Pirate and Patriot
51r Martin Frobisher. By William McFee. Illustrated. (Lane. 12s. 6d.)
Tax love of prize-money helped to lose us our American colonies. If Rodney, when he seized St. Eustatius in 1781, had not weakened his strength by sending home part of his fleet with the plunder, the French might conceivably not have secured that temporary command of the sea which brought about the surrender of Cornwallis at. Yorktown and the loss of our American dominions. On plunder the fighting- man in all ages has kept an eye, and on plunder the Elizabethan fighting-man--and- especially the Elizabethan seaman—kept both eyes. His country. he loved deep down in his heart, and there was also a passing glance for adventure—thdugh (as Conrad has said) "The mere loAre of adventure is no saving grace, it is no grace at all." But loot and gold were what principally spurred him on, and this peculiar blend of piracy and patriotism, shot With a love of adventure and joined to a spirit of service in ships, made a very formidable combination.
Stout fighting-man as the Elizabethan seaman always was, lie was also in other ways rather a sorry rogue. Few Elizabethans could resist making a prize at sea whatever its nationality ; it was what Drake called " a little comfortable dew from heaven." John Hawkins was an unscrupulous slaver, Richard Grenville a man of infinite courage, but no particular sense ; but for a combination of unpleasant qualities, always however united to an intrepid daring, Martin Frobisher, whose biography by Mr. McFee is another fine link in the Golden Hind series, is as eminent as any of his none too scrupulous contemporaries.
Frobisher, a hulking illiterate Yorkshire lad whom no one could do anything with ashore, started life as a slaver on the Guinea coast, and next became a pur sang pirate in the Narrow Seas. He double-crossed the Earl of Desmond by promising to get him back to Ireland and then informing on him to the Queen's Council ; having married a wealthy widow, he made away with all her estate and all her children's, leaving them to starve. In conspiracy with one, Lock, he helped to fool the public into investing in a gold mine in the Arctic regions on the strength of a sample he had brought back from there, which had thrice been proved to be iron pyrites. The mean shifts and disreputable contrivances to which he resorted seem to have left their mark in the hard cunning face which forms the frontispiece to this volume.
But to all this there is an offset. Three great voyages in search of the North-West Passage have written Frobisher's name imperishably on our maps. In the defeat of the Armada, the obstinate defence off Portland Bill of his isolated squadron against four huge galleasses can, in the judgment of Sir Julian Corbett, be surpassed only by Grenville's last fight in the ' Revenge.' As a naval strategist well in advance of his times he saw (in the words of the author, who is an American) that if the enemy were permitted to import the materials of war, it was futile to expect the conclusion of any war. He saw that if neutrals were permitted to make money by selling material to the enemy behind a hypocritical assumption of " the freedom of the seas," a blockade became a delusion and a sham." He organized the first Dover Patrol ; and if—a rough choleric sailorman—he did roar out in Harwich harbour, on hearing of Drake's surreptitious attempt to put 55,000 Spanish ducats quietly into his pocket, " We will have our shares or I will make him spend the best blood in his belly," he was only asking for his rights. But Frobisher did not like Drake, or, as a Yorkshireman, Drake's perhaps rather exclusive circle of West-Country seamen.
Mr. McFec, already so well known as an expert on ships and sailors, to whom we are greatly indebted for bringing forward the really very little that is known about the man Frobisher, allows us to take leave of him.happily. He is a knight, the Queen has given him a gold chain ; a master in-the art of marrying, he has espoused another well-too-clog widow, and he dies worth between thirty and forty thousand pounds.
As £4,979 was all that he got officially out of the Armada, he must have done well out of other sources. He could not spell his own name, which he sometimes wrote Ffurbussher and sometimes as Froobiser, while other nithoepic tastes fancied Ffurbussh or Ffourbyssher.
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