THE LOSS OF THE REVENGE.

Marlborough Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1252, 10 December 1880, Page 3

THE LOSS OF THE REVENGE.

Mr A. T- Card, local agent for the Art Union of London, has received a specimen copy of the engraving to be presented to every subscriber for the current year. The subject is one that must appeal to the strongest feelings of all persons interested in our national history, and its importance may be arrived at from the following description : “ Sir Richard Grenville, in a comparatively small ship, “The Revenge,” had to fight singlehanded against a fleet of fifty-three Spanish ships, and tho battle never ceased for a day and a night. At last, forty out of one hundred men were slain, and many more wounded, and the powder was almost spent, and the masts and rigging lying over the side ; and Sir Richard called out to the gunner to blow up and sink the ship ; but the men, for the sake of wives and children at home, induced him to surrender.” This happened in tho year 1591, and Mr Tennyson had a descriptive poem in the Nineteenth Century Review, a quotation from which will most vividly bring the scene before us.

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay. And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying

from far away : « Spanish ships of war at sea ! We have sighted

fifty-three! Then sware Lord Thomas Howard ; “ Fore God I am no coward ; But I cannot meet them hoar, for my ships are

out of gear And tho half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the lino ; can we fight with fifty-three ?”

Then spake Sir Richard Grenvillo : “ I know you are no coward ; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself tho coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.”

So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven ; But Sir Richard bore iu hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below ; For we brought them all aboard And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left in Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory

of the Lord. He had only a hundred seamen to work tho ship

and fight, And ho sail’d away from Flores till the Spaniard

came in sight, With his huge eea-castlee heaving upon tho

weather bow. “ Shall we right or shall wo fly ? Good .Sir Richard, let us know, For to fight is but to die ! There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun is

set.’ And Sir Richard said Again : “We bo all good English men. Lo us bang theso dogs of Seville, tho children of the devil, For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.’

And so Lord Thomas Howard, with his five ships sailed away, and left the little Revenge, with her hundred fighting on deck, and her ninety sick below, to bear the brunt of battle with the flfty-threo Spanish monsters, which came hugely towering all round her. And the fight went on all through the day aud, —

A. dozen times thev came will. their ptirno —•* musqueteers, And a dozen timoo we shook’em off aa a dog that shakes his ears When he leaps from the water to the land.

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 the fifty-three Ship after ship, the whole night long, their highbuilt 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 shatter’d, aud so could fight us no more, — God of battles, was ever a battle like this in tho world before ?

So they fought on. and Sir Richard was greviously wounded in the side and the head, and the surgeon who was attending to him was shot dead in the act ; and the night went down, and the cun smiled out, nnd forty of the hundred were slain, and many more wounded, and the powder ulmost spent, and the masts and rigging lying over the side ; then Sir Richard called out to the gunner to blow up aud sink the ship.

And the gunner said “ Ay, Ay,” but the seamen made reply : “ We have children, we have wives, And the Lord hath spared our lives. We will make the Spaniard promise, if vre yield, to let us go We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.” And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foo.

The Spanish Admiral was so struck by the gallant conduct of Sir Richard, that lie sent off his barge to bear him on board his own ship. And the stately Spanish men to their flagship

bore him then, Where they layed him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace ; But he rose upon their decks, and ho cried ; “ I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true ; 1 have only done my duty as a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirt I Sir Richard Grenville die !’ And he fell upor. their decks, and he died. The moment selected by the artist for his picture is just when the Spanish Admiral’s barge is approaching the Revenge; to take off Sir Richard Grenville. There in tho centre lies tho little ship, the stump of one mast alone remaining, and all round, like lmutora about a wounded lion, stand the lofty Spanish war-ships, showing many a mark of the crushing English cannon halls, fearing to go too near, lest the Revenge should be blown up and they be involved in her own. ruin, and at last——The little Revenge herself went down by the island crags To be lost evermore in the main. This is a subject which cannot fail to have great interest for the English people, whose hearts ever warm to any story of the sea, on which so may of them have for centuries found a home, and many alas ! a grave.—and, as a picture, it is powerfully designed ; the contrast between the towering forms of the Spanish men of-war and the little Revenge is admirably rendered, and the bactcground of calm sea, ail'd misty headland, aryl cloud-flecked bright sky, are quite poetic in their treatment. ... , .. The manner in which the translation, into bD.ck and white, has been made by Mr Willmore will doubtless maintain the high character of the engraver.