The cost of building ships was very low in comparison with modern figures, although it rose rapidly with the influx of gold from America in the sixteenth century. Two small warships, the Mary Fortune and the Sweepstake, were built for Henry VII at a cost of £110 and £120 respectively.[[306]] At the opening of Henry VIII’s reign the Mary Rose, 400 tons, and the Peter Pomegranate, 300, together cost £1,016 fully equipped for sea;[[307]] while the Henry Grace à Dieu, the largest ship of her time, cost £8,708 in 1514.[[308]] Privately owned ships were chartered by the State at 3d. per ton per week.
A French manuscript of 1519[[309]] affords some information as to the shipping of that date. It is a translation in French of Caesar’s wars, to illustrate which a large map of France is provided as a frontispiece. Following the contemporary custom, the cartographer has inserted drawings of ships in the surrounding seas. One of these, placed near the mouth of the Garonne, represents a large merchantman. She has a curved stem and rounded, swelling bows, shaped like a bellying sail and surmounted by a flat, platform-shaped forecastle which overhangs the water. The waist has greater freeboard than that of a warship, and the poop is small and square. No guns are visible, and the hull is evidently designed for stability and carrying capacity rather than speed and fighting convenience. There are three pole masts, each with a round top and one square sail. There are no topmasts and no bowsprit. Three other sailing-ships are shown on the same map. Their hulls are of the same type as the one already described, but they have only one mast each. As this was a work dealing with ancient history it is probable that the artist purposely drew the oldest-fashioned craft he was acquainted with. He had some archaeological instinct, as is evident from the semi-Roman costumes which appear in other illustrations; and he recognized that it would be inappropriate to place guns in the ships, not one of which possesses them. If this view is correct the manuscript is interesting as providing one of the many lost connecting links between the mediaeval and modern types of sailing-ship.
Robert Thorne’s map of 1527, appended to his book to Dr. Lee, bears a spirited drawing of a sailing-vessel approximating more to the man-of-war type. She has a square, overhanging forecastle, a low waist, and a high, narrow poop. The fore and main masts are lofty, and are each provided with top-sails, while the short mizen has one lateen sail. It is not apparent whether this was intended to represent an English or Spanish vessel. Thorne was an Englishman, but the drawing was made at Seville and is placed in a part of the ocean to which no English ship had then penetrated.
One more example of the none too numerous drawings of merchantmen may be quoted. In a Book of Hydrography designed in 1542 by a Frenchman, John Rotz, for Henry VIII,[[310]] occur numerous beautifully painted maps embracing all parts of the world. On one, representing the North Atlantic, a merchant vessel is seen near the coast of Portugal. The hull, evidently built for carrying capacity, is on very full lines, and the fore and after castles are small in proportion. The mainmast carries two sails, but the fore and mizen masts have only one each, that on the latter being a lateen. There is a bowsprit but no sprit-sail. This may possibly represent a Portuguese carrack of the type with which they voyaged to the East Indies. Such vessels were subsequently developed to (for that time) an enormous size. One captured by the English in 1592, named the Madre de Dios, was of 1,600 tons burden.
The facts considered above serve to indicate that, although little is known with exactitude about the merchant vessels of early Tudor times, it is at least certain that they were by no means identical in design with the warships. The latter, as will be seen, mounted large numbers of guns—over 100 in many cases—and this fact influenced their design to an extent quite unnecessary in trading craft, which were far less heavily armed. The principal features in the development of the latter from their mediaeval prototypes were: increasing length, relatively small size of the ‘castles’, and an increasing number of sails and spars, together with the introduction of topmasts.
The ship’s boats were usually three in number, the ‘great boat’, the long-boat, and the skiff or jolly-boat. They were probably carried on deck in the waist, and must have been hoisted by tackles from the yard-arms, since davits were not then used for the purpose. The great boat was often towed. Hakluyt gives an account of a voyage to the Mediterranean by the Matthew Gonson in 1535, as narrated by one of the crew. He says that they towed their great boat all the way from Chios to the Straits of Gibraltar, implying that she was then hoisted aboard. As this boat was big enough to carry ten tuns of water it is difficult to imagine how it was done.
1
2
TWO MERCHANTMEN.
1. From Robert Thorne’s map, 1527. 2. From
Harl. MS. 6205, date 1519.