FRANCIS DRAKE DEBUNKED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 28, 5 January 1940, Page 24

FRANCIS DRAKE DEBUNKED

Spoil-sport Historians And That Famous Game Of Bowls

(By

W.F.

INGRAM

HE fact that the New Zealand Centennial bowling carnival is to be held in Wellington this month may or may not start an argument about Francis Drake. But the wise will not risk any money on the issue. Drake’s game on Plymouth Hoe is bowling’s most famous tradition, but the tradition does not survive the schoolbooks. Kingsley used it in "Westward Ho!", and Seymour Lucas’s picture of the incident hangs in many a home, school, and clubroom. The story is dramatic, but it is also humorous. C. W. Bracken, in his History of Plymouth records it vividly: "Into a group of astonished admirals and captains," he writes, "Captain Thomas Fleming burst panting and blowing and exclaiming to the High Admiral: ‘My lord, my lord! They’re coming. I saw them off the Lizard last night!’

af "And again, in reply to his hearers’ queries, ‘The Armada, your worships-the Spaniards.’" Drake was quite unmoved by the news of the Armada’s coming, although he believed the Spanish Armada to be far away. "There is time enough to finish our game and to fight the Spaniards afterwards," tradition makes him say. Would Have Been Mad But historians doubt the story. E. F. Benson, in his Life of Drake, declares that the Admiral must have been stark, staring mad and his behaviour that of ° a lunatic if he delayed one instant. He had to warp his ships out of the Sound in the teeth of.a wind that was bringing the Armada ever closer to England. A book published in 1736, indeed, declares that Drake went at once to prepare for battle. "Drake would need see the game up," says the book, " but was soon prevailed on to go and play out the rubber with the Spaniards." Was He Playing That Day? Some spoil-sport historians even declare that Drake was not playing bowls at all that day. There is nothing apparently in the records of the City of Plymouth to confirm the story of his game, although every good citizen of Plymouth believes it. In a pamphlet published in 1624, only 36 years after the Armada, a Spanish Duke is made to say that the Armada moved so secretly that it reached English shores "while the English commanders were at bowls upon the Hoe at Plymouth." Tradition did the rest, and history has put the high-light in the right place. Origin of Bowls James A. Manson, writing in 1912, argued that London was the cradle of the game of bowls, and that it was played with stones. The Latin " jactus lapidum" means "casting of stones," from which, it is said, comes the word "jack," in present use on the green. Some bowlers take exception to this. They translate "jactus lapidum" as "putting the stone," or shot-putting, another game altogether. Manson describes a manuscript of the thirteenth century in order to show the "venerable age" of the game. It contained a drawing of two players aiming at a small cone, instead of the modern jack. "From their gestures, the players seem to be taking a lively interest," he says, and this seems to be an indication that the historian is on the right track. For there is no game in the world that causes such extraordinary antics as bowls! Whatever the historical facts are, the bowling green is the haunt of the candid camera fiend; the antics and postures of the staid business-men make pictures worth the getting, for, as Shakespeare said, it is better to be " set quick i’ the earth, And bowled to death with turnips" than to retire gracefully from the sport.