Grenville

( Sir Richard ), the commander of The Revenge , in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Out of his crew, ninety were sick on shore, and only a hundred able-bodied men remained on board. The Revenge was one of the six ships under the command of Lord Thomas Howard. While cruising near the Azores, a Spanish fleet of fifty-three ships made towards the English, and Lord Howard sheered off, saying, “My ships are out of gear, and how can six ships-of-the-line fight with fifty-three?” Sir Richard Grenville, however, resolved to stay and encounter the foe, and “ship after ship the whole night long drew back with her dead; some were sunk, more were shattered;” and the brave hundred still fought on. Sir Richard was wounded and his ship riddled, but his cry was still “Fight on!” When resistance was no longer po ible, he cried, “Sink the ship, master gunner! sink her! Split her in twain, nor let her fall into the hands of the foe!” But the Spaniards boarded her and praised Sir Richard for his heroic daring. “I have done my duty for my queen and faith,” he said, and died. The Spaniards sent the prize home, but a tempest came on, and The Revenge , shot-shattered, “went down, to be lost evermore in the main.”—Tennyson, The Revenge , a ballad of the fleet (1878). Froude has an e ay on the subject. Canon Kingsley, in Westward Ho ! has drawn Sir Richard Grenville, and alludes to the fight. Arber published three small volumes on Sir Richard’s noble exploit. Gervase Markham has a long poem on the subject. Sir Walter Raleigh says: “If Lord Howard had stood to his guns, the Spanish fleet would have been annihilated.” Probably Browning’s Hervé Riel was present to the mind of Tennyson when he wrote the ballad of The Revenge .