Читать книгу Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Julian Stafford Corbett - Страница 33

[1] The articles marked with an asterisk do not appear in the Gorges set, and were presumably those which Ralegh added to suit the conditions of his expedition or which he borrowed from other precedents.

[2] Cape Finisterre.

[3] Cape St. Vincent.

[4] MS. Cape Devert.

[5] MS. 'loofe.'

[6] Corporal of the field meant the equivalent of an A.D.C. or orderly.

[7] This appears to be the first known mention of a court-martial being provided for officially at sea.

[8] This passage is corrupt in the MS. and is restored from Wimbledon's Article 32, post, p. 58.

[9] This was the Spanish practice. There is no known mention of it earlier in the English service.

[10] Gorges's article about 'Musket-arrows' is here omitted by Ralegh.

[11] I.e. 'noisy confusion.' Shakspeare has 'I heard a bustling rumour like a fray.'

[12] The corresponding article in Gorges's set (Stowe MSS. 426) is as follows:—

'No man shall board any enemy's ship but by order from a principal commander, as the admiral, vice-admiral or rear-admiral, for that by one ship's boarding all the fleet may be engaged to their dishonour or loss. But every ship that is under the lee of an enemy shall labour to recover the wind if the admiral endeavour it. But if we find an enemy to leeward of us the whole fleet shall follow the admiral, vice-admiral or other leading ship within musket-shot of the enemy, giving so much liberty to the leading ship, as after her broadside is delivered she may stay and trim her sails. Then is the second ship to give her side and the third, fourth, and rest, which done they shall all tack as the first ship and give the other side, keeping the enemy under a perpetual volley. This you must do upon the windermost ship or ships of the enemy, which you shall either batter in pieces, or force him or them to bear up and so entangle them, and drive them foul one of another to their utter confusion.' For the evidence that this may have been drawn up and used as early as 1578, and consequently in the Armada campaign, see Introductory Note, supra, pp. 34–5.

[13] 'Sergeant-major' at this time was the equivalent to our 'chief of the staff' or 'adjutant-general.' In the fleet orders issued by the Earl of Essex for the Azores expedition in 1597 there was a similar article, which Ralegh was accused of violating by landing at Fayal without authority; it ran as follows:—'No captain of any ship nor captain of any company if he be severed from the fleet shall land without direction from the general or some other principal commander upon pain of death,' &c. Ralegh met the charge by pleading he was himself a 'principal commander.'—Purchas, iv. 1941.

[14] This expression has not been found elsewhere. It may stand for 'chap merchant,' i.e. 'barter-merchant.'