Although, as we have seen, four-masted ships were known long before the end of the fifteenth century, the merchantman of Tudor times was usually equipped with three. In short vessels the masts were rigged in a fan-shape, the foremast inclining forwards, the mainmast upright, and the mizen raking towards the rear so as to give greater distance between the sails. The latter tended to increase in number, the use of top-sails and sprit-sails beneath the bowsprit becoming common in the reign of Henry VII. An additional spar, projecting from the stern of the ship in the same manner as the bowsprit from the bow, and named the ‘outligger’, was fitted to receive the sheet of the lateen sail on the mizenmast. With top-sails, topmasts were introduced, but the latter were fixtures in the sixteenth century and not strikeable at sea. To diminish rolling in heavy weather it was customary to lower the main- and fore-yards down to the deck, as is depicted in various drawings. Top-gallant-masts and sails were fitted to warships—the Henry Grace à Dieu had them on three of her four masts—but it does not appear that any merchant ship had them until a much later date. Although there is some evidence that reefing was known in very early times, it was not extensively practised at the period in question. The purpose of reefing is to reduce the sail area in high winds, but among Tudor seamen a contrary device was favoured. The sails were cut smaller than the maximum size possible, and were lengthened in light winds by lacing to their lower borders additional pieces called bonnets. As many as three bonnets were sometimes supplied for one sail,[[311]] but two was the more usual number. They were applied to the main- and fore-sails and also to top-sails.[[312]] Jibs and stay-sails, and fore-and-aft rigging generally, were entirely unknown at this time, the nearest approach to any such thing being the lateen. In consequence it was much harder than at present to make headway against contrary winds, as an example of which the difficulty invariably experienced by English traders in getting away from the Guinea coast may be cited. The shape of the hulls was such as to offer great resistance to the wind, and the leeway must have been excessive. Towards the middle of the century, when the size of the forecastle had somewhat diminished, it would seem that it was possible to heave the ship to without showing any sail at all: Sir Hugh Willoughby’s journal, describing the gale encountered off the Norwegian coast, says, ‘... the wind increasing so sore that we were not able to bear any sail, but took them in, and lay a drift, to the end to let the storm over pass’.
More distant voyages demanded a long-overdue improvement in the science of navigation. The finding of latitude was rendered a comparatively simple matter by the successive inventions of the astrolabe, the cross-staff, and the quadrant.[[313]] The astrolabe, which came into use prior to the age of the great discoveries, remained in favour throughout the sixteenth century, being described by Martin Cortes in his Breve Compendio de la Sphera in 1556. An astrolabe which was used by Sir Francis Drake is preserved in the museum at Greenwich. Cortes’s astrolabe consisted of a metal ring, of which 90 degrees were graduated, and a metal pointer turning on a pin in the centre. The pointer had aperture sights at either end, and when moved until the sun could be seen through both apertures it indicated his elevation above the horizon in degrees on the graduated part of the ring.[[314]] The cross-staff was invented early in the sixteenth century, but never entirely superseded the astrolabe until both were rendered obsolete by the quadrant, an invention of John Davis at the end of the same century. With these instruments latitude was ascertainable with fair accuracy; in skilful hands the error was usually less than one degree. The same could not be said about longitude, in which huge errors were unavoidable by any method then known. Longitude remained then and long afterwards an insoluble problem, and many charts of the time made no effort to indicate it.
Of contemporary foreign vessels the most interesting is the caravel, as being the type with which Columbus made his great voyages across the Atlantic, and which had a considerable influence on the design of the Tudor man-of-war. The caravel, which the Spaniards found most suitable for their early ocean navigations, had little in common with the short, broad merchantmen of the narrow seas. It was built with a high, tapering poop, a low waist, and a high, overhanging forecastle, rectangular in plan, and serving to break the force of a head sea. The high castles and general handiness of design rendered it an efficient fighting vessel, and it was probable, as Mr. Oppenheim has pointed out, that it was for this reason that Henry VII was eager to employ such craft in preference to English-built ships on the rare occasions when he needed to mobilize a naval force.[[315]] But the caravel, probably as lacking sufficient cargo capacity, did not find favour with English shipbuilders, and as late as 1552 was still distinctively a foreign type. In that year the London merchants who sent out Thomas Wyndham on a trading voyage to Barbary bought a Portuguese caravel of 60 tons to form part of his squadron. The inhabitants of the Canary Isles, recognizing from a distance that she was not an English ship, made an attack on the expedition as they concluded that she had been wrongfully acquired.
The carrack, unlike the caravel, is not an easily identifiable type, and the word seems to have been applied to any large and bulky vessel. In one navy list the Henry Grace à Dieu appears as the ‘Imperyall (or Gret) Carrick’,[[316]] but this is exceptional, and the term was generally used only of foreign ships. In its particular application, if it can be said to have had one, it signified first the trading-ships of Genoa,[[317]] which ceased to come to England after the fifteenth century, and afterwards the great East Indiamen of the Portuguese. The act granting tonnage and poundage in 1485 provides that if an Englishman ship his goods in a ‘carryke or galley’ he shall pay the same duties as a foreigner. The carracks in this case meant Genoese, and the galleys Venetian, vessels.
1
2
TWO CARRACKS.
1. From Royal MS. 20. E. ix. 2. From
Add. MS. 5415. A. 7.
Another non-English ship was the hulk, the large, clumsy merchantman of the Hanse towns. William Towerson, sailing for Guinea in January 1558, captured two ‘hulks of Dantzick’ in the Bay of Biscay. They made no attempt at resistance against his three vessels, and were released as not worth keeping by reason of their poor sailing qualities: ‘they sailed so ill that, having all their sails abroad, we kept them company only with our foresails, and without any topsails abroad, so that in every two days sailing they would have hindered us more than one’—which seems to argue that the Germans built their ships solely with an eye to capacity. Henry VIII hired several hulks from the Hansa for use against the French in 1545. His fighting instructions for an anticipated action in that year directed that they should be placed in the front line and used to break up the order of the enemy before the onset of the men-of-war in the second line.[[318]]
Turning to warships, we find ourselves on much surer ground. Detailed inventories exist of several of the crack ships of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and carefully executed drawings of the same period are numerous.[[319]] In the evolution of the warship the paramount factor was the rapid development of artillery. The guns mounted in ships were at first small and of little penetrative power. Consequently it was essential to place them where they could do the greatest execution on an enemy’s decks and against his rigging. The tactical idea in the use of the gun was mainly to employ it in the same way as the long-bow and the cross-bow; to kill the enemy’s crew rather than to sink his ship. Hence we find in the warships of Henry VII large numbers of ‘serpentines’, small guns weighing about three hundredweight and throwing a half-pound ball, grouped in the castles of the ship, which were built very high to accommodate them in two or three tiers. At the same time a few heavier guns, throwing stone balls, were placed in the waist. These were too low down to reach the greater part of the hostile deck at close quarters, and must therefore have been fired at the hull. The collective weight of all these guns was very great and, to secure stability and structural strength, the ship’s sides had to be sloped inwards from the water-line so that the weight should be more centrally carried. This ‘tumblehome’ in high-built ships was so great that the width of the deck on poop and forecastle was often less than half the width at the water-line. It served another purpose in rendering boarding more difficult, for, even if two vessels were touching at the water-line, their decks were necessarily several feet apart. The most easily accessible part was the waist, which was defended by nettings and by guns placed in the castles on purpose to sweep it with ‘hail shot’, the forerunner of grape and canister.