another copy of it in the _Lansdown MSS._ (No. 213), we know it
to be the work of 'William Gorges, gentleman.' He is to be identified
as a son of Sir William Gorges, for he tells us he was afloat with his
father in the Dreadnought as early as 1578, when Sir William was
admiral on the Irish station with a squadron ordered to intercept the
filibustering expedition which Sir Thomas Stucley was about to attempt
under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII. Sir William was a cousin of
Ralegh's and brother to Sir Arthur Gorges, who was Ralegh's captain in
the Azores expedition of 1597, and who in Ralegh's interest wrote the
account of the campaign which Purchas printed. Though William, the
son, freely quotes the experiences of the Armada campaign of 1588, he
is not known to have ever held a naval command, and he calls himself
'unexperienced.' We may take it therefore that his treatise was mainly
inspired by Ralegh, to whom indeed a large part of it is sometimes
attributed. This question, however, is of small importance. The gist
of the matter is a set of fleet orders which he has appended as a
precedent at the end of his treatise, and it is on these orders that
Ralegh's are clearly based. They commence with fourteen articles,
consisting mainly of sailing instructions, similar to those which
occur later in Ralegh's set. The fifteenth deals with fighting and
bloodshed among the crews, and the sixteenth enjoins morning and
evening prayer, with a psalm at setting the watch, and further
provides that any man absenting himself from divine service without
good cause shall suffer the 'bilboes,' with bread and water for twelve
hours. The whole of this drastic provision for improving the seamen's
morals has been struck out by a hurried and less clerkly hand, and in
the margin is substituted another article practically word for word
the same as that which Ralegh adopted as his first article. The same
hand has also erased the whole numbering of the articles up to No. 16,
and has noted that the new article on prayers is to come first.[5]