The crews’ quarters were almost non-existent. Generally they slept on deck, although there was room between decks for some of them. This space, however, was not ventilated (that, of course, had little effect on a 15th-Century Spaniard. Even the Spaniards of the lower classes to-day seem somewhat averse to ventilation) and was devoted to cargo and supplies. Below this space was the “bilge” which was filled with stone for ballast. The raised forward deck was in reality just a platform that incidentally formed a roof over the forward section of the main deck—the deck, that is, that formed the waist—and beneath this forecastle deck were protected spots where the crew could secure some shelter from the weather. They cooked, when they cooked at all, on a box of small stones that sat on the main deck just under the edge of the raised forecastle. This crude fireplace was decorated by a large square plate of zinc that stood upright, attached to one side of the box, to serve as a windbreak.
Below, swishing around among the stone that formed the ballast, was the ever-present bilge water that was always a serious problem in these ill-built hulls. It was a never-ending annoyance, even in fair weather, and had constantly to be pumped out or bailed out. And when these ungainly craft met with heavy weather their situation was serious, for the strains caused by the waves opened seams here and there, and often allowed so much water to enter that foundering resulted. Even when Spain, ninety years after Columbus, sent her vast Armada to threaten England, only to have it defeated by Drake and his companions, and scattered by the North Atlantic storms after it had rounded Scotland in its attempt to return to Spain, ship after ship, tossed by the boisterous seas, twisted and groaned and opened her seams, and sank in the cold black water or drove head on to the rocky coast of Ireland. The great storm they encountered sank twenty times as many ships as did the fleet that so ably defended England.
And in such ships as these the hardy men of bygone times searched out the unknown lands of earth, braved the storms of great uncharted seas, braved, too, the unknown dangers which, exaggerated by their imaginations, grew to such size as might have made the bravest quail. And when their ships were dashed to wreckage on some uncharted rock, or filled with water when their seams were spread, those who saved their lives and managed to return to port, shipped again and faced the same threatening dangers.
In the adventurous days that followed Columbus, ship design and ship construction developed rapidly. The desire to carry heavy guns led to placing them on the main deck where they fired over the low bulwarks or wales which since then have been called gunwales. Then the desire to carry more guns led to placing them between decks where ports were cut in the sides of the ship for them to fire through. The British and the French led in both design and construction, the British having built ships of 1,000 tons as early as the reign of Henry V in 1413. But so far as size was concerned, other nations followed suit, and when Medina Sedonia came driving up the English Channel with the 132 ships of the Spanish Armada stretched in its vast crescent, at least one ship was of 1,300 tons.
A MEDITERRANEAN GALLEY
This ship is of the type used long after the Middle Ages. Several men pulled each oar and all the oars were in one bank.
But the oaken fleet of England, while it had no ship quite to equal in size this giant Spaniard, was more than a match for the Don, and Drake, that master of seamanship, refused to drive alongside the clumsy Spaniards, but lay off, instead, and peppered them with gunfire, and following them up the English Channel, fell upon those that dropped behind.
The opening of the Americas and the East to trade and colonization resulted in an expansion of ship-building such as the world had never before known, an opportunity of which an oar-driven ship could never have taken advantage.
Portugal, for a time—owing to her many colonial possessions, which now have largely faded away—became a great sea power, which, however, shortly suffered eclipse. Spain, despite the terrible catastrophe that befell her great Armada, remained a power of real strength for a century longer. The Dutch, those hardy sailors from the low countries, for many a year sailed to and from their East Indian possessions, proudly conscious of the fact that they were supreme upon the seas. And the French, although their strength at sea was never clearly supreme, nevertheless built navies and sailed ships second to none, or at the least, to none but Britain.