The armament of the Sovereign, built in 1488, was as follows:[[320]] In the forecastle, above deck, 16 serpentines, and below deck, 24; in the poop, 20 serpentines; in the ‘somercastle’ (apparently a quarter-deck, one stage lower than the poop), above deck, 25 serpentines, below deck, 21 together with 11 stone guns; in the waist, 20 stone guns; in the stern, over the rudder, 4 serpentines. Total, 110 serpentines and 31 stone guns. The Regent, built about the same time, was most likely a larger vessel, as she carried 225 guns. In her case their distribution is not known.
Although Henry VII had these two first-class warships built, he did not maintain a large navy, and at his death there were apparently only seven royal ships.[[321]] His successor, bent on a more adventurous foreign policy, began to strengthen the fleet from the very commencement of his reign. The Mary Rose and the Peter Pomegranate were built in 1510, and the Henry Grace à Dieu was laid down at the end of 1512 to replace the Regent, burnt in action off Brest earlier in that year.
An incident which took place in April 1513 probably had a great effect on the armament of the Henry Grace à Dieu. The English fleet was blockading the French in Brest and seeking in vain for some means of bringing the enemy to action. As a reinforcement a squadron of six French galleys was ordered round from the Mediterranean under the command of a brave and able officer named Prégent de Bidoux. Three of these galleys, according to contemporary letters, were armed with one heavy gun each, obtained from the Venetians, and of such a size as had never before been seen in France. It was asserted that a single shot from such a gun would be sufficient to send any ship to the bottom. The boast was soon, to a great extent, substantiated. Arriving off Brest on April 22, Prégent made a bold dash through the blockading fleet and succeeding in getting into Blanc Sablons Bay. In the process his formidable guns sank one English ship outright and crippled another, striking her through in seven places so that there was great difficulty in keeping her afloat. This was a minimum estimate of the damage, as admitted by the English themselves; a neutral account stated that two ships were sunk, and Prégent himself claimed to have destroyed four large ships and two transports, which was certainly a gross exaggeration.[[322]]
The construction of the Henry Grace à Dieu could not at this date have been at a very advanced stage, since she was not ready for sea until June 1514; and it is fair to assume that the demonstration of the effectiveness of a few heavy guns provided by the above action was responsible for the mounting of several such in the Henry. Be that as it may, the tendency was henceforward to reduce the number of light pieces carried in the upper works of a ship and to transfer the weight of armament to a hard-hitting battery placed on the level of the waist and in a fighting deck below the waist. The Henry Grace à Dieu is the first ship known to have been provided with a tier of guns below the main deck. She was armed in 1514 with 136 small guns, and the following heavier pieces, the exact dimensions of some of which are not ascertainable: stone guns, 4; ‘great pieces of iron of one making and bigness,’ 12; ‘great iron guns of one sort that come out of Flanders,’ 4; ‘great Spanish pieces of iron of one sort,’ 2; stone guns on wheels, 18; miscellaneous large guns, 4; great brass culverins, 2; a great brass bombard on four wheels; and a great brass curtall on four wheels: total, 48 heavy guns.[[323]] It is doubtful whether the stone guns should be ranked as heavy weapons. They were evidently larger than serpentines, to judge from their position in the Sovereign’s armament already described; but it is unlikely that they were identical with the ‘canon petro’ of the latter half of the century, which fired a 26 lb. shot. They were probably in 1514 medium-sized pieces, and if we deduct them from the above total, the undoubtedly heavy guns of the Henry numbered 26. The culverin was of 5½ inches calibre, and threw an 18 lb. ball; according to a paper of 1513 the weight of the shot fired by the curtall was 60 lb., while the missile of the bombard was of 260 lb. and required a charge of 80 lb. of powder.[[324]] It is somewhat hard to believe that the Henry ever used such a gun at sea; and in another list of almost the same date the bombard is omitted.[[325]] By the end of the reign the Henry had been re-armed, her heavy guns then numbering 19, and consisting of 4 cannon, 3 demi-cannon, 4 culverins, 2 demi-culverins, 2 cannon-petro, and 4 sakers.[[326]] The weight of shot ranged from 60 lb. for the cannon down to 6 lb. for the saker.
The same policy of reducing the number of guns, increasing their weight, and carrying them lower, was pursued in the case of other ships built during the reign, with the consequence that the excessive height of the castles was no longer necessary; and after 1540 several vessels were built practically flush-decked. These ships, which varied from 150 to 300 tons, were described as galleys, but the word was not intended in its usual sense. They were fully-rigged sailing-ships and, although they may have been occasionally assisted by the use of sweeps, it was not their principal means of propulsion. They probably owed the name to their speed and handiness as compared with the high-built, older-fashioned vessels. An illustration[[327]] of one of them, the Tiger, built in 1546, appears as the frontispiece of Oppenheim’s Administration of the Royal Navy. She carries about twenty large guns, of which fourteen are placed on the broadsides below the main deck. The king himself was greatly interested in the efforts made to improve warships. The following extract from a letter of Chapuys, an eminently reliable authority, demonstrates his responsibility for the innovation just described:
‘The King has sent to Italy for three shipwrights experienced in the art of constructing galleys, but I fancy he will not make much use of their science, as for some time back he has been building ships with oars according to a model of which he himself is the inventor.’[[328]]
The smaller examples of this class were known as ‘rowbarges’. They did good service against the French galleys in the war of 1544–6, and were used for policing the Channel in times of peace. They are thus described by Martin du Bellay, a contemporary French writer:
‘Il y a une espèce de navires particulières dont usoyent noz ennemis, en forme plus longue que ronde, et plus estroitte beaucoup que les gallères, pour mieux se régir et commander aux courantes, qui sont ordinaires en ceste mer; à quoy les hommes sont si duits, qu’avec ces vaisseaux ils contendent de vitesse avec les gallères, et les nomment remberges.’
In the larger ships the type of hull gradually developed into that familiar in numerous pictures of the Armada period: low forecastle, very little higher than the waist, and moderately high poop, the guns being mounted on the main deck and in one or more fighting decks below it. This build, although increased in size, remained substantially unaltered in its main proportions until the middle of the eighteenth century.
Although the hulls of ships were undergoing great modifications, the style of rigging warships remained practically unchanged during the period under review. The Sovereign of 1488 had four masts, the fore and main having topmasts and top-sails, and the mizen and bonaventure mizen being rigged with one lateen sail each. A sprit-sail was carried under the bowsprit. The Sovereign was in all respects an excellent ship, and probably in advance of the general standard of her time. As late as 1525, when her timbers were old and rotten, the authorities were recommended to have her rebuilt because ‘the form of this ship is so marvellous goodly that great pity it were she should die’.[[329]] Apparently the advice was not carried out, for she disappears from view about this time. The Henry Grace à Dieu carried topmasts and topgallantmasts and three sails on the fore-, main-, and mizen-masts, and a topmast and two sails on the bonaventure mizen; also a sprit-sail under the bowsprit, which, for practical purposes, was a fifth mast.[[330]] But the Henry was exceptional in most respects, and the rigging of the Sovereign became the standard type for sixteenth-century warships.