THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



ance of the offer, he was too late ; the patronage of 

 Ferdinand and Isabella had already been obtained, and 

 Columbus had set sail for the West. The pirates, in 

 the pursuit of their calling, were ' the occasion,' as 

 Hakluyt has it, ' why the West Indies were not dis- 

 covered for England/ The time of England was not 

 yet come. 



A striking contrast might be drawn between the two 

 nations, Spain, which gained the whole credit and profit 

 of the enterprise of Columbus, and England, which so 

 The shipmen narrowly missed it. A hundred years later, in the defeat 

 oj ngan . ^^ ^^ Great Armada, the contrast was to be pointed, but 

 already it was apparent. 'The English sailors,' wrote 

 Ferdinand's ambassador at the Court of King Henry 

 VII, ' are generally savages.' They were unchanged 

 since the days of Chaucer, and picked up a living, 

 without loss of temper, from a precarious coasting trade 

 and adventures not easily distinguishable from piracy. 

 The character of the English sailor is the most inalter- 

 able and valuable of national assets ; while the British 

 Constitution has moved from precedent to precedent, 

 he has remained the same. His life is a hard one, but 

 he takes it as it comes. He is untouched by the formal 

 punctilios of the cavalier and the cankered scruples of the 

 puritan. He is careless of the graces and ornaments 

 of life. Though he has a warm heart, he is no humani- 

 tarian. Danger is his daily companion, and he has 

 learned the lesson of Sir Edward Howard, that a seaman 

 is useless unless he is resolute to the degree of madness. 

 Above all, he is alert and serious in what concerns his 

 craft. Of all professions, the sailor is habituated to 

 subordinate himself most completely to the necessities 



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