Читать книгу Champions of the Fleet. Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empire онлайн

6 страница из 49

Swiftsure was the name given to the second ship of the set. “Swift-suer” was the way the Queen Elizabeth spelled it—“Swift-pursuer,” that is—not an inappropriate name for the sister ship of a Dreadnought. The pair were intended as ships of the line, to use a later day term. The other two ships of the group were smaller vessels of the light cruiser class of the period, intended for service as scouts, as the “eyes and ears of the fleet” at sea. Their names were the Achates and the Handmaid, expressive names both in their way.

Matthew Baker’s men had the Dreadnought and Handmaid to build; Pett’s men the Swiftsure and the Achates. They all started work within three weeks, and Pett’s men won the race by just a month. The Swiftsure and the Achates were both sent afloat on the 11th of October, 1573; the Dreadnought and the Handmaid on the 10th of the following month.

An Arctic explorer of those times, whose name lives on our maps—the man, indeed, who named the North Cape for us, Captain Stephen Borough (or Borogh, as he himself usually wrote it), one of “ye foure Principall Masters in Ordinarye of ye Queene’s Maᵗⁱᵉˢ Navye Royall,” by special appointment also the Master of the Victory, and a son of North Devon in her proudest day—had naval charge and supervision over the building of the Dreadnought and the other ships at Deptford. He lodged meanwhile at Ratcliffe, across the river, and his “traveylinge chardges,” with the waterman’s receipt for rowing him to and fro on his weekly visits of inspection, signed “Richard Williams of Ratcliff, Whyrryman,” is still in existence.