266 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



other without coming to handgrips. The wonderful 

 Italian republics of Venice, Piza, and Genoa rose to 

 amazing heights of power and wealth by reason of 

 their maritime exploits, and Spain and Portugal 

 launched out into the deep and wide Atlantic in 

 quest of plunder it is hardly fair to call it com- 

 mercial enterprise. But, hardly noticed by them, an 

 even fiercer, hardier race of seafarers had arisen in 

 the North, beginning in the same way with vessels 

 propelled by oars, but with one essential difference 

 every man was free and a warrior. The early history 

 of our own country is inextricably interwoven with 

 the exploits of these Northern pirates, who sought 

 on the sea the wealth their own inhospitable shores 

 denied them, and ravaged in turn every country 

 within their reach that was fairer and wealthier than 

 their own. To them, and to their lineal descendants 

 the Normans, we owe our existence as a nation, and 

 undoubtedly it is to their seafaring instincts we owe 

 the present fact of our greatness in maritime affairs. 

 Throughout these stormy centuries the story of the 

 sea is one of continual bloodshed and rapine. The sea 

 was the road to fame, and wealth was only obtained 

 by robbery and murder. Peaceful maritime trading 

 did not exist, because it could not. " Seafarer " was 

 a synonym for pirate, a being whom the advance of 

 civilization and Christianity was one day to wipe off 

 the sea as a foul blot upon humanity. There is no 

 room for discrimination, all were alike guilty where 

 it was possible to be so. Even down to Elizabethan 

 times, it is well for us to remember that, although 

 great strides had been made in the direction of 

 peaceful sea-traffic, many of the nation's heroes were 



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