THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



short and easy passage, by the North West, to more 

 distant lands. And for these purposes what is chiefly 

 necessary is a good system of technical education in 

 nautical affairs. 



Nautical Throughout his life Hakluyt continued to urge on 

 ucatton. ^^^ government and public the importance of sound 

 nautical education. His scheme, though nothing came 

 of it, was a modest one. A lectureship should be 

 established ' in London or about Ratcliffe, in some con- 

 venient place ' ; and he tells how Sir Francis Drake 

 offered twenty pounds a year to this end ; but forty 

 pounds a year was found needful to secure a fit man, 

 and, no other donor presenting himself, the scheme fell 

 through. The Spaniards, says Hakluyt, maintain at 

 the Contractation House, or Exchange, in Seville, a 

 learned Reader in the art of Navigation: and no-one 

 is given charge of ships for the Indies until he has 

 attended the instructions of the Reader and has satisfied 

 a board of examiners who are joined with the Reader 

 to test theoretical and practical knowledge. This Reader- 

 ship, he points out, has already given to Spain the 

 services of learned writers on the art of navigation, as 



Spanish £qj. instance Geronimo de Chavez, and Pedro de Medina, 

 whose works are text-books for the navigators of all 

 nations.^ What Hakluyt desires, in short, is a Nautical 

 University or Faculty, where men may be trained and 

 graduated in all the sciences and crafts that are necessary 

 to furnish forth the complete navigator, and to make 

 him an efficient servant of his country. He returns to 



1 Pedro de Medina's Arte de Navegar (1545) was translated into 

 English by John Frampton and published in London in 1581, a 

 year before Hakluyt's Divers Foyages. 



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