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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FIFTY-TWO STORIES
OF THE
BRITISH NAVY.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BRITISH NAVY.

A SAXON CHRONICLE.

The founders of the English nation were a maritime people. Before they settled in the British Isles they had to dare the dangers of the deep, and though for nearly four hundred years after their first arrival they were too much occupied with internal strife to think of external enterprise, no sooner had they apparently completed the subjugation of the Britons and effected a settlement of their own differences by uniting the country under one crown, than they were called upon to give vigorous attention to maritime affairs.

Egbert, king of the West Saxons, who, by the conquest of Mercia and Northumbria, became the first overlord of all England, A.D. 828, was soon compelled to deal seriously with the Danes. According to old chroniclers, threatened with invasion in the south, he engaged these formidable foes at Charmouth in Dorsetshire, but sustained defeat. Two years later, however, when they returned and landed on the coast of Wales, uniting with the disaffected Britons in a powerful armament, Egbert proved equal to the occasion, met them in a general engagement at the Battle of Hengestesdun, routed their entire forces, and compelled the Britons to seek safety in their mountains and the Danes to return to their ships. Desultory warfare supervened for some time with ever-varying success until, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the Danes were defeated off Sandwich in a desperate battle in which nine of their ships were taken by the English, and the rest compelled to seek safety in flight. After this they again returned, this time with a fleet of three hundred and fifty sail, devastated the south country and took Canterbury and London by storm.

Hitherto the English had made the fatal mistake of allowing their enemies to land before attempting to grapple with them, and even the disasters which followed naturally upon such a policy did not arouse them to a sense of the necessity of maintaining an efficient fleet. On the contrary, dispirited by their failures, the English seem to have abandoned all thoughts of naval armament, and to have contented themselves with fortifying their cities and defending them against enemies whom they passively allowed to land. This unhappy condition of things continued through the reigns of Ethelbald, Ethelbert and Ethelred; during which time the Danes conquered Northumbria and East Anglia, and invaded Wessex. In A.D. 867 they took York, and in the following year Nottingham. In 870 they defeated and put to death Edmund, king of East Anglia, whose burial-place was named St. Edmundsbury—Bury St. Edmunds—and during the same year fought no less than nine battles in Wessex. Abbeys, churches and monasteries were burnt, and the whole country was given up to fire and the sword.

In the year 871 Alfred came to the throne and found himself a monarch without a people, a king without a country. The long-continued struggle with the Danes, who, like locusts, "came without number and devoured the fruits of the land," had reduced the people to a state of despairing servitude. The wealth, strength, and spirits of the English, who had sometimes been compelled to fight as many as ten or twelve battles in the course of a year, had become exhausted, and instead of attempting to defend themselves further, they began everywhere to submit to the Danes; preferring a settled slavery to a precarious freedom. Although the country had been brought to this low condition, the young king did not despair of its restoration, but with equal vigour and prudence applied himself to the prosecution of the war and the conduct of public affairs. Encouraged by his example and inspired by his spirit, the English at length took heart again, and ultimately—led by his skill and wisdom—defeated the Danes at Exeter in 877, and at Edington in the following year, securing the peace of Wedmore, which, while it gave them little more than the kingdom of Wessex as a possession, ensured them what they needed much more than land, a period of rest and repose, which, but for one short interval, lasted for fifteen years. This period Alfred employed in pursuing the arts of peace and preparing himself for the eventualities of war. In the year A.D. 883 he sent envoys to Rome and India; and in 886 he took and re-fortified the city of London. From 893 to 897 he was once more engaged with his old enemies the Danes. This protracted campaign was by no means a light undertaking. Hasting, the Danish leader, pitched his camp on the hills gently sloping above Benfleet, in Essex, and sent two hundred and fifty Danish ships cruising along the south-west coast of Kent; while he proceeded himself with eighty ships along the Thames estuary. Having formed a camp at Milton, near Sittingbourne, he ventured up the River Lea where he found himself unexpectedly entrapped; for Alfred hit upon the expedient of draining the river, and by this means left the Danish ships high and dry. Retreating to Benfleet, Hasting