Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

THE MERCHANT NAVY.

he history of the merchant navy in the Middle Ages is very much mixed up with that of the military navy.

In the time of the earlier Norman kings we seem not to have had any war-ships. The king had one or two ships for his own uses, and hired or impressed others when he needed them; but they were only ships of burden, transports by which soldiers and munitions of war were conveyed to the Continent and back, as occasion required. If hostile vessels encountered one another at sea, and a fight ensued, it seems to have been a very simple business: the sailors had nothing to do with the fighting, they only navigated the ships; the soldiers on board discharged their missiles at one another as the ships approached, and when the vessels were laid alongside, they fought hand to hand. The first ships of war were a revival of the classical war-galleys. We get the first clear description of them in the time of Richard I., from Vinesauf, the historian of the second Crusade. He compares them with the ancient galleys, and says the modern ones were long, low in the water, and slightly built, rarely had more than two banks of oars, and were armed with a “spear” at the prow for “ramming.” Gallernes were a smaller kind of galleys with only one bank of oars.

From this reign the sovereign seems to have always maintained something approaching to a regular naval establishment, and to have aimed at keeping the command of the narrow seas. In the reign of John we find the king had galleys and galliases, and another kind of vessels which were probably also a sort of galley, called “long ships,” used to guard the coasts, protect the ports, and maintain the police of the seas.

The accompanying drawing, from one of the illuminations in the famous MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle, in the British Museum (Harl. 4,379), is perhaps one of the clearest and best contemporary illustrations we have of these mediæval galleys. It will be seen that it consists of a long low open boat, with outrigger galleries for the rowers, while the hold is left free for merchandise, or, as in the present instance, for men-at-arms. It has a forecastle like an ordinary ship; the shields of the men-at-arms who occupy it are hung over the bulwarks; the commander stands at the stern under a pent-house covered with tapestry, bearing his shield, and holding his leader’s truncheon. A close examination of the drawing seems to show that there are two men to each oar; we know from other sources that several men were sometimes put to each oar. The difference in costume between the soldiers and the sailors is conspicuous. The former are men-at-arms in full armour—one on the forecastle is very distinctly shown; the sailors are entirely unarmed, except the man at the stroke-oar, probably an officer, who wears an ordinary hat of the period, the rest wear the hood drawn over the head. The ship in the same illustration is an ordinary ship of burden, filled with knights and men-at-arms; the trumpeters at the stern indicate that the commander of the fleet is on board this ship; he will be seen amidships, with his visor raised and his face towards the spectator, with shield on arm and truncheon in hand.

Ship and Galley.

If the reader is curious to see illustrations of the details of a naval combat, there are a considerable number to be found in the illuminated MSS.; as in MS. Nero, D. iv., at folio 214, of the latter part of the thirteenth century; in some tolerably clearly drawn in the “Chronique de S. Denis” (Royal, 20, cvii.), of the time of our Richard II., at folio 18, and again at folio 189 v. Other representations of ships occur at folios 25, 26 v., 83, 136 v. (a bridge of boats), 189 v., and 214 of the same MS.

These ships continued to a late period to be small compared with our notion of a ship, and most rude in their arrangements. They were great undecked boats, with a cabin only in the bows, beneath the raised platform which formed the forecastle; and the crew of the largest ships was usually from twenty-five to thirty men. An illumination in the MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle (Harl. 4,379), folio 104 v., shows a ship, in which a king and his suite are about to embark, from such a point of view that we see the interior of the ship in the perspective, and find that there is a cabin only in the prow. The earliest notice of cabins occurs in the year A.D. 1228, when a ship was sent to Gascony with some effects of the king’s, and 4s. 6d. was paid for making a chamber in the same ship for the king’s wardrobe, &c. In A.D. 1242 the king and queen went to Gascony; and convenient chambers were ordered to be built in the ship for their majesties’ use, which were to be wainscoted—like that probably in Earl Richard of Warwick’s ship in the present woodcut. This engraving, taken from Rouse’s MS. Life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (British Museum, Julius, E. IV.), of the latter part of the fourteenth century, gives a very clear representation of a ship and its boat. The earl is setting out on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the foreground we see him with his pilgrim’s staff in hand, stepping into the boat which is to carry him to his ship lying at anchor in the harbour. The costume of the sailors is illustrated by the men in the boat. The vessel is a ship of burden, but such a one as kings and great personages had equipped for their own uses; resembling an ordinary merchant-ship in all essentials, but fitted and furnished with more than usual convenience and sumptuousness. In Earl Richard’s ship the sail is emblazoned with his arms, and the pennon, besides the red cross of England, has his badges of the bear and ragged staff; the ragged staff also appears on the castle at the mast-head. The castle, which all ships of this age have at the stern, is in this case roofed in and handsomely ornamented, and no doubt formed the state apartment of the earl. There is also a castle at the head of the ship, though it is not very plainly shown in the drawing. It consists of a raised platform, the round-headed entrance to the cabin beneath it is seen in the picture; the two bulwarks also which protect it at the sides are visible, though their meaning is not at first sight obvious. A glance at the forecastle of the other ships in our illustrations will enable the reader to understand its construction and use. Besides the boat which is to convey the earl on board, another boat will be seen hanging at the ship’s quarter.