place in the creation. H is giant achievement is beyo nd cavil and should by now have encouraged new dimensio ns of understandin g of mankind's religious as well as scientific understandings . And agai n, we owe a salute to the Royal Navy, who cheerfull y signed Darwin on fo r this long voyage, though he could add nothing to its chart-making mission-and, perhaps, to the temper of the longevolved, multifario us English culture which produ ced many appli cants bes ides Darwin , wi ll ing to pay their own way. Ir is a measure of the strength of England at her peak, says Richard Lee Marks, that there we re so many applicants. A Wide Commons D epended on Victory in Narrow Seas T he strength of England at her peak was a phenomenon that depended on the righ t arm of the natio n, the Royal Navy. I hope our narrative over the past five years in Sea History has conveyed at least my sense of the need for m ight to defend right in a wo rld that provides no automatic safeguards. Providing such safeguards, the English-speaki ng culture of the British Empire advanced thro ughout the wo rld till it embraced one quarter of Earth's population as the midpoint of th is century approached. T his was an empire upheld by naval m ight supporting mai nl y indigenous forces aro und the wo rld. In the 1950s, with no fight ing-except against terrorists in, for exam ple, Kenya and Malaya, or tragically, among people reviving religious and tribal confl icts in India and Africa which the Empi re had suppressed-the Empire had vanished. T he Em pire, fu ndamentally different from any previo us empire, lives in this narrative, at least, for th ree epochal achievements: First, the wo rl dwide abol ition of slavery, practically unive rsal amo ng human society for the past five thousand years. England was the firs t to break th is nightmare vision of people as chattel. Seco nd, a fu ndamental and growing respect fo r the securi ty of individual h uma n life, and for peop le's inalienable rights. T his had much to do with the emergence of the yeoman in English life-a perso n who stood on his own feet and wo uld not stand fo r ab use. Drake and Cook, leaders in open ing the ocean world , were of yeoman stock as in deed were Shakespeare and Darwin, leaders in recreating and interpreti ng the wo rl d's huma n and natural heritage for a broad, awaken ing public. T hird, the concept of the commons, an idea springing from the village co mmons open to all expressed ultimately in the vision of the wo rld's oceans as a great commons. This was the vital concept offreedom of the seas first expressed by Q ueen Eliza beth in 158 1, as we have seen. And based on these three organically evolved , roo t ideas that all people should be free, that all should be secure in their lives and righ ts, and the ideal of common access to resources, it was natural for the English to come first to achieve government by a body of people in the House of Commons under an evolving, organic Co m mo n Law, rather than rule by a potentate advised by special interest, under an iro nclad law of Divine Righ t. Plen ty of crimes, some of the most heartless sort, were commi tted by English-speaking people subscribing to these principles, as the Irish across the centuries and the yo ungs ters who labored and died in what the poet Blake called the dark Satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution can attest. M uch mo re co uld be said, ranging fro m a New England cleric's horrib le comm ent that the Lord had sent disease to wipe out Indians and clear the lan d for His pilgrims, to willingness to bomb primitive people in p uni tive raids in our own tim e. But these are
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attitudes the English-speakin g polity has rejected or are learning to reject. And the attitude of restraint stands out co ntinuously as a hallmark of the English settl ement. Peo ple are much given to quoting Voltaire's remark that the E ngli sh executed Admi ral Byng fo r cowardice "in order to encourage the others." Co ntex t is important, however, and it is well to remember that Voltaire was in England because only in England - not in the France of the Enli ghtenment-co uld he say what he wanted to without fear of being put in jail. Further to this point, the English never shot another admi ral, thro ugh the simple device of refusing to bring such charges again, leaving the penalty on the books as a deterrent. By contrast, Napoleon in the land of the Rights of Man, shot one admiral out of hand- the unfo rtunate man had been bluffed into defeat by Lord Cochrane using a handful of fri gates against French ships of the line-and it will ever be suspected that he had Admiral Villeneuve killed for losing Trafalgar to Nelso n, after th e brave and able Villeneuve had been royally entertained in England before being sent h ome to France. H ow many who kn ow of Voltaire's comment on Byng's execution of these other admirals-o r that Byng' s death so shocked the English sense of justice that similar charges were never brought against an E nglish admiral again? We're not in an admiralcounting co ntest here, but we are and should be concerned with careless use of the death sentence, and how humankind has begun to move beyond that evil. T he author of the otherwise distinguished book Longitude commits the incredible solecism of having Admiral Cloudisley Shovel! have a man who dared correct his navigation hanged on the spot, then p roceeding blithely on to wreck his fleet. Challenged by an editor of Sea H istory on this point, the author could not produce a sh red of evidence to support this patently false story. She let us know, however, that the incident could have happened, and because of that, it was a valid good story. W rong on both counts! It could not have happened-fo r ove r 100 years before the wreck ofShovell' s fleet it had been necessary to hold a formal court martial, involving not only the officers of the ship aboard which the crime had been committed , but offi cers from other ships as well, before a determination of guilt could be made or a capital sentence imposed . And- bad history never makes a "good story." It is terrible to ignore the slow, imperfect achievement ofb asic human rights, and a people that grows up in ignorance of what it rook to gain and defend those rights is sooner or later going to lose those rights through that careless and ultimately dangerous ignorance. So the breakthroughs of the English-speaking world, increasingly reshaped and built upon by peoples of backgrounds far removed from the rainy, sea-girt kingdom where they first saw light of day, became the pro perty and heritage of a much wider world. T he importance of these ideas , these developed co nvictions of the English-speaking wo rld, became part of the heritage of Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru had spent time in English jails with his mentor Mohandas Gandhi, but once Indian independen ce was won- peacefully-he refused to rega rd the English as his oppresso rs. So he wrote his life testament Toward Freedom in English. ,t 1. Agatharchides of C n id us, On the Erythrean Sea, rranslated and edited by Stanley M Bu rstein (H akluyt Society, London, 1989), page 15 1. 2. Ri chard Lee Marks, Three Men of the Beagle (Alfred A. Knopf, New Yo rk, 199 1). This fin e work offers fres h pers pectives on relatio ns berween Darwin and FirzRoy and insigh t in to Jem my Burton 's ord eal .
SEA HISTORY 90, AUTUMN 1999