282 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



those days but, on the other hand, they were manned 

 by slaves not only in name, but in fact. They were 

 hampered by the bad old mediaeval tradition, which 

 made of the seaman but a piece of machinery only 

 useful to get the ship from one point to another. 

 When fighting was to be done, the soldier came 

 forward an alien on board ship, whose trade was 

 fighting and the sailor was whipped into the back- 

 ground. To oppose such a crew as this must have 

 been a delight to the sturdy sea-fighters of England, 

 every man of whom felt that upon him rested a certain 

 proportion of the welfare of the whole venture, and 

 was to invite the defeat which invariably came, no 

 matter what the odds were odds that in some cases 

 were so disproportionate as to make it difficult to 

 believe the records we have. 



Now, while these desultory combats at sea made 

 the grandest possible training for the English mariners, 

 improving their seamanship and tactics of fighting, as 

 well as giving them that sheer contempt for the enemy 

 which counts for so much in all warfare when it does 

 not lead to carelessness or neglect, the Spaniards 

 apparently found it impossible to learn. They clung 

 to their effete ideas, and only invited more complete 

 disaster by increasing the size of their vessels and 

 adding to their already unwieldy crews. And thus 

 they led up to the crowning mercy of the Armada. 

 Utterly unable to understand the reasons why their 

 ships were taken, or why the English sailors seemed 

 to be invulnerable to defeat, they collected that amazing 

 congeries of vessels, with their polyglot crews, their 

 equipment of monks and priests, and their store of 

 manacles for the accommodation of the heretic prisoners 



