16 THE SEA. 



should take him from his adopted profession, and it is presumable that his friends became 

 reconciled to it, for we find him suddenly raised, at one step, from the grade of a volunteer 

 to the rank of captain, although but eighteen years old ! Family influence, doubtless, had 

 something to do with it. Gentlemen captains, who were often brave men, but who knew little 

 enough about naval affairs, were common in those days. Raleigh distinguishes them very 

 distinctly from the "tarpauling captain," or mariner who had learned his profession from 

 a youth up. Monson, however, as his writings prove, soon became an adept in navigation 

 and all the arts of seamanship. 



Passing over a voyage in which Monson was nearly shipwrecked, we come to 1589, when 

 he accompanied the Earl of Cumberland in his expedition to the Azores. The crews were 

 reduced to great distress from want of water, and while cruising among the islands, a grand 

 spout was seen issuing apparently from one of their cliffs. Cumberland asked Monson to 

 go with four men and find out whether it was available for their use. "While they were 

 rowing towards the land, a great whale, lying asleep on the water, was noted from the ship, 

 and was mistaken for a rock, whereupon the vessel tacked about and put to sea, leavino- 

 Monson to his fate. (The original narrative does not explain whether the waterspout, noticed 

 from the ship, had proceeded from the whale, before it fell asleep.) " I had no sooner," says 

 Monson, " set my foot ashore, than it began to be dark with night and fog, and to blow, 

 rain, thunder, and lighten in the cruellest manner that I have seen. There was no way for 

 me to escape death but to put myself to the mercy of the sea ; neither could I have anv 

 great hope of help in life, for the ship was out of sight, and there only appeared a light upon 

 the shrouds to direct me." The narrative says that a countryman of Monson's on board 

 prevailed upon his lordship (the Earl of Cumberland) to forbear sailing. This was, one 

 would think, hardly necessary, as Monson was his second in command ; but stress of weather 

 will probably account for the vessel being driven some distance. They rowed and rowed, but 

 lost all sight of the ship. At length, in despair, they fired their last charge of powder from a 

 musket. The flash was seen through the fog, and they were saved. "We were preserved," 

 says the narrative, " rather by miracle than any human act ; and to make it the more strange 

 we were no sooner risen from our seats, and ropes in our hands to enter the ship, but the boat 

 sunk immediately." The subsequent sufferings of the crew from the continued want of water 

 have rarely been equalled. " For sixteen days together," says Monson, " we never tasted a 

 drop of drink, either of beer, wine, or water ; and though we had plenty of beef and pork of a 

 year's salting, yet did we forbear eating it, for making us the drier. Many drank salt water, 

 and those that did died suddenly ; and the last words they usually spoke were ' Drink, drink, 

 drink ! ' There were 500 men on board, and the mortality, though not expressly stated in 

 numbers, is said to have been something fearful. At last they made the coast of Ireland, 

 and obtained relief. So severely was Monson's health affected by this voyage, that he retired 

 from the active pursuit of his profession for a year afterwards. 



Again he joined the Earl of Cumberland in 1591 on an expedition directed against Spain, 

 off the coasts of which he successfully took two caravels by one of the stratagems for which 

 he was famous. He had boarded one from the ship's boat; he manned her with a part of 

 his boat^s crew, and rowed back to his ship. The Spaniards on the other caravel far in the 

 distance thought that the first, her consort, had been dismissed, and so shortened sail to meet 



