Another Plymouth man, Robert Thorne, again with Henry’s help, went out to look for the North-west passage which Cabot had failed to find.  Thorne’s ship was called the Dominus Vobiscum, a pious aspiration which, however, secured no success.  A London man, a Master Hore, tried next.  Master Hore, it is said, was given to cosmography, was a plausible talker at scientific meetings, and so on.  He persuaded ’divers young lawyers’ (briefless barristers, I suppose) and other gentlemen—­altogether a hundred and twenty of them—­to join him.  They procured two vessels at Gravesend.  They took the sacrament together before sailing.  They apparently relied on Providence to take care of them, for they made little other preparation.  They reached Newfoundland, but their stores ran out, and their ships went on shore.  In the land of fish they did not know how to use line and bait.  They fed on roots and bilberries, and picked fish-bones out of the ospreys’ nests.  At last they began to eat one another—­careless of Master Hore, who told them they would go to unquenchable fire.  A French vessel came in.  They seized her with the food she had on board and sailed home in her, leaving the French crew to their fate.  The poor French happily found means of following them.  They complained of their treatment, and Henry ordered an inquiry; but finding, the report says, the great distress Master Hore’s party had been in, was so moved with pity, that he did not punish them, but out of his own purse made royal recompense to the French.

Something better than gentlemen volunteers was needed if naval enterprise was to come to anything in England.  The long wars between Francis I. and Charles V. brought the problem closer.  On land the fighting was between the regular armies.  At sea privateers were let loose out of French, Flemish, and Spanish ports.  Enterprising individuals took out letters of marque and went cruising to take the chance of what they could catch.  The Channel was the chief hunting-ground, as being the highway between Spain and the Low Countries.  The interval was short between privateers and pirates.  Vessels of all sorts passed into the business.  The Scilly Isles became a pirate stronghold.  The creeks and estuaries in Cork and Kerry furnished hiding-places where the rovers could lie with security and share their plunder with the Irish chiefs.  The disorder grew wilder when the divorce of Catherine of Aragon made Henry into the public enemy of Papal Europe.  English traders and fishing-smacks were plundered and sunk.  Their crews went armed to defend themselves, and from Thames mouth to Land’s End the Channel became the scene of desperate fights.  The type of vessel altered to suit the new conditions.  Life depended on speed of sailing.  The State Papers describe squadrons of French or Spaniards flying about, dashing into Dartmouth, Plymouth, or Falmouth, cutting out English coasters, or fighting one another.