It was Pero Menendez de Aviles, perhaps the greatest of all Spanish seamen, who goaded his slow-moving and short-sighted Government into creating an oceanic navy. Menendez was a fanatically religious man, and regarding, as he did, the heretic corsairs as the enemies of mankind, he was frequently guilty of acts of ferocious cruelty. That he, as sincerely as his English antitype Francis Drake, believed himself to be the chosen instrument of Heaven cannot be doubted; but he certainly lacked Drake’s kindly nature.
In 1555 Menendez is found with an armed squadron guarding the trade fleets. He built at his own cost three ‘galleons’—the battleships of the day—and in 1561 was appointed Captain-General of the Indian Trade. The French were checked, and by strenuous endeavour something had been done when the English appeared on the scene. The Huguenots, driven from the West Indian Islands, established themselves at St. Augustine in Florida. Menendez’s untiring energy pursued them there, and in 1565 the colony was wiped out. Menendez’s grim cruelty was bitterly remembered. The Spanish Government, now beginning to rouse itself, issued orders that the principal vessels of the trade fleets were always to be armed, and twelve galleons were built for further protection, for the maintenance of which a special tax was levied on the Indies merchants. These galleons were the beginnings of the Spanish oceanic navy.
The Spanish sea-service was full of grave defects. A Spanish warship was commanded by a military officer, whose special charge was the soldiery; gunnery was neglected and the seamen treated like galley-slaves. In these circumstances the Spanish galleon was comparatively ineffective against ships provided with good guns and gunners. Spain’s seafaring population, also, was not large, and since it was impossible to commandeer and arm a powerful force of her own merchant ships on an emergency, the Government was wont to seize foreign ships for the purpose, whose crews naturally embraced every opportunity of deserting.
On the other hand, the English Navy was the natural product of seafaring instincts. It was not the outcome of policy, and was ruled by no jealously devised legal code comparable to that of Louis XIV. of France. It grew up almost imperceptibly without any clear conception of the process. The old feudal traditions gave way slowly, and in 1588 they still so far prevailed that a noble had to be made nominal Commander-in-Chief over the head of Drake, though, thanks to both, no disaster followed. But there has usually been a spirit of comradeship in English armaments largely or entirely lacking elsewhere, and this spirit was beginning to be felt under Elizabeth.
During the early years of Elizabeth there was a tendency to neglect the Royal Navy. The country was so strong in privateers and merchant craft available for war, and so devoid were her possible antagonists, France and Spain, of true naval power, that little was done. But about 1570 the news of Menendez’s untiring efforts brought about a new shipbuilding programme under the direction of John Hawkins, who in 1569 became Treasurer of the Navy. Several new ships were built under his supervision, and were the most formidable fighting engines that had yet appeared on the seas. They were of moderate size, but very seaworthy, heavily armed, and almost entirely lacking the high fore-and-stern castles which had encumbered the earlier vessels. In 1574 a Spanish agent, reporting to his Government, noted their great fighting value.
The word ‘galleon’ has been frequently misinterpreted. The galleon was a ship fit for ocean work, built with something of the fine lines of a galley—hence its name. The very long, narrow, lightly-built galley was useless in the Atlantic; on the other hand, the short, broad, oceanic trading vessels were too slow and unwieldy to be of use in war. Trimming between these two extremes, the French shipwrights evolved a vessel at once seaworthy and comparatively fast, and the model was adopted by England and the Peninsular States. Its essential characteristics were that it was three beams or more long, with a draft two-fifths of its beam. By an extraordinary series of misconceptions the galleon has come to be regarded as a heavy, clumsy vessel peculiar to Spain. As a fact, Spain was perhaps the last of the great Powers of the sixteenth century to adopt it. This conclusion has been very convincingly set forth by Mr. Julian Corbett in his ‘Drake and the Tudor Navy.’
AN ELIZABETHAN MIDDLE-RATE GALLEON OR BATTLESHIP.
She has one covered gun-deck, and shows the low forecastle as against the high ‘cageworks’ of contemporary Spanish vessels.
(From a contemporary drawing by Visscher.)