RALEIGH 



RAM 



571 



was careful to give himself the cowardly safeguard 

 of allowing Raleigh to go with his old sentence still 

 hanging over his head, as well as communicating 

 his route to Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador. 

 And so in April 1617 the hero sailed to the doom 

 which fate was weaving for him, while James even 

 then was drawing into ever closer relations with 

 Spain, and beginning his negotiations for the 

 Spanish marriage. Before sailing Raleigh asked 

 leave, but in vain, to make an attack on Genoa, an 

 ally of Spain. His small fleet was manned, some 

 forty gentlemen excepted, by ' the very scum of the 

 world, drunkards, blasphemers.' Storms, desertion, 

 disease, and death followed them from the first, and 

 ere they reached the mouth of the river Raleigh 

 was himself stricken down by sickness and com- 

 jielled to stay behind with the ships, and entrust 

 the command of the party who went to seek the 

 mine to Keymis. He did not give his men distinct 

 orders to avoid fighting with the Spaniards, and 

 when they found in their way a new Spanish town, 

 San Thome, they attacked it and burned it down, 

 but never reached the mine. In the fight young 

 Walter Raleigh was struck down, as he shouted 

 the words, ' Come on, my men ! This is the only 

 mine you will ever find.' Keymis lost control of 

 his men, and came sadly back to his admiral, 

 whose bitter rej roaches made him drive a knife 

 into bis heart. The men now refused to return 

 with Raleigh to the mine, whereupon he asked 

 them if they would follow him in an attack on 

 the Mexican fleet, telling them in his desperation 

 that he had in his possession a commission from 

 France. At length, on the 21st of June 1618, he 

 arrived at Plymouth with his ship, the Destiny, 

 alone and utterly cast down. His kinsman Sir 

 Lewis [Judas] Stukely was sent to bring him up 

 to London ; at Salisbury on the way he feigned 

 illness to gain four days' time to write his touching 

 Apology for the Voyage to Guiana. Surrounded by 

 a ring of spies, chiefest among whom was Stukely, 

 he again intrigued for an escape to France, but 

 was betrayed at every step. James dared not 

 allow him to appear before the council of state, but 

 had him formally examined before a commission of 

 six, among them Coke, Archbishop Abbot, and 

 Bacon, besides resorting to the infamy of sending 

 a spy to gain li is confidence and discover his secrets. 

 In his perplexity Raleigh damaged his cause by 

 contradictory statements and confessions, and his 



D'ges seem to have convinced themselves that he 

 never had any intention to find the mine at all, 

 as appears from tne Declaration of the Demeanour 

 and Carnage of Sir Walter Raleigh, a feeble 

 statement, though drawn up by the master-hand 

 of Bacon. He was condemned to die the next 

 morning (29th October 1618) on the old sentence, 

 and neither the entreaties of the cjueen nor his 

 own moving eloquence could save his life. ' You 

 will come to-morrow morning,' he said to an old 

 friend he met on his way liack to prison ; ' I do not 

 know what you will do for a place. For my own 

 part, I am sure of one.' One of his kinsmen warn- 

 ing him that his enemies would take exception at 

 his high spirits, ' It is my last mirth in this world,' 

 said he ; 'do not grudge it to me. When I come to 

 the sad parting, you shall see me grave enough.' 

 His high courage never left him to the last. He 

 wrote some verses the night before, and, says Dean 

 Tounson, ' he ate his breakfast heartily, and took 

 tobacco, and made no more of his death than if it 

 had lieen to take a journey.' Of the cup of sack 

 brought him he said, ' It is good drink, if a man 

 might stay by it.' The speech he made on the 

 scaffold was masterly in its persuasive eloquence 

 'as he stood there in the cold morning air,' says 

 Mr Gosse, ' he foiled James and Philip at one 

 thrust, and conquered the esteem of all posterity.' 



He asked to see the axe, and touched the edge 

 with the words, ' This gives me no fear. It is a 

 sharp and fair medicine to cure me of all my 

 diseases.' To some one who objected that he ought 

 to lay his head toward the east he answered, 

 'What matter how the head lie so the heart be 

 right,' than which, as Mr Gardiner well says, no 

 better epitaph could be found for Raleigh's tomb. 



The best edition of Raleigh's works is that in 8 vols. 

 published at Oxford in 1829, with the 18th-century Lives 

 by Oldys and Birch prefixed. Sir Egerton Brydges edited 

 the Poems in 1814. See Dr T. N. Brushfield's Biblio- 

 graphy (Ply month, 1886). There are Lives by Cay ley 

 (1805), Tytler (1833), Mrs Thomson (1830), Edward 

 Edwards (the fullest, voL i., life; voL ii., letters, 1868), 

 J. A. St John (1868), Louise Creighton ( 1877 ), Edmund 

 Gosse (1886), and William Stebbing (1892). Gibbon 

 thought of treating the subject, but abandoned it. 

 Kingsley's glowing essay in Miscellanies (voL i. 1859) is 

 excellent; so also, but in a different way, is the treat- 

 ment in S. B. Gardiner's History (vols. i.-iii.). 



Rnlik. See MARSHALL ISLAHDS. 

 Rallidae. See RAIL. 



Ralston, WILLIAM RALSTON SHEDDEN, Russian 

 scholar and folklorist, was born in 1828 of Scotch 

 ancestry his surname originally Shedden. He 

 studied at Trinity College, Cambridge (1846-50); 

 was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1862, 

 but never practised ; and from 1853 to 1875 held a 

 post in the library of the British Museum. He 

 four times visited Russia ; in 1886 was elected a 

 corresponding member of the St Petersburg Im- 

 perial Society of Sciences ; and besides many review 

 and magazine articles, and a translation of his 

 friend TurguenieflPs Liza ( 1869), published Kriloff 

 and hit Fables ( 1869), Songs of the Russian People 

 (1872), Russian Folk-tales (1873), and Early 

 Russian History (1874), the last his Ilchester 

 lectures at Oxford. He was also a splendid racon- 

 teur. He died in London, 6th August 1889. 



Rain, an ironclad ship intended to run into 

 and sink an enemy's vessels. For this purpose 

 it is provided with a heavily armoured stem 

 projecting below the water-line in the form of 

 a beak (see figs. 7 &c. in article NAVY). In 

 action the ram is propelled at full speed against 

 her antagonist, and if she succeeds in striking 

 her the olow is supposed to be sufficient to 

 crush in her side and sink her immediately. 

 In the British navy rams had formerly a separate 

 rating, and in the United States the Katahdm was 

 built especially for thin purpose ; but all line-of- 

 battle ships are now in effect rams, and the name is 

 applied to the part of the stem of the battle-ship 

 used in striking. The ram >yas first employed during 

 the American civil war in the action between 

 the Federal fleet and the Confederate armour- 

 clad ram Virginia in Norfolk Roads in 1862, when 

 the Federal frigate Cumberland was rammed 

 and sunk by the Virginia. In 1866 the Austrian 

 ironclad Ferdinand Max rammed and sunk the 

 Italian ironclad Re d'ltalia at the battle of 

 Lissa. In 1879 the Peruvian ironclad ram Huascar 

 rammed and sunk the Chilian corvette Esmeralda. 

 In 1875, while the Channel Fleet were oft' the 

 Irish coast, the Vanguard was accidentally 

 rammed by the Iron Duke, and sank in an hour. 

 During the German naval manoeuvres of 1878 the 

 Grosser Knrfiirst was rammed by the Konig 

 Willtelm, and sank immediately, 280 of her crew 

 l>eing drowned. It is but just to say that the Cum- 

 berland, the Re d'ltalia, and the Esmeralda were 

 not under control when they were rammed, and the 

 result of all engagements fought since the intro- 

 duction of rams has shown that when an attacked 

 vessel is under control and properly handled ram- 

 ming can easily be avoided ; but at the same time 

 it now plays an important part in naval tactics. 



