An Elizabethan Epic

HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES. Selected and edited by Irwin R. Blacker. 522 pages. Viking. $8.50.

Why then the world's mine oyster,

Which I with sword will open!

The spirit of the age finds utterance in Shakespeare's swaggering lines. In 1533, when Elizabeth was born, England was an igneous interruption in the North Sea that mattered rather less to Europe than Cuba does to the U.S. In 1603, when Elizabeth died, England was the mightiest sea power in the world, a nation of adventurers whose wily merchants and intrepid captains had struck into all seven seas, set up commercial interests from the Caribbees to Cathay, set down precarious colonies in North America, and in two decades of continual conflict had defeated the dominant empire of the era.

All this is surely matter for an epic, and at the close of the 16th century the epic was brought forth. Like most of the great national chronicles, The Principall Navigations Voiages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation is a collective composition: an amazing compendium of travel diaries, personal letters, on-the-scene descriptions, geographical treatises, ships' logs, company reports and even promotional brochures--all industriously assembled and brilliantly edited by one Richard Hakluyt, a shy professor of cosmography at Oxford who organized an informal ministry of science to mastermind the nation's policy of expansion and then published The Principall Navigations as a running report on the progress of empire.

Talk With Ivan. All through the 17th century, English masters would as soon set sail without a compass as without a Hakluyt. Then for a century the great book lay obsolete. But in 1846 the Hakluyt Society was established in its honor. Historian Irwin Blacker, a U.S. member of the society, has now published a 200,000-word' recension of the 1,700,000-word original, a sort of handy Hakluyt that preserves the most significant and exciting passages for the nonprofessional reader and vividly suggests that the original is at least a magnificent eyewitness account of England's most glorious adventure, and at best the greatest epic in the language.

England came late into the race for empire. It was not until 1553 that Willoughby and Chancelor, "seeing that the wealth of the Spaniards and Portingales, by the discoverie and search of newe trades and Countreys was marveilously increased," set sail to find a Northeast Passage to Asia. Willoughby had bad luck: he froze to death in Lapland. But Chancelor turned the North Cape, and "came at last to the place where hee found no night at all, but a continuall light and brightnesse of the Sunne shining clearely upon the huge and mightie Sea." Landing near Archangel, he sledded south to "Mosco," where he found a palace "not of the neatest," had a nice talk with Ivan the Terrible, and instituted a profitable fur trade with Muscovy.

Wondrous Tales. So much for the Northeast Passage. In 1576, Captain Martin Frobisher set out to discover a Northwest Passage to Asia. His third voyage produced a remarkable description: "The storme still increased and the yce so invironed us, that we could see neither land nor sea, as farre as we could kenne: so that we were faine to ease the ships sides from the great and driry strokes of the yce: some with Capstan barres, some fending off with oares, some with plancks of two ynches thicke, which were broken immediatly with the force of the yce, some going out upon the yce to beare it off with their shoulders from the ships. But the rigorousness of the tempest and the force of the yce so rased the sides of the ships that it was pitifull to behold, and caused the hearts of many to faint. Thus we continued all that dismall night."

So much for the Northwest Passage. Southward the way was barred by Spain, but the greedy "marchant adventurers" heard wondrous travelers' tales. One story, no doubt brought back by an ancestor of Ian Fleming, gave it out that "certaine servants of the emperor having prepared gold into fine powder blow it thorow hollow canes upon their naked bodies, untill they be al shining from the foote to the head."

Pulsing Lifeline. Encouraged by such prospects, Captain John Hawkins sailed south in the fall of 1564. Having admonished his sailors to "serve God daily and love one another," he seized 300 hapless Negroes on the Guinea coast and went "bulting" off to Hispaniola, where he traded them for sugar and spice. The Spanish authorities--whose custom it was to entertain a foreigner with "a stake thrust through his fundament and so out at his necke"--sharpened their preparations. In 1568, Hawkins and his flotilla of six vessels were accosted by "thirteene greate shippes." In the ensuing scuffle, Hawkins lost four vessels, but six Spanish ships were blasted out of the water and 500 Spanish soldiers were slaughtered. It was a famous victory, but Hawkins was not happy about it. "If all the miseries of this sorrowfull voyage should be throughly written," he confides, "there should neede a painefull man with his pen."

After Hawkins came Francis Drake, a seagoing genius who found the pulsing lifeline of the Spanish empire--the great artery of gold that flowed from Peru to the Isthmus of Panama, and from the Isthmus to Madrid--and tore at it like a tiger. In his most famous exploit, Drake sailed up the west coast of South America, sacking the Spanish seaports as he passed. At Tarapaza, "being landed, we found by the Sea side a Spaniard lying asleepe, who had lying by him 13. barres of silver; we tooke the silver, and left the man." Off Colombia he seized a Spanish galleon glutted with some 30 tons of treasure, casually allowed that he was "sufficiently satisfied," and then headed home by way of the Moluccas and the kingdom of Java ("The French pocks is here very common to all"). And so Drake became the first Englishman to sail "about the whole Globe of the earth."

Seagoing Brothels. Elizabeth rewarded him with knighthood, but the King of Spain was less appreciative. He resolved that "England shal smoake," and in 1588 the Duke of Medina Sidonia sailed north with the mightiest naval armament of the age. According to Hakluyt, there were 30,000 men in 134 ships, among them several seagoing brothels and 64 enormous floating forts. The British fleet made a far less impressive array: 12,000 men in 100 ships, and beside the Spanish galleons the British men of war looked like overdecorated dinghies. But the British ships had the advantage of "dexteritie," and most of them could actually release a bigger broadside than the Spanish galleons.

East of Calais, Drake closed in for the kill. "I dout it not," he wrote to Lord Charles Howard, his commander in chief, "but ere it be long so to handle the matere with the Duke of Sidonia as he shal wish himselfe at St Mary Port among his orenge trees." Ere long indeed the desperate duke was driven into "the boisterous and uncouth Northren seas," where many of his "battered and crazed ships" were wrecked. "Insomuch that of 134 ships there returned home 53 onely small and great."

Last Stand. The defeat of the Armada is the historic climax of Hakluyt's saga; but the literary climax is attained in Sir Walter Raleigh's recreation of the bloodiest sea battle of the age: the last stand of the Revenge.

"The Revenge riding at anker neere unto the Azores, being all pestered and romaging every thing out of order, very light for want of balast, the one halfe part of the men sicke, and utterly unserviceable: had intelligence of the approach of a Spanish Armada of fiftie and three saile of men of warre, carrying above ten thousand men. But Sir Richard Grinvile, out of the greatnesse of his minde, utterly refused to turne from the enemie, alleaging that hee would rather choose to die, then to dishonour his countrey.

"The fight thus beginning at three of the clock, continued very terrible all that evening. The great San Philip becalmed his sailes, so huge was the Spanish ship. Who after layd the Revenge aboord. But having received the lower tire of the Revenge, shifted her selfe with all diligence, utterly misliking her first entertainement. Yet alwayes others came, so that ere the morning there had fifteene severall Armadas assayled her by eight hundred shotte of great Artillerie and the multitudes of their armed soulders, but by the Revenge were foure great Spanish shippes sunke.

"As the day encreased, so our men decreased. All the powder to the last barrel! was now spent, fortie men slaine, and the most part of the rest hurt. Sir Richard being shot into the bodie, was againe shot into the head. There remained no hope, no supply of men, or weapons; the Mastes all beaten over boord, her upper worke rased.

"Sir Richard finding himselfe in this distresse, commaunded the Master gunner to split and sinke the shippe. But the Captaine and the Master yeelded that all their lives should be saved, and Sir Richard was sent unto to remoove, the shippe being marveilous unsavorie. Sir Richard died as it is sayd, the second or third day. What became of his body we know not. His owne honour he hath not outlived."

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