Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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The political and social events which have been mingled with its history are interwoven with those of almost every people on the face of the globe. We shall see how much our own has been shaped and involved. It was with the memory of the glorious deeds of British seamen and soldiers that Browning wrote, when sailing through the Straits:—

“Nobly, nobly, Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away;

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;

Bluish, ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;

In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray;

‘Here, and here, did England help me—how can I help England?’—say

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turns to God to praise and pray,

While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.”

And the poet is almost literally correct in his description, for within sight, as we enter the Straits of Gibraltar, are the localities of innumerable sea and land fights dating from earliest days. That grand old Rock, what has it not witnessed since the first timid mariner crept out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic—the Mare Tenebrosum—the “sea of darkness” of the ancients? Romans of old fought Carthaginian galleys in its bay; the conquering Moors held it uninterruptedly for six hundred years, and in all for over seven centuries; Spain owned it close on two and a half centuries; and England has dared the world to take it since 1704—one hundred and seventy-three years ago. Its very armorial bearings, which we have adopted from those given by Henry of Castile and Leon, are suggestive of its position and value: a castle on a rock with a key pendant—the key to the Mediterranean. The King of Spain still includes Calpe (Gibraltar) in his dominions; and natives of the place, Ford tells us, in his “Handbook to Spain,” are entitled to the rights and privileges of Spanish birth. It has, in days gone by, given great offence to French writers, who spoke of l’ombrageuse puissance with displeasure. “Sometimes,” says Ford, “there is too great a luxe de canons in this fortress ornée; then the gardens destroy ‘wild nature;’ in short, they abuse the red-jackets, guns, nursery-maids, and even the monkeys.” The present colony of apes are the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Rock. They have held it through all vicissitudes.