Now if this, by any chance, is anything like correct she must have been a very much smaller ship than the Great Michael, which is not very likely, since Henry VIII would naturally have wanted "to go one better". Moreover, she is generally credited as having been of at least a thousand tons displacement, and carried a battery little, if any, inferior in weight and numbers to that of the Michael.
She was heavily equipped with ordnance, very little of which is apparent in her pictures. According to her inventories she carried something like 185 guns of all sorts and sizes, but many of these must have been kept on shore as reserve stores. She is generally credited with carrying 14 heavy guns on the lower and 12 on the main deck, and 46 light cannon on her upper works. Some of the large and all the smaller ones were breech-loaders, and as most were provided with at least two "chambers" or breech-pieces, which contained the powder-charge and could be quickly substituted one for the other, we may almost call them "quick-firers". She was gorgeously decorated in the first place, and poop, waist, forecastle, and tops were hung with shields showing alternately the St. George's Cross, the Golden Fleur-de-Lis on a blue ground, and the Tudor Rose on a green and white ground. Her sails were woven with a decorative design in gold damask, and she carried a lion figure-head, but the lion was badly executed and a very tame one. Like all Tudor ships she flew a profusion of flags, standards, and immense streamers bearing the St. George's Cross, the fly or long-pointed end being half green and half white. These were the Tudor livery colours. The plain red-cross flag or "Jack" was well in evidence and generally carried on the fore masthead as well as among the smaller flags placed on poles at equal distances along the bulwarks. The royal standard was also carried, but not in every ship, and sometimes it appears "impaled" with the national red-cross flag—that is to say, the two were placed side by side on the same flag.
The national status of the Royal Navy was becoming recognized. Before this time, though the English "Jack" generally found a place somewhere on board an English ship, the banners and pennons of the nobles and knights on board were most in evidence. Now we see nothing but royal and national emblems. In the war with France in 1455 the ships of the squadron forming the "van" or leading portion of the fleet carried the St. George's Cross at the fore, those of the centre at the main, and the rear squadron at the mizzen.
In describing the Henri we have practically described all the "great shippes" of her class, of which there were a considerable number, though none were quite so large, or probably quite so elaborately decorated. Of course she was what we may call "a show ship", like the Royal James and Sovereign of the Seas of a later date.
But by 1546, if we may accept Anthony Anthony's Roll as correct, "timber colour" with scarlet masts and spars was uniform for all classes of ships.
But it is time we turned our attention to the men who manned them. The changes in this respect were quite as important as those we have noted in the ships themselves. To begin with, the nobles and gentry of the kingdom were beginning to wake up to the fact that war afloat offered them at least equal opportunities of distinction to those they had hitherto looked for in land warfare. Besides, they had now little or no chance of that at home, and there was no longer any land frontier over in France across which they could ride and raid and harry and fight as their fathers and grandfathers had so often done. Naval strategy was still confined to cross raiding, but ships were now better fighting-machines and were not merely used as platforms for hand-to-hand fighting and as transports; so that men of the class which had hitherto looked down on ships and sailors began to turn their eyes towards the sea.
Ships of the Time of Henry VIII
(From a Drawing of 1545)
Looking at the lofty hulls, the immense mainsails, and the nearness of the ports to the water-line, we can easily understand how a want of care wrecked the Mary Rose. The ship in the background on the right is apparently trying to reduce sail, and has had to lower her main-yard. Her mainsail is almost in the water, to the apparent danger of the ship.
This does not mean that they became seamen. No, they still remained and considered themselves soldiers, and did not trouble to learn any seamanship. That was still the special job of the master or skipper. But they recognized that the command of a fighting-ship was worth having. I may instance the Carew family.[18] At least three of them were serving in command of ships in the battle at Spithead in 1545. Sir George Carew lost his life when his ship, the Mary Rose, went down; his brother, Peter Carew, who had been a year or two before in command of a company of infantry in the English army in France, commanded a Venetian ship—probably hired—the Francisco Bardado; while their uncle, Sir Gawen Carew, commanded a third. As for the men, the seamen, thanks to more seaworthy vessels, had probably improved in their seamanship, while the navy was formed into a regularly-organized force consisting of "mariners, soldiers"—or, as we should call them now, marines—"and gunners". Every ship had her proper complement of each. Thus the Henri Grace à Dieu carried 260 seamen, 400 soldiers, and 40 gunners; the Mary Rose 180 seamen, 200 soldiers, and 20 gunners; the Peter Pomgranate 130 seamen, 150 soldiers, and 20 gunners; and so forth, according to size.