The seamanship, the navigation, and the gunnery of the Elizabethan age will ever be memorable, not merely because they attained such excellence after centuries of imperfection, but because by a combination of these three arts the whole future of England was mapped out, her supremacy assured, and her colonial expansion begun.
A four-masted warship of her reign was not a handy creature to control. She could fight and she could ride out an Atlantic gale, but she was clumsy; she was—even the best of her class—much addicted to rolling, owing to the fact that she possessed such immense weights above the water-line. She was certainly an improvement on the ships of Henry VII and VIII, but she was too cumbrous to be considered in any degree satisfactory. Before we proceed to discuss the way they were handled, let us briefly survey the principal types of vessels on board which the men of this reign had to serve.
Sixteenth-Century Four-Masted Ship.
By a Contemporary Artist.
Elizabethans Boarding an Enemy’s Ship.
There was, firstly, the “high-charged” man-of-war with her lofty poop and forecastle. A contemporary illustration shows such a vessel with guns protruding from the stern and two tiers of guns running along either side of the ship. There were light guns in the forecastle as well. That portion on the main deck between the break of the poop and forecastle was the waist, where the crew moved about and the ship’s boats were stowed. In those days, when so much of the fighting was done at close quarters, and the enemy endeavoured so to manœuvre his ship as to come alongside and pour his men on the other’s deck, dealing out slaughter to all who should bar his way, it was the aim of the attacked ship to catch the invaders between two fires. The poop and forecastle being so well guarded and, by reason of their height, so difficult to assault, the enemy might possibly board the ship at the waist. But inasmuch as the after bulkhead of the forecastle and the forward bulkhead of the poop were pierced for quick-firing guns, the boarding party was likely to meet with a warm reception. As an additional obstacle to boarding, it was customary before a fight to stretch long red cloths over the waist. These cloths were edged on each side with calico, says an Elizabethan writer, and were allowed to hang several feet over the side all round the ship, being sometimes ornamented with devices or painted in various colours. Wooden barriers, called “close-fights,” were also built across the ship’s deck for repelling boarders, and were loopholed like the bulkheads. Furthermore, nettings were stretched across the ship to prevent any falling spars from dealing death to the crew.
The tumble-home on these ships was excessive, but since they carried so many decks it was essential that the topmost should be as light as possible. But just as on a modern steamship the master can survey everything forward from the eminence of his bridge, so the Elizabethan captain, standing on the poop, was able to command the whole ship, to see ahead and to keep an eye on his men. There was no uniform colour for painting the Elizabethan hulls, Mr. Oppenheim says. Black and white, the Tudor colours green and white, red, and timber colour were all used. Sometimes a dragon or a lion gilded was at the beak-head, with the royal arms at the stern. On either side of the stern was a short gallery, on to which the captain could emerge from his cabin under the poop. The long tiller from the rudder came in under the poop, and was controlled by a bar or whipstaff attached to this same tiller. “The roul,” says James Lightbody in his “Mariner’s Jewel,” published in 1695, “is that through which the whipstaff goeth, which is a piece of wood the steersman holdeth in his hand to steer withal.” The man received his orders, as a rule, from the master of the ship, but when entering port the pilot would instruct him how to steer.
