A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

All the elements of the crews of later times are found in the ships of the Middle Ages. The mariners and "grometes" are the able seamen and ordinary seamen. There were boys then also. The archers were the predecessors of the marines, and of those drafts from the line regiments which were frequently used to make up the complement of men-of-war. The modern officers, too, have their representatives in the vessels of the Plantagenet kings. The Rector, afterwards called in official Latin Magister, is the master, the constable is the ancestor of the gunner, there was a carpenter, a "clerk," who was renamed the purser later on, and the boatswain. The nature of the work to be done would dictate the formation of these different offices. So soon as regular ships' companies began to be formed, it would be found indispensable to have someone to conduct the navigation—the master; someone to supervise the arms—the constable; someone to serve out the stores—the clerk. As ships' companies grew larger and ships more complicated, it would be necessary to increase the number of officers, and little by little the staff of a modern warship was formed. The title of captain appears at first to have been given to an officer who held what we should call flag rank. In the fifteenth century it began to be applied to the commander of a single ship. He was primarily a military officer, who might or might not be a seaman, but who in either case had a master under his command whose function it was to navigate the ship.

The growth of what came afterwards to be called flag rank may easily be traced. At first the king appointed some knight or noble to command his sea forces, and the soldiers in his ships, for some definite service. Then we hear of officers commanding in a given district for a specified time. These were first known as "captains and governors," justices or constables. In the early years of the fourteenth century the title of "Admiral" began to come into use. Captain and Admiral is the rank of the officer who commands the North and the Western Fleets. The first included the coast and sea from Dover to Berwick; the second, from Dover to the duchy of Cornwall inclusive. There was occasionally a third officer, who commanded in the Isle of Man and the Irish Sea. Of him we hear little. His chief duty was to assist in the work of subduing the Scots, and he was once at least chosen from among those chiefs of the Isles and the Western Highlands who were the worst enemies of the King of the Scots in the Lowlands. These captains and admirals were at first simple knights. Some of them were seamen of the Cinque Ports. The Alards, a family of Winchelsea, produced more than one holder of the post. The first admiral for all the seas was Sir John Beauchamp, K.G.; he was appointed by Edward III. in 1360, for a year. But it was not till later that it became the rule to have one admiral superior to all the others. In the fourteenth century a considerable change began to appear in the character, though not in formal rank or power, of these officers. In 1345 it was found necessary to appoint the Earl of Arundel to command the Western Fleet, "for no one can chastise or rule them unless he be a great man," to quote the candid confession of the King's Council. The royal authority, in fact, was growing weaker. It fell to its lowest depths in the later times of the Lancastrian line. The inevitable consequence was, that the barons seized upon the command of the ships, and used them for their own purposes. Warwick the king-maker, who among his many other offices held that of Captain of Calais and Admiral, was practically master of the whole naval forces of the country. The office of Lord High Admiral, which dates from the Lancastrian dynasty, was, in fact, a result of the aggression of the baronage. The king's authority being no longer sure of obedience, it was necessary to call in the power of the nobles, with the inevitable result. Those who knew that they were indispensable made their own terms. By the end of the Middle Ages the office of Lord High Admiral had become permanent. The old captains and admirals of the Northern and Western Fleets had disappeared, or were represented by subordinate officials, who received their commission from the Lord High Admiral. When the great Royalist reaction of the later fifteenth century had restored the authority of the Crown, the office survived. On the military side of his office the Lord High Admiral was the king's lieutenant for the fleet, exercising immense delegated powers in complete subjection to the Crown. But during the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses, such a man as Warwick, who garrisoned Calais with his own followers, and had the command of the ships, of which many were his own property, was practically master of the Channel, and rendered as much obedience to the king—or as little—as he pleased.

While the King of England possessed dominions on the Continent, he drew part of his naval forces from them. There is occasional mention of the king's ships and galleys of Aquitaine. The great reputation of the Italian seamen of the Middle Ages led to their employment now and then, and one, Nicholas Ususmaris of Genoa, was for a time in the service of Edward III., though only to command the ships belonging to Aquitaine. The Mediterranean seamen were employed very largely by the King of France, who was driven to use them by the want of skilful men among his own subjects. In the Middle Ages the English king appears only to have had recourse to them when he wished to make use of that typical Mediterranean craft, the galley. Under Henry VIII. Italians were brought in largely to serve both as seamen and shipbuilders, but by that time a larger class of vessel and a more extensive art of seamanship had begun to prevail. The galley, as has been already said, has never been found to answer in the Channel, and its brief appearances there have been of little note. For the classes of vessels he mainly used, that is, ships which might take to the oar as a subsidiary resource, but relied chiefly on the sail, the king could find men in abundance among his own subjects.

The most brief sketch of our navy in the Middle Ages would be incomplete without some mention of the famous claim to the sovereignty of the seas. That the King of England did make this haughty profession of superiority is within the knowledge of everybody, and it was advanced, in form at least, till late in the reign of George III. Attempts have been made to carry it back to the reign of King John, and have been supported by the inveterate mediæval practice of forging documents to bolster up supposed rights. But the so-called ordinance of King John, issued at Hastings in 1200, has been long given up. It was unquestionably a mere forgery, concocted at a later time to give the authority of antiquity to a more recent pretension. Yet about a hundred years later we find the sovereignty of Edward II. over the seas fully recognised by the Flemish towns. Edward III. asserted his right to be sovereign of the four seas of Britain without qualification. It must be remembered that this claim, which later times found intolerably arrogant, had in the Middle Ages the justification that it was supported by effective power. Not only was the King of England by far the most powerful sovereign on the seas in the west, but the possession of Calais gave him the command of the Straits of Dover on both sides. At a time when trade was conducted by coasting voyages, this enabled him to throttle the maritime commerce of the south with the north at will. The Venetian and Basque ships which came up to Antwerp in the early summer and went south again before autumn, were not only liable to attack by English vessels coming out of Dover or Calais, but they had constant need to use the roadsteads of these ports. It was consistent with all the ideas and practice of the Middle Ages that this power to injure should have been held to imply a right to assert superiority, and compel the recognition of it. Sir Harris Nicolas states that the first admission of this right on the part of foreigners is found in 1320, when certain Flemish envoys appealed to Edward II. to put a stop to piracies committed on their vessels by English evil-doers, praying him "of his lordship and royal power to cause right to be done, and punishment awarded, as he is Lord of the Sea, and the robbery was committed on the sea within his power, as is above said." It may be pointed out that the offences complained of were committed upon the English coast, and that an astute diplomatist of a later date might have argued that this admission did not amount to a recognition of English sovereignty over the whole North Sea. No serious resistance was, however, made to this claim till the reign of Louis XIV., which we may account for by the fact that nobody was strong enough to resist. The Venetian and Basque traders submitted to the claim much as an African caravan might recognise the right of a chief to extort backsheesh. The kings of France were too weak and too much occupied elsewhere to fight on this point of honour. The Flemings were generally our allies, and the northern powers were not concerned. Our pretension was the more easily borne because the King of England did not insist upon levying dues on all who passed through the four seas, but only on a salute as a formal recognition of superiority. This outward sign of deference, the lowering of sails, and in later times the firing of guns, was insisted upon punctiliously till far into the seventeenth century, and there are isolated cases in which it was extorted even in the eighteenth. The space of sea over which the sovereignty of England was held to extend was counted to stretch from Finisterre to the coast of Norway.

When the words "sovereignty of the sea" are used as meaning the king's effective superiority to any force which could be brought against him, there can be no question as to its reality. Throughout the Middle Ages, a king of England who was master of his own dominions was rarely hampered by the naval force of any enemy. When he marched to subdue his kingdom of Scotland, his fleets kept pace with his army as it advanced through the Lothians. On the rare occasions on which he visited his lordship of Ireland, there was nobody to say him nay. He passed and repassed at will to and from his kingdom of France. Pirates, Scotch, Flemish, and Scandinavian, might infest the coast. Now and then an expedition met with disaster. French and Spanish adventurers sometimes harried the coast, and burned small towns. But these failures of our power were comparatively rare. They occurred only when the king was weak, and the country exhausted or disturbed. The rule was, that when the monarchy exerted its strength it could sweep the seas. If the king was careless, Parliament was at hand to exhort him to action. Englishmen were keenly alive to the importance of "guarding the narrow seas round about." Nor were our ancestors ever in doubt as to how best to employ their navy. Even in the bad times of Edward II., when wisdom did not preside in the Council, a threat of invasion from France was met by the preparation of a fleet which was to attack, so that the enemy might first feel the evil. Centuries of experience have taught no better way of using the sea power.

A detailed account of the naval enterprises of the Middle Ages would go altogether beyond the scale of this work. Nor is the story one which can be told without monotony. In spite of the many improvements in the construction of ships and the advance of seamanship, the means of conducting a regular naval campaign were wanting. Vessels were still unable to keep the sea during long periods of cruising and blockade. They were not strong enough to stand the strain, nor could they carry the water and provisions required for the large fighting crews crowded into vessels ranging from fifty to three hundred tons. It followed from this double disability that warfare on sea was conducted by expeditions of brief duration. A fleet was collected, and sailed to attack the enemy's ships or harry his coast. When successful, it gathered all the plunder it could find, and returned home to be laid up for repair, while its crews were disbanded. Thus it not infrequently happened that, immediately after a striking victory, a raiding expedition of the enemy was able to pounce on some part of our coast, and retaliate by murder and ravage for what he had just suffered at home. We had a prevailing superiority, due to the greater number and efficiency of English seamen, and the greater average faculty of the English kings; but we must not look for examples of coherent, orderly war conducted through months, or even years, of effort by permanent forces.

A few examples must suffice to illustrate the general character of these centuries of conflict. No better instance of the nature of mediæval sea warfare can be found than the story of the desperate feud between the English and Norman fishermen, in the reign of Edward I. In 1293 a dispute arose in some port of Normandy or Gascony—for the authorities differ—between the French and English sailors. The point at issue, it is said, was which was entitled to drink first. It came rapidly from words to blows, and a man was killed. The authorities again differ as to whether he was French or English. All agree that the English sailors were chased back to their ships by a mob. Their ship put to sea, pursued by French vessels, and escaped. But the passions of the Norman seamen being now thoroughly aroused, they were minded to pursue the feud. Meeting six English merchant ships, they fell upon them and captured two. They hanged the crews at the yardarm, together with some dogs by way of greater insult. Then they paraded the Channel, plundering all they met, making "no distinction between an Englishman and a dog." In the meantime, the four ships which had escaped took refuge in the Cinque Ports. Here they promptly found allies, and a foray was rapidly arranged to revenge the outrage. A squadron of English ships, mainly drawn from the Cinque Ports, started in pursuit of the French. Finding that the enemy had returned to port, the English adventurers entered the Seine, captured six vessels after a sharp burst of fighting, and carried them off, having previously despatched their crews. Hereupon followed raid and counter raid, with their inevitable accompaniment of "great slaughter on both sides, shipwreck and rapine—both thirsting for blood." At last by common consent it was agreed to set a day and fight it out. The feud had apparently extended to all the seamen who used the Channel. Not only did other Frenchmen join the Normans, but Flemings and Genoese also. The Dutch and the Irish, the men, that is, of the partly English partly Norse towns of the coast, allied themselves with us. On the appointed day, the 14th April or May,—for once more the authorities do not agree,—the fleets met in mid-Channel, and after a savage battle the French and their allies were overcome with great carnage. At this point, but not till now, the Kings of England and of the French took up the quarrel of their subjects, and the feud between the fishermen and seamen grew into a national war. As, however, it possessed no naval features of interest, we need not pursue further the consequences of this explosion of the violence and pugnacity of the mediæval seamen.

It must always be remembered that the conditions which made this private war possible endured throughout the Middle Ages. In the absence of strong organised fleets to patrol the sea, and when no police had yet been formed in any State capable of depriving the sea robber of a safe market for his booty, every sailor not only had to fear the pirate, but he generally was prepared, upon a favourable opportunity presenting itself, to become one. The men of the Cinque Ports, of Yarmouth, or of Poole, to say nothing of the fact that they were prompt to pillage one another for want of better, were ever ready to applaud their townsman who brought in a French or Basque prize. The Norman or Basque, again, would have been surprised indeed if he had been asked to blame the fellow-countryman who came home with English booty. In fact, the sea everywhere was much in the condition of the Scotch Border. There might be truce between the kings, but the Borderers never ceased in their raids on one another, or on the rival clans of their own side. Hence it was that merchant ships sailed in large fleets for mutual protection, and that the complaints of rulers that their subjects had been pillaged by the sailors of another prince were incessant. Nor were the kings by any means backward in encouraging their vassals by their example. Of the two sea fights with which the chivalrous memory of Edward III. is associated, Sluys, and the battle off Winchelsea, known as "Les Espagnols sur Mer," the second was an incident in this piratical warfare. King Edward did not indeed make an unprovoked attack on the Spaniards for mere purposes of plunder, but he retaliated for one piece of piracy by another. His act was not one of especial violence for his time, yet it would not have been possible except in an age when the relations of seafaring nations were habitually lawless, and when an act of robbery by one was left unpunished, except when it provoked retaliation in kind by the other.

The battle of Sluys was a great regular engagement fought in pursuit of a national war. Edward III. had openly assumed the title of King of France in January 1340, and was preparing to assert his right by conquest. Philippe de Valois made ready to defend his throne, and took the measure dictated by sound sense. He collected a great fleet, composed in part of ships belonging to his subjects, in part of vessels hired from the Genoese. But the wisdom of the King of the French stopped at this preliminary stage. Although it appears that his fleet was collected as early as March, when King Edward had only forty ships in the Orwell, the great French armament lay idle in the little Flemish river Eede, at the anchorage of Sluys. The calculation perhaps was that its mere presence would suffice to delay the English king from attempting to cross. King Edward was not to be frightened. In spite of the opposition of his Chancellor and the backwardness of some of his captains, he decided to attack. Vigorous use was made of the time allowed him by the sloth of the enemy. Ships were called in from the north, and about the middle of June the king stood over to Blankenberg on the coast of Flanders. His fleet was somewhat stronger than the French. He puts the force opposed to him at a hundred and ninety vessels, while his own, including small craft, was over two hundred. But the French acted as if it had been their intention to deprive themselves of the advantage of their numbers. They remained in the river, with their ships lashed side by side to one another in three divisions. At a time when all battles were finally decided by hand-to-hand fighting, this was a not uncommon device with fleets which decided, or were compelled, to accept the attack. Nor was it altogether unreasonable, for it seemed to possess this advantage, that it forced the assailant to come on bow to bow, where his beaks would act with least effect, and where his men must board along a narrow passage; while the defender had the advantage of being able to make a barrier across the fore part of his vessel with his yard and his oars. The fatal defect of the formation was that an enemy who could fall on one end of the line could roll it up. As the French were drawn up along the bank of an estuary, and the English fleet was coming in from the sea, there was nothing to force King Edward to make a front attack. This fatal weakness of the position is said to have been noted by Barbavera, the veteran admiral of the Genoese. He is credited with an effort to induce King Philip's officers, Kiriet and Bahuchet, to stand out to sea so soon as the English appeared on the coast, but they showed the timidity which has commonly been noted in the sea fighting of the French, and preferred to wait passively for the attack. As usual, the victory fell to the side which could and would fall on.

King Edward had landed knights, who, riding over the sandhills, had taken a leisurely view of the French fleet at anchor. The weakness of their position must have been patent even to a less skilful captain than the victor of Creçy, and he decided to attack without delay. The battle was fought on the 24th of June. In the early morning the tide was at ebb, and an advance up the river was impossible. The English ships stood out to sea on the starboard tack till they were well opposite the entrance to the river. Then, as the tide turned, they swept in with it, and fell on the nearest division of the French. The destruction which followed bears an interesting resemblance to the battle of the Nile. On that occasion an English fleet coming in from the sea attacked the French lying passively at anchor, and overwhelmed them in detail. The difference was, that the Nile was decided by broadsides, and the great fight at Sluys by sword-stroke and the edge of the axe. Ship after ship was carried by boarding and its crew slaughtered, for all sea fights were, as Froissart noted, "felon," merciless and without quarter. The French had put the Great Christopher, a ship of King Edward's own, of which they had formerly made prize, at the end of their line. She fell first, and her sister ships shared her fate. In the rear of the French, that is, at the end farthest from the sea, some ships did indeed escape. They were commanded by Barbavera. It is probable that the English had not reached them when the tide turned, and the expert Genoese mercenary took the opportunity to slip to sea, leaving the van and centre to be crushed. In this also there is a curious similarity to the battle of the Nile, when Villeneuve fled with the rear ships. Sluys was an incredibly murderous battle. Upwards of thirty thousand men are said to have perished in the French fleet. It entirely crushed the naval forces of the Valois king, and from that time forward for years Edward crossed the Channel with as little molestation from an enemy as he would have met on the Thames at Oxford. The English loss was comparatively slight, but it is said to have included four of the ladies whom the king was taking with him to join the queen at Ghent.