in a group, to act as rear-guard to the Spanish fleet, firing signal guns to stop their flying consorts, and sending pinnaces to order the fugitives back. Then Hawkins in the Victory, with the Dreadnought, the Mary Rose, and Swallow, and other ships unnamed, came up and struck in. Now moving ahead through her own smoke to plunge into the mêlée and come to the rescue of some hard-pressed consort, now working tack for tack parallel with and firing salvo after salvo at short range into some towering galleon or huge water-centipede-like galleass—so the hours of that eventful forenoon wore through on the Dreadnought’s powder-begrimed decks. “Sir George Beeston behaved himself valiantly,” records the official Relation of Proceedings, drawn up for the Lord High Admiral. In vain did the most formidable of the Spanish galleons try to close and board. Ship after ship was forced back with shattered bulwarks and splintered sides, and with their scuppers spouting blood, after each English broadside, as the round shot crashed in among the masses of Spanish soldiery, packed on board the galleons as closely almost as they could stand.

More Spaniards joined their admiral as Sidonia passed north, the Spanish rear and centre squadrons forming together a long straggling array, among the ships of which, from nine to after one o’clock, the Revenge, Victory, Dreadnought, Triumph, Ark Royal, and the rest charged through and through fighting both broadsides. Shortly after two o’clock, the English ships passed on, pressing forward to overtake the Spanish van group of galleons. By four o’clock the battle was won, but firing went on till nearly six, “when every man was weary with labour, and our cartridges spent and our ammunition wasted” (i.e. used up).

Once more the Dreadnought followed the fortunes of Drake’s flag to battle; again, too, as Captain Fenner’s ship. In the year after the Armada she had her part in escorting the Corunna expedition, the “counter-Armada,” designed to beat up the quarters of the enemy at home and attempt the wresting of Portugal from the Spanish yoke. A landing party of “Dreadnoughts” fought ashore. Led by Drake and the general of the soldiers, Sir John Norris, they drove the Spaniards before them. “Unto every volly flying round their ears,” says old Stow, “the generall, turning his face towards the enemie would bow and vale his bonnet, saying ‘I thank you, Sir! I thank you, Sir!’ to the great admiration of all his campe and of Generall Drake.” The wine vaults of Corunna, however, interposed on behalf of Spain. Soldiers and sailors alike broke in and got drunk, and all that could be done after that was to reship the men and write the campaign down a failure.

In the attack on Brest in 1594, when Sir Martin Frobisher met his death, the Dreadnought had her share. Two years after that she fought with Essex and Raleigh in the grand attack on Cadiz—this time as one of the picked ships of Sir Walter Raleigh’s own “inshore squadron.” She sailed with Sir Walter again after that in the celebrated “Islands Voyage”; and then the curtain rings down on the memorable days of the story of the Dreadnought of the Great Queen’s fleet. The old ship lasted afloat (after an expensive rebuild in James the First’s reign) until the time of the Civil War. She figured in the interim in the Rochelle Expedition and also in one of Charles the First’s Ship-money fleets. The Dreadnought of St. Bartholomew’s Day and Matthew Baker made her last cruise of all in the year of Marston Moor.

Six Dreadnoughts in all have flown the pennant since England’s Armada Dreadnought passed away.

“OLD DREADNOUGHT’S” DREADNOUGHT

From the original drawing made in 1740 for the official dockyard model. Now in the Author’s Collection.

Charles the Second’s Dreadnought was our second man-of-war of the name. Originally the Torrington, one of Cromwell’s frigates, and named, after the Puritan usage, to commemorate a Roundhead victory over the hapless Cavaliers, Restoration Year saw the ship renamed Dreadnought, under which style she rendered the State good service for many a long year to come. In that time the Dreadnought fought, always with credit, in no fewer than seven fleet battles. She was with the Duke of York when he beat Opdam off Lowestoft in 1665; with Monk, Duke of Albemarle, and Prince Rupert in the “Four Days’ Fight” of 1666; at the defeat of De Ruyter in the St. James’s Day Fight of the same year. Solebay, in the Third Dutch War, was another of our second Dreadnought’s notable days, and also Prince Rupert’s three drawn battles with De Ruyter off the Banks of Flanders in 1673. Worn out with thirty-six years’ service (reckoning from the day that the Torrington first took the water), the Dreadnought had set forth to meet the famous French corsair, Jean Bart, in the North Sea, when, one stormy October night of 1690, she foundered off the South Foreland. Happily, the boats of her squadron had time to rescue those on board.

Our fourth Dreadnought, William the Third’s ship, fought the French at Barfleur and La Hogue, and after that did good service down to the Peace of Ryswick as a Channel cruiser and in charge of convoys. She served all through “Queen Anne’s War,” by chance only missing Benbow’s last fight. Later, the Dreadnought was with the elder Byng—Lord Torrington—at the battle off Cape Passaro, in the Straits of Messina, in 1718, where one, if not two, Spaniards lowered their colours to her. The Dreadnought on that occasion formed one of Captain Walton’s detached squadron, whose exploit history has kept on record, thanks to Captain Walton’s dispatch to the admiral, as set forth in the popular version of it: “Sir, we have taken all the ships on the coast, the number as per margin.” Of that dispatch more will be said elsewhere.[1] The Dreadnought ended her days in George the Second’s reign, at the close of the war sometimes spoken of as “The War of Jenkins’ Ear.”

Two Dreadnought officers, Sir Edward Spragge, who captained our second Dreadnought in the “Four Days’ Fight,” and Sir Charles Wager, a very famous admiral in his day, First Lieutenant of our third Dreadnought in the year before La Hogue, have monuments in Westminster Abbey.

Boscawen’s Dreadnought comes next, a sixty-gun ship built in the year 1742. She was the first ship of the line that Boscawen had the command of, and she gave him his sobriquet in the Navy, “Old Dreadnought,” the name of his ship just hitting off the tough old salt’s chief characteristic—absolute fearlessness. An incident that occurred on board the Dreadnought while Boscawen commanded the ship gave the sobriquet vogue. It is, too, a fine sample of what Carlyle calls “two o’clock in the morning courage.”

It was in the year 1744, when we were at war with both France and Spain, one night when the Dreadnought was cruising in the channel. The officer of the watch, the story goes, came down after midnight to Captain Boscawen’s cabin and awoke him, saying, “Sir, there are two large ships which look like Frenchmen bearing down on us; what are we to do?” “Do?” answered Boscawen, turning out of his cot and going on deck in his nightshirt, “Do? why, d⸺ ’em; fight ’em!” The fight did not come off, however, as the suspicious strangers disappeared.

On board Boscawen’s Dreadnought it was that, fourteen years later, Nelson’s uncle, Maurice Suckling, who got Nelson his first appointment in the Royal Navy, and under whose command the boy Nelson first went to sea, made his mark as a post-captain. It was in the West Indies in 1757, the year in which Byng was shot, and the day was the 21st of October.

The Dreadnought with two consorts met seven French men-of-war, four of them individually bigger and more heavily gunned ships than ours, and the other three powerful frigates, and gave them a sound thrashing.

The news was received in England with exceptional gratification as the first sign of the turn of the tide since Byng’s defeat off Minorca. That was one thing about it that stamped the event in popular memory. A second memorable thing was the incident, according to the popular story, of the “Half Minute Council of War” that preceded the fight.

The three British ships were the Augusta, Captain Forrest; the Dreadnought, Captain Maurice Suckling; and the Edinburgh, Captain Langdon. The three had been sent by the admiral at Jamaica to cruise off Cape François, in order to intercept a large French homeward merchant convoy reported to be weakly guarded. The available French naval force on the station was believed to be too weak to face our little squadron. But, unknown to Admiral Cotes at Port Royal, fresh men-of-war had just arrived from France purposely to see the convoy home. In the result, when our three ships arrived off Cape François, seven French ships stood out to meet them. In spite of the odds the British three held on their course.

These were the forces on either side, in ships and men:—

British Line of Battle.
Dreadnought	60	guns	Capt.Suckling	375	men
Augusta	60	”	Capt.Forrest	390	”
Edinburgh	64	”	Capt.Langdon	467	”
	184	guns.		1232	men.
French Line of Battle.
La Sauvage	30	guns		206	men
L’Intrépide (Commodore)	74	”		900	”
L’Opiniâtre	64	”		640	”
Le Greenwich (formerly British)	50	”		400	”
La Licorne	30	”		200	”
Le Sceptre	74	”		750	”
L’Outarde	44	”		350	”
	366	guns.		3446	men.

Directly the French came in sight the senior officer, Captain Forrest of the Augusta, signalled to the other two captains to come on board for a council of war. They came, and, the story goes, arrived alongside the Augusta together and mounted the ship’s side together. As they stepped on to the Augusta’s gangway, Captain Forrest, it is related, addressed the two officers in these terms: “Gentlemen, you see the enemy are out; shall we engage them?” “By all means,” said Captain Suckling. “It would be a pity to disappoint them,” said Captain Langdon. “Very well, then,” replied Forrest; “will you gentlemen go back to your ships and clear for action?” The two captains bowed, and turned and withdrew without having, as it was said, actually set foot on the senior officer’s quarter-deck.

Within three-quarters of an hour they were in action, the Dreadnought leading in and attacking the French headmost ship as the squadrons closed. Captain Suckling opened the fight by throwing the Dreadnought right across the bows of the Intrépide, a 74, and much the bigger ship, forcing her to sheer off to port to avoid being raked.

Backed up by the Augusta and the Edinburgh, the Dreadnought was able to overwhelm the French commodore with her fire, and force the crippled Intrépide back on the next ship, the Opiniâtre. That vessel in turn backed into the fourth French ship, and she into another, the Sceptre. The four big ships of the enemy were accounted for. Our three ships seized the opportunity. Well in hand themselves, they pounded away, broadside after broadside, into the hapless Frenchmen, who were too much occupied in trying to disentangle themselves to do more than make a feeble and ineffective reply. By the time that they got clear the British squadron had so far got the upper hand that the French drew off, leaving the British squadron masters of the field. All of our three ships suffered severely, the Dreadnought most of all.

In Nelson’s lifetime the day was always observed by the family at Burnham Thorpe with special festivities, and Nelson himself often called it, it is on record, “the happiest day of the year.” More than that too, Nelson himself more than once half playfully expressed his conviction that he too might some time fight a battle on another 21st of October, and make the day for the family even more of a red-letter day. As a fact, during the last three weeks of his life on board the Victory off Cadiz, in October, 1805, Nelson, with a prescience that the event justified, used these words both to Captain Hardy and to Dr. Beatty the surgeon of the flagship: “The 21st of October will be our day!”

Captain Maurice Suckling’s “Dreadnought” sword was bequeathed to Nelson and was ever kept by him as his most treasured possession. He always wore it in battle, it is said; notably at St. Vincent, when he boarded and took the two great Spanish ships the San Nicolas and the San Josef; and his right hand was grasping it when the grape shot shattered his arm at Teneriffe.

The Dreadnought of Boscawen and Maurice Suckling ended her days at perhaps England’s darkest hour of national trial—at the time of the American War. She was doing harbour duty at Portsmouth at the time, as a guard and receiving ship.

At no period, perhaps in all our history did the future and the prospects of the British Empire seem so absolutely hopeless. We were fighting for existence against France and Spain, the two chief maritime Powers of Europe; and at the same time the vitality of the nation was being sapped by the never-ceasing struggle with the American colonists, now in its seventh year. Holland had added herself to our foes; Russia and the Baltic Powers were banded together in a league of “armed neutrality,” and stood by sullen and menacing. That, however, was not the worst. The price of naval impotence had to be paid. Great Britain was no longer mistress of the sea. She had lost command of the sea, and was drinking the bitter cup of consequent humiliation to the dregs.