Читать книгу A Book for the Hammock онлайн
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ssss1.I find this word “murderer” frequently occurring in Hakluyt.
There are some curious features of sixteenth and seventeenth century maritime warfare preserved in this fine old captain’s Naval Tracts. He tells us that the French used to conceal half their soldiers in the hold and to call them up as they were required, the others who had been fighting going below. The Dunkirkers, like the Spanish whom Anson fought,[17] flung themselves flat on the deck before the enemy, so that the shot, great and small, should fly over them. The Hollanders he charges with Dutch courage. “Instead of cables, planks, and other devices to preserve their men, the Hollanders, wanting natural valour of themselves, used to line their company in the head, by giving them gunpowder to drink, and other kind of liquor to make them sooner drunk; which, besides it is a barbarous and unchristianlike act, when they are in danger of death to make them ready for the devil, it often proves more perilous than prosperous to them by firing their own ships or making a confusedness in the fight, their wits being taken from them.” It will be supposed that the seamen of Blake had a higher notion of Dutch courage than Monson.