A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

The foundation of the modern navy was a great and vitally important part of their administrative work. It must not be supposed that there was any sharp-drawn line dividing the Middle Ages from the later times. The new monarchy itself cannot be said to have differed formally from the old. Henry VII. claimed to reign by the same right and authority as his predecessors. The difference was in the method and the spirit. From the end of the fifteenth century till the beginning of the seventeenth, Englishmen looked to the sovereign as the representative on earth of that law whose "voice" is "the harmony of the world." To the great mass of Englishmen, to all, in fact, except a few nobles, and the poor and martial northern counties, the king was the divinely appointed ruler who stood between them and anarchy. They expected him to govern by the law, but they also recognised his commission to pronounce and enforce it. In later times the authority of the Crown became an object of hostility, but from the day that Henry VII. put on the circle of gold which had fallen from the helmet of Richard III. on the field of Market Bosworth, till Elizabeth sank to rest, old, weary, and half broken-hearted, there were few Englishmen who would have drawn any distinction between the State and the King. On the Continent of Europe the same influence was at work, turning the mediæval king into the modern despot.

So, too, in regard to the navy, there is no deliberate break with the past, no express beginning of any new thing. The ships are still the king's, commanded by his captains, manned by his mariners, administered by his servants. Even in matters of detail the old usages lingered far into the seventeenth century. The captain continued for long to be more soldier than sailor, the man whose business it was to fight, not to sail the ship. In Boteler's "Dialogues," published in the reign of Charles II., though probably written in the reign of his father, it is proposed, as if there were some novelty in the suggestion, that no man should be appointed captain until he had been at least one voyage to sea. The attempt to form a regular corps of naval officers dates from the Restoration, and must be put to the credit of James II., then Duke of York and Lord High Admiral. The crews were still collected for each voyage, and disbanded at its end. This applies not only to the men, but to the officers, though the king might keep a certain number of captains about him, by putting them on the footing of gentlemen of his household. It was not until the time of the Commonwealth, and then through the exertions of the Council of State, that the navy was raised to a strength which made it possible to dispense with the service of pressed or hired merchant ships when a great fleet had to be fitted out. On the face of it, in fact, and if we look to the mere letter, there was no change at all. The admiral was still a great officer of State, who acted as king's lieutenant in sea affairs. There were king's ships managed by the king's servants, and in time of need the old calls were made on the ports to provide their quota for the defence of the country.

Yet for all that there was a change, and the beginning of something new. The same causes which were leading to the formation of professional standing armies on the Continent, were at work to induce the Tudors to pay attention to their navy. English kings had done so before them. When the Duke of Norfolk told Chapuys, the ambassador of Charles V., in 1535, that it was a good thing for a king of England to be provided with ships to inspire awe in those who wished to attack him, he was saying nothing which was not well known to John or Edward III. The difference lay in the continuity of attention paid to the navy by the Tudors, in the proportion of their revenue which they spent on it, and in the formation of a department expressly devoted to the work of maintaining the king's ships. In former times so much of the king's navy as was his personal property bore a close resemblance to those bands of mercenaries which he raised for a particular war, and disbanded when he had no further need for their services. From the time of the Tudors his ships became a permanent establishment. It is from them that the Royal Navy descends, not from the sea militia of the Cinque Ports. The British army began with the regiments of Charles II., not with the host which was called out on the summons of our ancient kings.

From the very necessity of the case, a permanent fighting force calls for the attention of a no less permanent civil administration. Throughout nearly the whole of the reign of Henry VIII. the work continued to be done under the supervision of the Clerk of the Ships, but by an increasing staff of subordinate clerks, called for by its growing needs and the establishment of a dockyard at Portsmouth. The office, in fact, grew, as has been commonly the case with our administrative machinery, by adaptations to meet needs. At last, in 1546, in the year before his death, the king formed the first regular Navy Board by letters patent dated April 24. It consisted of a Lieutenant of the Admiralty, a Treasurer, a Comptroller, a Surveyor, a Clerk of the Ships, and two officials who had no special title. A "Master of the Ordnance of the Ships" was created at the same time, but this was a separate office. This organisation was subject during its history to suspensions and modifications, as will be seen further on; but four of the officers here named, the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, and Clerk of the Ships, or of Acts, or of the Navy, continued with brief intervals to be the chiefs of the civil administration of the navy till 1832. Upon them fell the duties of buying stores, building and taking care of ships, managing the dockyard, distributing provisions, paying wages, and what we should now call the compassionate allowances given to wounded men. This body existed, with temporary suspensions, but little permanent modification, till 1832, when it was merged into a body from which it must always be carefully distinguished—namely, the Admiralty.

The Admiralty, which has now absorbed the whole administration of the navy, originally only exercised the higher military control. It was, in fact, the representative of the Lord High Admiral, and is still technically described as the commission named to discharge the duties of his office. This office descended to the Tudors from earlier times. The Lord High Admiral was, to repeat a phrase already used, the king's lieutenant for sea affairs. He exercised a large jurisdiction, gave commissions to the military officers of the navy, the lieutenants, that is to say, and captains, issued the orders, and commanded in war. The non-military officers, the masters and their mates, whose duty was the navigation of the ship, the doctors and pursers, fell under the Navy Office. This department was subordinate to the admiral, and bound to execute his orders, but he did not sit in it. In earlier times he discharged the duties of his office in his own house. Even at later periods, when there was an Admiralty Office at Whitehall, the Navy Office had its own quarters in Seething Lane, or, later on, in Somerset House, until the great reform of 1832 welded the departments together.

By the end of the reign of Henry VIII. the navy was, in so far as the main lines are concerned, organised pretty much as it was destined to remain for three centuries. The chief change introduced during this long period was the formation of the regular corps of naval officers, which dates from the Restoration. Until that time there was no organised body of fighting sea officers, as we may call them, in order to avoid the confusion which arises from the use of the word "military" as applied to the naval service. Individual men were habitually employed, and, when not on service, provided for by being put on the footing of gentlemen of the royal household, but they had no general commission as naval officers, and no claim to pension. The Lord High Admiral gave commissions when a fleet was fitted out, issued instructions, and commanded in person. The Navy Office, or Navy Board, did the civil work. On this side of the administration the necessity for taking care of ships and stores early led to the formation of a regular staff of pilots, boatswains, and gunners, who belonged to the navy, and were not merely attached to this or that ship for as long as she was in commission.

The growth of the ship itself had much to do with bringing about the formation of a permanent Royal Navy. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was no longer possible to rely on such resources as could be found in the Cinque Ports, even if they had not been silted up by the action of the currents of the Channel. Little vessels built for the coasting trade had neither the size, the strength, nor the armament which had now become necessary for the work of war. The larger merchant ships of the great ports were, indeed, better fitted for the purpose. In those times of insecurity at sea they generally went armed, even in peace. Accordingly, we find that until the middle of the seventeenth century pressed or hired merchant ships were always to be found in great fleets. But their inferiority to the vessel built for war was early recognised. Queen's officers were found to declare that the merchant ships were of little use, except to make a show, in the fight with the Armada. The special warship early became a necessity to a power which was bound to keep up its strength at sea. It could only be provided by the State, which at that time meant the king. Henry VII. saw that truth clearly, and so did his successors on the throne. If they did not build vessels enough to render them independent of all other sources of supply in war, it was because of the poverty of the Crown. From the time, indeed, when vessels of any size began to be required for purposes of war, the State was compelled to rely on those it built for itself. The great bulk of our trade was conducted in vessels of small size. Even at the end of the first quarter of this century, a merchant ship of 500 tons burden was thought large. The great majority ranged from 150 to about 250 tons for the most distant voyages. But as early as the reign of Henry VII. warships were built of 1000 tons. Such vessels could not be supplied by the trade. Neither were the trading craft, being built as economically as possible, equal in strength to those constructed for war.

The great ships of the early Tudors were an exaggeration of the cogs of the Middle Ages. They were longer, broader, and built much higher in the sides. But they had the same towering castles at bow and stern. The word forecastle preserves the memory of the species of fort which once cumbered the fore part of ships. These fortresses were shut off from the rest of the ship by barriers, called, in later times at least, cobridges, and defended even when the enemy was in possession of the waist. Small guns, called "murdering pieces," were mounted on them, to clear the deck on emergency. As parts of a castle they had their merits, but they were very dangerous top hamper for a ship. The fate of the Mary Rose, which will be mentioned later on, shows how easily vessels of the time were upset. Their instability was exaggerated by the nature of the rigging. In the largest vessel there were four masts—one at the prow, another at the stern, and two between. They were apparently complete spars, not divided, as in later times, into lower mast and topmast. Each carried a great square sail or course of excessive height, to which a topsail could be added. The strain thrown on the hull by these great sails must have been severe. It was aided by the castles, which had a constant tendency to tear away when the ship was rolling. As the structure was weak, and the caulking alone was trusted to keep the ships watertight, it is easy to understand that a very short cruise or a very moderate spell of bad weather was enough to reduce the noblest of them to the condition of a sieve. Indeed, the unfitness of the "capital ships" of the sixteenth century for winter cruising was recognised by everybody. Even a hundred years later, when many improvements had been introduced, naval officers were reluctant to keep large vessels at sea after summer was over. As late as the reign of William III., at the end of the seventeenth century, a council of officers declared that the heavier line-of-battle ships could not be safely kept out after the first days of autumn. In the earlier Tudor times they were of use only in fine-weather months. The smaller vessels, being less built upon, and not subject to the same amount of leverage tending to tear them to pieces, were more seaworthy. As they must also have sailed very badly, there is no apparent reason for the confidence inspired in our ancestors by the presence of one of these "capital ships." They must be supposed to have trusted it to bear down opposition by its mere weight, just as a very fine corps of mail-clad horsemen would sweep lighter opponents before them on the field of battle.

Their armament consisted of a multiplicity of guns, ranging from very small pieces mounted on the castles up to the "cannon royal," a 68-pounder, on the main deck. Guns of different sizes were mounted on the same deck. Experience gradually showed the unwisdom of this variegated armament. In the following generations the cannon royal was given up as too heavy, and the very small pieces as too light, while the batteries were made uniform.