Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

An Early Seventeenth-Century Dutch Shipbuilding Yard.

After a Contemporary Artist. Painting the hull of an ocean-going merchantman

There is among the seventeenth-century MSS. in the British Museum still to be found a great deal of interesting data which well illustrates the experiences of ships and men in these times. Notwithstanding the incompetency of some of the captains who owed their position less to their ability as seamen than to influence, yet there were others who had been at sea most of their lives and had had command of merchant ships for years. Such men as these were of the highest value to their country during the Anglo-Dutch wars. You will remember that battle off Portland in 1653, during the first Dutch war. Richard Gibson, who was purser on board the Assurance at the time, has left behind his reminiscences of this fight. In the beginning of February the English fleet was sailing from Dover down Channel with a fair easterly breeze. “Gen^rl Blake and Deane in the Tryumph, S^r John Lawson Vice Adm^ll of the Redd in the Fairfax, Cap^tn Houlding Rear Adm^ll of y^e Redd in the Ruby, Gen^rll Monck Adm^ll of the White in y^e Vanguard, S^r W^m Penn Adm^ll of the Blew in the Speaker (now named the Mary), and the Whole Fleet about 52 Saile spread their Colours of Redd White and Blew, and their Flaggs Ensignes and Pendants (as now) according to their Division of Squadrons, and Sayled to meet the Dutch Fleet.... Upon our first Sight of the Dutch all the English had their Starbord tacks aboard; Gen^rll Blake Espying the Dutch Fleet to bare down before the Winde upon him got his Shipp ready, haled his Main Sayle up the Brailes, and braced his foretopsaile to the Mast.... The Dutch Fleet in a Boddy bore downe upon the Generalls, and pressed upon the Tryumph with as many Shipps as could well lay about her. Upon which S^r W^m Penn Tacked and his Division with their larboard Tacks (as soon as they could) stood thorow the Dutch fleet one way: as S^r Joⁿ Lawson (with his division) did the other.... Upon which such of the English Friggotts as Sailed well Stered out of Gunn Shot of the Dutch Fleet to Windward on the larbord side, untill they had got a head of severall Dutch Shipps of Warr: then set their Starbord Tacks and stand right with them, and boarded the first Dutch Shipp they could.”

It seems strange to us in these modern days, when excellent and reliable charts can be had for a few shillings, to read in the official dispatch signed by Monck and Blake to Cromwell that they supposed they would have destroyed the Dutch fleet off the Lowland coast, “but that it grew dark, and being off of Ostend among the sandes, we durst not be to bold, especially with the greate ships; soe that it was thought fitt we should anchor all night, which we accordingly did about 10 of the clock.” The way these ships manœuvred in battle so as to get to windward of their enemy was as pretty a sight as a fleet of racing yachts to-day manœuvring for the same ambition at the starting-line. At the battle of Lowestoft in June, 1665, at sunrise, the Dutch fleet “bore up to V(ice) A(dmiral) Minnes, and gave him a broadside, who received them accordingly, and so,” says a Harleian MS. of that date, “their whole Fleet passed by ours, firing at every Ship as they went, and receiving returnes from them, not one of either side being out of play at their first encounter: immediately upon which his R(oyal) H(ighness) made his Signe of the Tacking, that we might still keep the wind of them, which was as happily executed, notwithstanding that the Ennemy also strove for it.”

Yet again we have proof of the importance which the English Navy attached to falling into line of battle. The occasion was the four days’ battle off the North Foreland in June, 1666. When de Ruyter’s fleet had been sighted to leeward, our “General calld immediately a Council of Flag officers: which being done, ye signe was put out to fall into ye ligne of batle ... about 1 of ye clock ye fight began, Sir G. Askue with ye white squadron leading ye van.” In the official report of the battle of Solebay (May, 1672), Captain Haddock, in command of Lord Sandwich’s flagship the Royal James, shows that orders during battle were sent by means of the ship’s boats. “I had sent our Barge by my Lord’s command ahead to Sir Joseph Jordaine to tack, and with his division to weather the Dutch that were upon us, and beat down to Leeward of us, and come to our Assistance. Our Pinnace I sent likewise astern (both Coxswains living) to command our ships to come to our Assistance, which never returned.” And there are other instances of falling into line, as, for instance, at the battle on the 11th of August, 1673. “His H(ighnes)s Pr. Rupert seeing us come with that faire wind,” says the Stowe MS., “gave us the Signall to beare into his wake.” And again in the evidence of the Dutch Rear-Admiral Schey at the court-martial on Torrington after the battle of Beachy Head: “On the 10^th, being Munday morning, y^e Admirall Torrington made a signe for y^e ranging ourselves in a line, and our fleete being got into a line, y^e signe for engaging by a bloody flag from y^e Admirall’s foretopmast head being putt up.”

We spoke just now of the absence of good charts. It was Charles II who, being himself greatly interested in navigation and finding that there were no sea charts of the British Isles except such as were Dutch or copies of the Dutch—and very erroneous at that—gave a man named Greenville Collins command of a yacht for the purpose of making a sea survey, “in which service,” says Collins, “I spent seven years’ time.” James II, himself a great admiral, encouraged this work till its completion, and so good and accurate were the charts that they were in active use at any rate till the end of the eighteenth century. As to the lighting of the coast, this was still in a very primitive condition. The first navigation light in this country was that of the Roman Pharos at Dover, a day-mark which mariners still see to-day as they come bound up Channel. In monastic times probably St. Aldhelm’s (better known as St. Albans) Head showed a light to warn ships from the land, and it is also thought that there was a light at Flamborough[51] and in Flintshire. In 1685, Lowestoft, Dungeness, the North and South Forelands, Orfordness, Flamborough, Portland, Harwich, and the Isle of Man were all lighted by beacon fires of wood and coal. These coal fires continued in some of the lighthouses round our coast even till well into the reign of William IV. But the Argand lamp, which was invented during the reign of James II, gradually and surely took the place of the older-fashioned beacon. And if we may, whilst we are on the subject, anticipate a few years, we may add that though in William IV’s time lights were more numerous and the system of buoys was well established, yet lightships were practically non-existent. The first lightship dates from 1732, when Robert Hamblyn and David Avery established such a ship at the Nore.

We may pass now to consider the conditions which regulated the work of Stuart seamen on board one of the ships such as fought against the Dutch. We have to think of a type of warship that was nothing else than a slightly developed specimen of the Elizabethan period. The difference between the Tudor and Stuart ships at their fullest development is merely that the latter had become much bigger and carried additional sails and guns and crew. As a broad statement, this sums the matter up in the fewest words. Had you passed one of the biggest of the Stuart ships at sea you would have seen a three- and sometimes a four-masted craft with topsails and t’gallants above her courses. On such a ship as the Sovereign of the Seas, if we are to judge by a perfectly authentic engraving, royals were also set sometimes. On the mizzen you would have observed the lateen sail still in existence. What especially would have struck you would have been not merely the elongated beak, but the very long bowsprit. The sailors had to creep out along this spar, keeping themselves, by hanging on to a stay or spreader, from slipping into the ocean every time the vessel rose or fell to the motion of the waves. It was a pretty wet job to lay out along there in a breeze of wind when the beak-head was dipping well down into the sea every time she pitched and hurling a veritable cascade over them. There was one squaresail bent to a yard underneath the bowsprit, and this water-sail had a couple of round holes—one at either side low down near the foot—the object being to permit the water, which this low sail scooped up, to escape. The sheets of this sail led aft and came on board abaft the fore shrouds. In fine weather a bonnet was sometimes laced to this spritsail. But in these Stuart ships there was also a square spritsail hoisted on a sprit-topmast. To hoist this sail the men had, of course, to go right out to the extreme forward end of the bowsprit. Above this topmast flew the Union Jack.

A Seventeenth-Century First-Rate Ship.