The Revenge

This is the story of a sea battle. It's history and it really happened !

The Revenge was a British warship in the time of Elizabeth I. The story of its last battle against the Spanish was told in verse 300 years later by the Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson.

The telling of the tale brings you some historical notes which have been written for us by John Fairlamb - ( a big thank you to John).

Flores in the Azores where the battle took place (the island belongs to Portugal)

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Read by Richard. Duration 15.53.

The Revenge (with notes)

In 1588, Sir Francis Drake made the The Revenge his flagship. The story is about its last battle and you will hear it told in a somewhat stirring poem
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,

First a little scene setting.

When Elizabeth I was Queen of England, her country was at war with Spain. This was a maritime war - that means it was fought at sea by their navies. Both countries built ships made of wood. The Spanish ships were very much bigger than the English ships. As you will learn from this story, BIG is NOT always BEST.

It was such an amazing battle that the famous English Poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, wrote a poem called “The Revenge: Ballad of the Fleet” about it. Tennyson wrote the poem almost 300 years after the battle actually took place and it is important to remember that it is told from the English perspective, and in parts it’s not very polite about the Spanish.....

One day, in the year 1591, Admiral Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Richard Grenville were on an island called Flores, which is part of an a group of islands called the Archipelago of Azores . (These islands belong to Portugal.) A message was brought to these two men that a huge fleet of Spanish ships was seen heading towards the islands. The response of the two men was very different. Being an Admiral, Lord Howard was the commander of a number of ships - in fact - he had six ships under his command, one of which was The Revenge, which Sir Richard Grenville commanded as Captain. Six ships, when compared to Spain’s 53 very much bigger ships, was no contest that Lord Howard was willing to take on, and so he commanded that they get moving and leave the island as quickly as possible.

This is how the poem Called the Revenge begins. A pinnace, by the way, is a small ship.

And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:

"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"

Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward;

But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,

And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.

We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"

So that’s how the poem sets up the battle. I’ll just pause to explain a few things.

Sir Richard Grenville saw things in a different way from the Admiral, and decided not to flee with Thomas, but to fight. His crew were sick, and he thought that the Spanish Armada, which is what the Spanish navy was known as, would quickly overtake the ships and destroy them all, and so he had different tactic in mind. Instead of fleeing with the other five ships, Sir Richard Grenville decided to steer the Revenge straight towards the mighty Spanish Armada, and, perhaps he thought that while they had no chance of defeating the Armada, they could at least slow down their progress and give the other ships a chance to get away.

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;

You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.

But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,

To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."

Nearly half his crew were lying sick and dying, on the island - at least ninety sailors, leaving him with just a hundred crew to sail the big sailing ship and to fight against the Spaniards, but he took all the sick men onto the The Revenge and laid them in the cabins below deck. They were grateful to Sir Richard for not leaving them to be taken prisoner by the Spaniards when they reached the island.

So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,

Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land

Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below;

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,

To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

So they set sail straight towards those huge Spanish Galleons or giant ships that towered above the Revenge like skyscrapers. There were two rows of Galleons - one to the left and one to the right and Sir Richard directed the Revenge right down the corridor between them. Well, you can imagine the Spanish sailors and soldiers surprise when they saw the little ship in their midst.

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!

There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."

And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.

Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,

For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet."

Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so

The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,

With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;

For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,

And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.

They, the great Spanish Armada, had FIFTY-THREE huge ships and the English, the English, ONLY ONE measly little boat. They had Hundreds of cannons and thousands of soldiers; the English, well they had about a hundred men on board and few cannons. What chance did they have against the MIGHTY SPANISH? The situation seemed so ridiculous that the Spanish started to laugh and mock the puny little craft. I think they didn’t know if they should feel sorry for the English - Had they lost their minds? - or be insulted by their sheer audacity.

Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed,

Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft

Running on and on, till delayed

By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,

And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,

Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.

The Revenge kept going, on and on right down the long avenue that lay between the Spanish Galleons, that is, until it came under the shadow of the Armada’s biggest ship - the San Philip. It was so huge that the wind that propelled the Revenge, was blocked and the Revenge came to a sudden halt right there.

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud

Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day,

And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,

And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

There the battle began and the first cannon balls flew from Spanish ships to the Revenge and from the Revenge to the Spanish ships. Some of the Spanish ships moved away, not bothering to even fight. Hard as the Spanish came against Sir Richard’s men, they gave it back to them.

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went

Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;

And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,

And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,

But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,

Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.

For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more -

God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said "Fight on! fight on!"

Though his vessel was all but a wreck;

And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,

With a grisly wound to be dressed he had left the deck,

But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,

And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,

And he said "Fight on! fight on!"

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,

And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;

But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting,

So they watched what the end would be.

And we had not fought them in vain,

But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maimed for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;

And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,

And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;

And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;

But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,

"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night

As may never be fought again!

We have won great glory, my men!

And a day less or more

At sea or ashore,

We die -does it matter when?

Sink me the ship, Master Gunner -sink her, split her in twain!

Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"

And the gunner said "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:

"We have children, we have wives,

And the Lord hath spared our lives.

We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;

We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow."

And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"

And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,

And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap

That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;

Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,

But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,

And they manned the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,

And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own;

When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep,

And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,

And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,

And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,

Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,

And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain,

And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

Dear Listeners,

This is a masterful achievement

of an epic poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

known as a literary Ballad, containing

iambic trochee meter, ( stresses

from long to shot with a characteristic forward

movement) and

echoing half rhymes

that drive the action through the verse lines

Its interesting rhyme scheme

of alternating rhyming verse ends

and rhyming couplets as well as

eight verse length stanza's known

as Octaves also part of its formation

and make it highly complex.

Following the story of the English

fleet and the defeat of the Spanish Armada

with little resources. And the character voice

within the narrative verse of Sir Richard Granville

excellently read by Richard make it a highly gripping drama.

The account of the story interwoven in the poem

of Sir Richard batteling against the Spannish,

also provide a great account of history during

the Sixteenth Century, that we can learn from.

I hope you enjoy this and other literary Ballads

in the Classics section, including The Pied Piper

another Victorian verse epic, following a central

character. And written by contemporary

Victorian poet Robert Browning. If you go to this

page you can view it as an I pod Video

that like a digital App syncs the text with

the visuals and the picture,

brought to you first by Storynory.com.

Bye Bye

N *