It was obvious that there was no getting into the island by that entry, and therefore the earl went back to the point at which he had first touched St. Juan; and, bringing round one of his ships, battered down the fort at the landing. His vessel was stranded and became a wreck, but an entry was made into the island. A march of a mile through wood and rocky ground brought the invaders to the town, which is described, probably with great exaggeration, as being of the same circuit as Oxford. It had been deserted by all except the women, children, and old men. The men capable of bearing arms had shut themselves up in the fort called the Morra, which it was necessary to reduce by a regular siege. As very frequently happened in the ventures of that time, there was more honour than material profit made at San Juan de Puerto Rico; but in this case the leader aimed chiefly at honour, or at least something altogether beyond the mere ransom. It was Cumberland's intention to retain possession of San Juan de Puerto Rico for the Crown of England, and he actually remained there far longer than was wise, if he had considered only his immediate interests. His intention to antedate the establishment of the English in the West Indies by more than half a century was altogether premature. His force, already weakened by sickness and inaction, was not strong enough for the undertaking. After losing nearly four hundred men by fevers, the earl took to his ships and returned to England.
I have told the history of the Earl of Cumberland's capture of San Juan de Puerto Rico at what may appear undue length if it is judged by the intrinsic importance of the feat; but it stands here as the representative of a score of others which could not be told without swelling this book to irrational proportions. The naval war of Elizabeth's reign was, above all, a war of adventurers. Cumberland was only the richest, the best born, and, it is not unjust to add, the most high-minded, of a large class which included Cavendish, Grenville, Preston, Sommers, Dudley, Shirley, Lancaster, and a score of others whose names meet us here and there as commanding ships in fights and captures, but who came out of and returned to obscurity. The regular naval war did not differ materially from the enterprises of these sea-rovers. The capture of Cadiz was only the taking of San Juan de Puerto Rico on a great scale, and the cruises to the Isles were very much like the earl's cruises to the Canaries. It is this adventurous quality, the touch of romance and knight-errantry, which gives its peculiar charm to the Elizabethan time. There is a youthfulness about the epoch which is lost by the next generation. England was "mewing her mighty youth," springing from a small power to a great, and from a little trading nation to one whose sails were on every sea. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the English flag had only once or twice gone farther than to Archangel in the north and Scanderoon in the Levant. Before her death, ships bearing her flag and manned by her subjects had "prowled with hostile keel" in all the seas of the world; and her merchants were preparing to open a permanent trade with the East Indies, while English colonists had established a footing on the continent of North America. In this great work the Royal Navy was not the only instrument. It is seldom that we find it acting alone, and never when a great display of power was required. Yet the Royal Navy was the steel of the lance, the model of discipline and warlike efficiency. The city of London, or so great a subject as the Earl of Cumberland, might show a few ships not inferior to the queen's, but that was quite the exception. The Royal Navy was already as distinctly marked from the other shipping of the country as it was in later generations.