The great picture at Hampton Court depicting the embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover in 1520 shows the Henry and several warships of the time, but the technical accuracy of the artist is open to great doubt. Five ships appear on a large scale, and their hulls are all so suspiciously alike that they suggest the idea that they were all drawn from the same original. The only differences are in a few minor details of carving and colouring. Two of the ships carry four masts and the remainder three; and it is noticeable that not a single lateen sail is shown in the whole fleet, the mizen-masts having square sails like the fore and main. This is almost certainly incorrect.[[331]] Such guns as can be seen are arranged in precisely the same way in every case, and the whole picture gives the impression that the artist was drawing conventional ships without much study of the real thing, and was concentrating his care on the numerous gorgeously dressed individuals who are seen on the decks and in the foreground.
THE HENRY GRACE À DIEU.
From a MS. at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
The fighting record of the Henry Grace à Dieu is not particularly brilliant. She was completed just too late to take part in the war of 1512–14. In 1522 war was again declared against France, and she was sent to sea in the fleet commanded by Sir William Fitz-William. He reported that she sailed as well and rather better than any ship in the fleet, weathering them all save the Mary Rose; and, although it was only the beginning of June, he went on to talk about laying her up for the winter. She was evidently something of a nuisance, and the admiral was anxious to be rid of her. There had been so much boasting about this marvellous ship that the French were certain to make her the especial object of their attacks, and the king would have been furious if she had been lost. On June 8 she lost her bowsprit, foremast, and maintopmast in a gale in the Downs, and a week later was brought round to Portsmouth to be laid up. Special precautions were to be taken against a French raid; two barks were kept scouting round the Isle of Wight, assisted by an elaborate system of beacons, sentinels, &c. Later on 1,000 marks were spent on a dock and fortifications for the Henry at Portsmouth, and it does not appear that she went to sea in 1523, after which year the war was virtually over.[[332]] In 1526, when laid up at Northfleet, it was reported that she was costing £200 a year in wages alone, and more than that in cables, hawsers, and other stores, and that a dock would have to be built at a cost of £600.[[333]] The next war was that of 1544–6. In the former year the naval operations were unimportant, and the Henry took no part in them; but in 1545 an immense French fleet was collected in the Channel, and for a time England lost the command of the sea. The English fleet was concentrated at Portsmouth, the Henry Grace à Dieu being the flagship. The king was dining on board when, on July 19, the approach of the French was signalled. Indecisive fighting at long range took place, and the French then withdrew. Another cannonade, with the like result, took place off the Sussex coast on August 15, and with this the war services of the Henry concluded. She was accidentally burnt at Deptford in 1553. Her career was typical of those of most of the large fighting ships of the time. All of them, both English and French, were considered too valuable to be committed to a decisive action, or to be sent to sea in any but the finest weather; and such exploits as were performed went to the credit of lighter and more easily handled craft.
In the wars of this period the French galleys on more than one occasion proved exceedingly useful to their side; but all attempts to popularize this type of vessel in England were failures. As has been explained, the numerous craft so described in the navy lists were for the most part not true galleys, but light sailing ships. In 1544, however, a galley was constructed on Mediterranean lines and named the Galley Subtile or Row Galley. She was of 200 tons, carried a crew of 250, and mounted 31 guns.[[334]] A drawing in the British Museum shows her fitted with a pointed beak or ram, and one mast with a huge lateen sail. She served on the Scottish coast in 1544, when Edinburgh was sacked, and in the actions against the French in the following year.
Artillery in the sixteenth century was in a state of transition. Originally, after first rudimentary experiments with wood, ropes, and leather, guns were built up by binding longitudinal strips of metal into cylindrical form with numerous metal rings, on the principle of the construction of a cask. Guns made in this way were mounted in Henry VII’s warships, and the system continued in vogue until the latter half of the century. At the same time cast-brass and cast-iron guns were beginning to be made abroad; many of them were imported into England, and they were used in forts and ships side by side with the built-up guns.
Practically all the larger pieces for sea use were loaded at the breach. The method consisted in having a detachable section, from one to two feet long, called the chamber, which was taken off the remainder of the barrel to be loaded. When charged with powder the chamber was replaced at the rear end of the barrel and fixed in position by a wooden wedge hammered in between it and a projection on the carriage of the gun, the shot having been previously placed in the barrel itself. The gun was then fired by means of a linstock and priming powder scattered over the touch hole. Three chambers were supplied with each gun in the time of Henry VII, but the number was afterwards reduced to two. The indistinct accounts of naval encounters give the impression that the rate of fire was not nearly so rapid as might have been expected, and the breech-loading system was rapidly displaced by muzzle-loaders towards the end of the sixteenth century. A large built-up breech-loader, recovered by divers in 1836 from the wreck of the Mary Rose (1545), is to be seen at the United Services Museum in Whitehall.
Guns of cast brass were said by ancient authorities not to have been made in England until 1521, nor cast iron until 1543, but these dates are probably much too late. In 1516 payment of £33 6s. 8d. was made to John Rutter of London ‘for hurts and damages by him sustained in a tenement to him belonging, wherein the King’s great gun called the Basiliscus was cast’.[[335]] If a great gun could be cast in England in 1516 it is reasonable to suppose that some experience had first been gained in casting smaller ones. The wrought guns of this period were embedded in solid elm carriages and fastened down by iron rings; but several cast metal examples exist which were fitted with trunnions in the modern fashion.
During the war of 1512–14 the Government purchased large numbers of guns at home and abroad. Humphrey Walker, an English gun-maker, supplied fifty pieces in 1512. The principal foreign place of manufacture was Mechlin, where Hans Popenruyter turned out heavy weapons in great quantities. He delivered twenty-four curtalls weighing about 1¼ tons each in 1512, also twenty-four serpentines averaging about ½ ton. The individual guns were all of slightly different weights and were all named with such appellations as The Sun Arising, Virago, Mermaid, Rat, Snake, Dragon, &c.[[336]] The heavier weapons were for land service, and assisted at the sieges of Tournay and Terouenne in 1513.
A paper of 1513[[337]] gives some interesting information about the various classes of guns in use: A minion fired an 8 lb. shot; a lizard, a 12 lb. ditto, with 14 lb. of powder; culverins, ‘novemburghs’, and apostles were 20-pounders; while a curtall fired a 60 lb. and a bombard a 260 lb. missile. The latter could only be fired five times a day, presumably on account of over-heating. The rates of fire of the others were very slow, none of them exceeding forty times a day. The powder was largely purchased abroad, although some was made in England; it cost 3½d. or 4d. a pound, and was of very poor quality. A Venetian description of England in 1557 mentions that there were then 600 iron and 250 brass guns in the Tower.[[338]] Since the private ownership of cannon was not encouraged, this fact goes far to explain the non-success of all rebellions against the Tudor throne.