The following pages give a sketch, drawn chiefly from these authors, of the progress of the timber-built sailing ship and of the principal influences which guided the evolution. Lessons may still be drawn from this history, it is suggested, which even in the altered circumstances of to-day may be of value in some other application. One lesson, long unlearnt, the great blunder of two centuries, lies clearly on the surface. The evidence will show how, by our long neglect of the science of naval architecture, the British navy fought frequently at an unnecessary disadvantage; but it will also show how, masters of the art of shipbuilding, we gave our fleets such a superiority in strength and seaworthiness as almost to neutralize the defects inherent in their general design.
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Before the fourteenth century the sailing ship, i.e. the ship in which sails were used as the chief motive power, could not compete in battle on equal terms with the oar-driven vessel; both in the Mediterranean and in Northern waters the oar-driven galley possessed advantages of speed and handiness which relegated the heavy, high-built and capacious sailing ship to the position of a mere transport or victualler. The fighting ships were the galleys: long speedy vessels with fine lines and low freeboard, propelled by rowers and fought by soldiers clad in mail and armed with swords and lances. Sails were carried, but only as secondary power, for use when the galleys ran before the wind.
Sea tactics consisted in ramming and boarding; the vessels were designed accordingly. The royal galleys of King Henry III, which formed the fighting fleet of Hubert de Burgh, are described as having each two tiers of oars, with platforms along each side over the heads of the rowers, on which the soldiers stood. Hung on the bulwarks in front of them were their shields. From the gaudily painted mast pennons and banners floated on the wind; a large square cotton sail, embroidered with the royal arms, was triced to the yard. The masthead was crowned with a circular “top,” a repository for bricks and iron bars wherewith to bilge an enemy vessel. At both ends of the galley were raised platforms or “castles” filled with picked soldiery, who during the approach to action would pour brass-winged arrows into the enemy and who, when the enemy had been grappled, leaped aboard. From mechanical engines low down in the waist large stones would be projected, and, if on the windy side, quicklime would be thrown, and other “instruments of annoyance.” The galleys were lightly built, and carried no pumps. It was no uncommon sight, we are told, to see half the knights baling, while the others fought hand-to-hand with the enemy.
By the year 1300 the size and utility of ships had made considerable advance. Two masts were given them, each supported by a few shrouds and carrying a single large square sail; neither masts nor sails were yet subdivided, but the sails could be enlarged by having one or more “bonnets” laced to their lower part. Of the two masts the taller, the foremast, raked considerably over the bows, and both were surmounted by tops, with flagstaff and streamers. A central rudder appeared in this century, in place of the paddle fixed to the quarter, and a rudimentary bowsprit. The largest cogs, as they were now called, were of 250 tons burthen. When hired of merchants for war service, they were converted by the addition of fore-, aft-, and top-castles, built high so as to overtop, if possible, the enemy. The war vessels were at this time lavishly decorated; the sails were silk, dyed red or embroidered with armorial designs, the tops and stages were aflame with banners and pennons, the masts and yards were gilt. Large sums of money were spent by the knights in beautifying their ships.
But in this century two great inventions brought to a close an epoch in warship construction. Gunpowder and the mariner’s compass were discovered. Cannon were adapted to ships in place of the mechanical engines which had formerly been carried, and by aid of the compass, housed in its wood-pegged bittacle in the steerage, vessels began to venture out of touch with land and sail with a new security the uncharted ocean.
The effect of each of these two discoveries was the same: a growth in the size, strength, and capacity of ships, a decline in the use of oars and a greater reliance on sails. High sides were required against the waves, stouter timbers to support the weight of ordnance, more capacious holds for the stowage of the ballast, food, and cordage which would be needed for a long sea voyage. The galley, with its low flush deck and outward-sloping sides was ill adapted for the new conditions; a new construction was seen to be needed. Two new types were evolved, one in the Mediterranean and one, more gradually, in Atlantic waters.
Even before the Christian era there had been a distinct differentiation between the ships of the Mediterranean and those of the Atlantic seaboard. The latter, as shown by Nicolas’ quotation from Cæsar, were more strongly built than the Roman galleys, with flatter bottoms, to “adapt them to the shallows and to sustain without danger the ebbing of the tide,” and with prows and sterns “very high and erect, to bear the hugeness of the waves”: properties which, even before the advent of fire artillery, conferred on them important advantages.[1] Nevertheless, complete differentiation did not obtain until after the discovery of gunpowder and the mariner’s needle. Before that time the vessels used by the Northern nations in war were of the galley type, built by themselves or, after the Crusades had revealed the superiority of the Mediterranean powers in warship design, hired not infrequently from Venetians or from Genoese. The Genoese were the chief naval mercenaries of Europe at this age: “Genoese were vice-admirals to the English king, and Genoese galleys fought for the French at Sluys.”
The new type evolved in the Mediterranean was the galleasse. For centuries, as we have seen, large sailing ships had been used for commerce, both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. With the inevitable increase in size brought about by the adoption of cannon, and by the desire for greater sea-keeping qualities, resort was now had by the Genoese and Venetians to sails in war vessels as a means of propulsion of equal importance with oars. Thus an uncomfortable compromise was effected between oars and sails; both were provided. The galleasse was originally a large decked galley, with three pole masts for its lateen sails, and with cannon spaced at intervals along its sides above the rowers. In form it differed little from the galley, but in the disposition of its armament it was entirely different; it represented the first stage in the evolution of the broadside fighting ship.
But the galleasse, though it might meet the requirements of Mediterranean warfare, was almost as unsuited as the galley to Atlantic conditions. Accordingly the warship underwent a separate and independent development at the hands of the Atlantic nations. Forsaking the galley, they took the lofty, strong and capacious sailing merchant ship as the basis of a new type, and from the lumbering carrack and caravel and dromon they evolved the vessel which eventually became known as the galleon. A distinctive naval architecture, Gothic rather than Byzantine in character, was thus founded on the Atlantic seaboard. The oar was entirely superseded by the sail. The ships were high, and their sides, instead of falling out like those of galleys, were curved inwards so as to “tumble home” above the water-line: an arrangement which protected the ordnance, added to the strength of the vessels, and tended to render them steadier gun-platforms. The top-castles were retained on the masts, but the end-castles disappeared, or rather, were incorporated into the structure of the lofty bow and stern, to provide accommodation for officers, and cover for the crew. The voile latine gave way to the voile quarrée. In place of the large lateen sails carried by galley and galleasse, were smaller sails and courses, square, more easily manipulated and allowing of greater variation in disposition and effective area, to suit the conditions of weather and the trim of the ship.