Now, what was the net result of all this? We may sum the matter up in the following statement. It gave the death-blow to the medieval methods of fighting and inaugurated the scientific idea of strategy. It demonstrated the fact that even in those circumstances when the big sailing ship was at her worst, viz. fighting in sheltered waters and in a flat calm, when the galley was certainly at her very best, yet the former could annihilate the latter. Contrariwise, the capture of the San Felipe showed that even the biggest ship afloat could be made a prisoner if only the captor went about the matter in the right way. And, finally, it inaugurated real naval discipline, even for the highest placed officer, and instituted the Court Martial.
And yet during the time of Elizabeth, though her admirals realised the value of strategy, yet they failed to understand fleet tactics. There was no regular order of battle. Howard’s fleet against the Armada in 1588 had been in action twice before it was organised into proper squadrons. During that nine days’ fighting the old idea of boarding, that had continued from the Greek and Roman days, through Viking and medieval times till the sixteenth century, was clearly giving way to the practice of broadside gunnery. But what is important to note is the fact that though the Elizabethan admirals were realising the superiority of the gun to the boarding pike, yet they had not become sufficiently logical to devise a battle order for enabling their guns to be used to the best advantage. Nevertheless, there was a partial appreciation of this important principle. The idea of fighting in line-ahead was certainly in their minds, and there was a tendency for the fleet to break up into groups, each group delivering its broadsides in succession on an exposed part of the enemy’s formation. A contemporary chart depicting the Armada and the English fleet at the different stages of fighting in the English Channel unquestionably shows the Queen’s ships standing out in line-ahead formation from Plymouth Sound, getting the weather gage of the enemy, and then firing into them from the windward side. Spanish evidence admits that the English were “in very fine order.” And it is quite curious to observe that though Spain and Portugal had led the way towards scientific seamanship and navigation, and England had followed, yet the Spaniards still looked upon gunnery as a dishonourable practice, still retained the medieval idea that gentlemen would fight only with swords; and therefore these South Europeans, unable to fight at a distance, used their best endeavours to close with our ships and carry on the contest after the manner of the tactics which Greek and Roman and Viking and Crusader had adopted.
Early Seventeenth-Century Ship of War.
By a Contemporary Artist.
It is true, also, that the Portuguese showed no little courage and enterprise in their shipbuilding. Some of their fifteenth-century caracks were four-deckers, of fifteen hundred and two thousand tons, with forty guns and a thousand sailors, soldiers, and passengers. And, even if they were not by disposition and natural endowment great sailors, yet they were splendid navigators. But they were never great shipbuilders in the scientific sense, since they built by rule of thumb. The Portuguese had, indeed, done much for cartography, and yet until the Dutch Gerard Mercator introduced his “Mappemonde” in 1569, containing a new method of projecting a sphere upon a plane, the problem of how to sail in a straight line over a curved figure still lacked solution. The Dutch Wagenaer, of whom we spoke just now, historically certainly owed a great deal to the achievements of the Portuguese and Spanish, but already by the year 1577 he had written on navigation. His charts of Dutch harbours and of the Narrow Seas were, for their limited purpose, of more value than any charts which had come from the South of Europe.
It has been well said by a careful writer that British seamanship has been historically the cause of British supremacy, and that most British sea fights have been decided by bringing single ships to close action, laying ship against ship. If this statement is true, it is especially applicable to the Elizabethan period, when seamanship was our strong point and tactics our weakest. Never before had English sailors reached such a high degree of proficiency therein; never in so short a time had it done so much to mould national history, and to lay the foundations of an Empire.
CHAPTER XI
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
