| MARYNERS. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Robarte Baxster, boteson:—xij wekes vj daies | xxxvijˢ | vjᵈ |
| Richard Boureman, cooke: xij wekes vj daies | xxixˢ | vᵈ |
| John Awsten: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| Nicholas Francton: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| Christofer Parr, gromett: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | jᵈ |
| Henry Osbourne: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| James Laske: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| Richard Shutt: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| Robartt Woodnaughtt: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| William Appleford: xij wekes vj daies | xxjˢ | vᵈ |
| John Huntt, master gonner: xij wekes vj daies | xxxijˢ | ijᵈ |
This is what the Dreadnought looked like as she lay in the dock on the Tuesday morning that saw the ship take the water. Imagine a solid-looking heavily-timbered hull, round bowed, with long, raking forward prow or beak, reaching out some ten or twelve yards ahead of the actual vessel, and with at the after-end a lofty towering poop with shallow overhanging balustraded gallery. Amidships the vessel is of a width equal to nearly a third of her length. From the “greate beaste,” the figure-head—a dragon—“gilded and laid with fine gold,” representing one of the supporters of the Queen’s arms, set up on the tip of the beak, away aft to the stern gallery is a distance of, over all, about a hundred and twenty feet. The body of the hull itself has a keel length of some eighty feet—from rudder post to fore-foot. Along the water-line the bends are all tarred over, with varnished side planking above, tough oak timber from the Crown lands of the Sussex Weald by Horsham. The topsides above are varnished to the bulwarks, where a touch of colour shows; ornamental carved and painted work in royal Tudor green and white, laid on in “colours of oil” and garnished with Her Majesty’s family badges in gold, and with here and there, on the balustrades of the quarter-rails and stern gallery, an additional touch of red. On the stern, “painted in oils,” are the arms of England, with the Lion and the Dragon, the Queen’s royal supporters, and below, on a scroll, Her Majesty’s motto, Semper Eadem.
OUR FIRST DREADNOUGHT
From a Contemporary Print kindly lent by Mr. Wentworth Huyshe. (The “Dreadnought” is shown as she appeared when serving in the “Ship Money” Fleet of Charles the First:—circ. 1637).
These are other things about the ship that would strike the Deptford visitor of that day. The square-headed forecastle is low and squat in appearance, compared with the piled-up, narrow poop right aft, looking over from which a foreign visitor to the Queen’s fleet once declared that “it made one shudder to look downwards.” The bottom of the ship is coated with “tallow and rosin mingled with pitch.” The square-cut, wide portholes, out of which the guns will point when they are on board—the Tower lighters will bring them down for mounting in a week or two—were the idea, they say in the yard, of Master Shipwright Baker’s father, old James Baker, many years ago King Harry’s shipwright, improving on the original French style. It was old Baker too, they say, who “first adapted English ships to carry heavy guns.” The Reformers wanted to send the old man to the stake for “being in the possession of some forbidden books”; but King Harry could not afford to let them burn England’s best naval architect even for the benefit of Protestantism.
The Dreadnought’s gun-ports should open some four feet clear of the water. People have not forgotten the horror of the Mary Rose; what happened to her; how she came to go down one summer’s day at Spithead. The waist bulwarks of the Dreadnought, if she swims as she ought, will be some twenty feet above the water-line. Nearly four hundred tons in burden is our new man-of-war—five tons heavier than the Swiftsure, than which ship too she is six feet longer, though the pair reckon as sister ships. Upwards of six thousand pounds out of Queen Elizabeth’s treasury (about £30,000 at present day value) will have been the cost of the Dreadnought when she leaves Deptford dockyard.
We will go on board for a brief look round the Dreadnought within. As we enter the ship we note how both the half-deck and the fore and aft castles are loopholed for both arrow-fire and musketry, so as to sweep the waist should an enemy board and get a footing amidships. Some of the lighter guns would be able to help. The heavier guns are mostly on the broadside, and are mounted on the decks below in a double tier. The Dreadnought altogether carries forty-two guns. Sixteen of them are heavy guns: two “cannon-periers” of six-inch bore, hard hitters, firing twenty-four pounder stone shot; four “culverins,” seventeen and a half pounders, twelve feet long and five and half inches in the bore, firing iron shot, and able to throw a ball upwards of three miles—“random shot.” There are also ten “demi-culverins,” nine-pounders, firing four and a half inch iron shot. The lighter guns are six “sakers,” pieces nine feet long (five-pounders, of three and a half inch bore) and two “fawcons” (three-pounders). The heavier guns are all muzzle-loaders. Distributed over the upper decks are eighteen breech-loading guns, for fighting at close quarters and rapid firing: “port-pieces,” “fowlers,” and “bases,” as they are called. They are on swivel mountings, and fire stone and iron shot.
All told, the Dreadnought’s armament weighs thirty-two tons. The guns are from Master Ralphe Hogge, “the Queen’s gunstone maker, and gunfounder to the Council.” They are of Sussex iron, from Master Hogge’s own foundry at Buxted. At this moment they are waiting at the Tower, together with the Dreadnought’s supplies of iron shot and cannon balls of Kentish ragstone from Her Majesty’s quarries at Maidstone, stacked “in ye Bynns upon ye Tower Wharfe each side Traitor’s Gate.” When the Dreadnought goes into battle she will carry some two hundred officers and men all told: a hundred and thirty “maryners”—“Able men for topyard, helme and lead,” and “gromets,” or boys and “Fresh men”; with twenty gunners and fifty soldiers. To keep her at sea will cost the Queen £303. 6s. 8d. a month for sea-wages and victualling. Three weeks provisions and water is the most that the ship can stow, owing to the space wanted for the ballast, the cables for the four anchors, and the ammunition and sea stores. That is why victualling ships have to attend Her Majesty’s fleets on service outside the Narrow Seas. The “cook room,” of bricks and iron and paving stones, is in the hold over the ballast. Two more notes may be made as we return on deck and quit the ship. The captain’s cabin, opening on the gallery aft, is neatly wainscoted and garnished with green and white chintz, and with curtains of darnix hung at the latticed cabin windows. There are three boats for the Dreadnought: the “great boat,” which tows astern at all times, the cock-boat and the skiff, both of which stow inboard. John Clerk, “of Redryffe, Shipwrighte,” built the “great boat,” being paid £24, in the terms of his bill, “For the Workmanshipp and makeinge of a new Boate for her Highness’ Shipp, the Dreadnought; conteyninge xi foote Di. in lengthe; ix foote Di. in Breadthe; and iij foote ij inches in Depthe.—By agrement.”
A brave show should our gallant Dreadnought make when she goes forth to war, with her varnished sides and rows of frowning guns and painted top-armours (the handiwork, according to his bill, of Master Coteley, of Deptford), and all her wide spreading sails set (“John Hawkins, Esquire, of London,” supplied these), and at the masthead, high above all, her flag of St. George of white Dowlas canvas with a blood-red cross of cloth sewn on.