Fig. 43. A Caravel of the End of the Fifteenth Century.
As to other details of equipment, we have mention of these ships possessing running glasses, i.e. sand glasses for the use of the log which time has not even now wholly abolished in spite of the patent log on sailing ships. Outriggers, or as they were called, “outliggers,” “bitakles,” (i.e., binnacles), “merlyng irens,” (i.e., marlin spikes) were also in use. By 1514 at any rate, the usual length of a sounding line appears to be forty fathoms. There were winches apparently on the Sovereign, for we find mention of the “wheles for to wynde up the Mayne Sayle.” In order that the large square sails should set as flat as possible, bowlines played an important part during this century and after. In the case of very large sails, the weight on the tack was relieved to some extent by adding luff hooks and chains. As will be remarked in the illustration of the Cordelière, in Fig. 46, pavesses, or wooden shields bearing the devices or coats of arms, were placed along the ship’s waist, and sometimes too, on the forecastle and poop. The reader will recognise them as being survivals from the times when the Viking sea-chiefs hung their shields along the bulwarks. At a later stage we shall see these shields giving way to the waist cloth as a protection for this part of the ship.
It was under Henry VII. that the bounty system for encouraging shipbuilders was introduced. It was during his reign, too, that Portsmouth Dockyard was founded, and that at this port the first dry dock was built in England, and the Sovereign was the first ship known to have gone into it. We find among the Naval Accounts of Henry VII., a record that on the tenth of October in the first year of his reign, the Grace à Dieu was docked at Hamble, or, as it was then known, Hamill. But Mr. Oppenheim points out that this docking here meant merely getting the ship high and dry on to the mud and then surrounding her with a fence of brushwood. The popularity which, during the fifteenth century, Hamble had shared with Southampton, was decreasing as soon as ships of the size of the Regent and Sovereign were built. Perhaps it was owing to the lack of water in this river that the Portsmouth dry dock was made.
Fig. 44. A Fifteenth-century Caravel.
All the time the unhappy Wars of the Roses had been wasting England’s energy and finances, the people in the south-west corner of Europe were prospering exceedingly. Whilst England was at a standstill as regards development, Spain and Portugal were going rapidly ahead in maritime matters. They had acquired an immense amount of nautical knowledge from the Venetians and Genoese, and until the time came for England to wake up and set her house in order, Portugal was taking the lead in voyages of exploration. When Columbus set forth in 1492 on the voyage that led to the discovery of the West Indies, his fleet comprised his flagship, the Santa Maria, and two other caravels named respectively the Nina and the Pinta. We find that the Santa Maria proved to be “a dull sailer and unfit for discovery.”[64] This statement is entirely borne out by Captain D. V. Concas.[65] For from historical data, a replica of the Santa Maria was built at Carraca by Spanish workmen in 1893, for the Chicago Exhibition. She was sailed across the Atlantic on her own bottom the same year with a Spanish crew. The course taken was exactly that followed by Columbus on his first voyage. The time occupied was thirty-six days, and the maximum speed obtained was about 6½ knots. Captain Concas, who was in charge of her, reported that she pitched horribly. The illustration in Fig. 43 represents a caravel of this period, and will give the reader a general idea of the ships of this time. This is from a photograph of a model made by Mr. Frank H. Mason, R.B.A., and exhibited in the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908. It has since been presented by Lloyd’s to the South Kensington Museum. The colouring of the underbody is quite correct, for we find mention of the “white bellies” of the Spanish ships of the sixteenth century being seen coming over the billows. The yard on the bowsprit for the spritsail should not be shown as a fixture for another hundred years later. The yards of the lower courses will be observed, and two topsails with fighting-tops and the lateen yard will be noticed aft. The rest of the rigging, including the stays and braces, are so clear as to need little comment further, except that the forestay should be provided with crane-lines as in Fig. 45. The cresset or lantern is shown in its correct place over the stern. A cresset was, strictly speaking, a hollow vessel for holding a light, and carried upon a pole. The light was produced from a wreathed rope smeared with pitch or rosin. The development now reached by the forecastle, and the tendency to exaggerate the height of the poop which became in Spanish galleons even higher still, are worthy of the reader’s attention. Fig. 44 is from a photograph of the caravel model in the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall. This is by no means an accurate model and is only put forward as an interesting representation of the manner of mounting the guns in these days, and showing how tubby in proportion to their length such ships sometimes were. It shows fairly accurately the proportion also to which the sides of the hull just above the water-line projected as compared with the narrow beam on deck. Whereas we saw in the illustration of the bucco in Fig. 35 a fighting-top of slender basket-work, we have now a much more solid structure. No topsails are shown here, but Columbus’s ship carried a main-topsail. Mr. Mason’s model shows a fore-topsail which was certainly carried on ships of this time, though not on the Santa Maria. The Whitehall model should not carry the heavy figurehead, and a bowsprit should of course be shown. The topmasts are also too long. Falconer’s “Marine Dictionary” derives the caravel from the Spanish word caravela as “a light, round, old-fashioned ship with a square poop, formerly used in Spain and Portugal.”[66] Levi derives the word as from either carabos, meaning a kind of lobster, or from cara-bella, meaning a beautiful shape, in reference, of course, to the lines of her hull.[67]
Fig. 45. Columbus’s Flagship, the “Santa Maria.”