SoldiersSailorsGunnersBowsBowstringsSheaves of ArrowsBillsMorrispikesStakes[230]GunpowderHarness [231]
Henry Grace à Dieu[232]400260402000500040001500150020005 lasts500
Gabriel Royal35023020500150012005005004002 ”300
Mary Rose200180203507007003003002003 ”220
Sovereign40026040500150012005005005002 ”300
Kateryn Fortileza300210403507007003003002003½ ”220
Peter Pomegranate150130203006006002502502008 brls180
Great Nicholas135152505005002002001606 ”160
Mary James15085152005004001601601606 ”130
Mary and John1001002005004001601601606 ”90
Great Bark15088122005005002002001606 ”130
John Baptist150135152505005002002001606 ”160
Lizard60328802001606060503 ”50
Jennet10446601501205050503 ”35
Swallow20464601501205050403 ”35
Sweepstake664601501205050403 ”35

The reader will remark the small number of gunners allowed. The Sovereign had 70 or 80 pieces and the proportion here does not allow even one gunner to a piece on a broadside. Perhaps the soldiers manned the guns, but it is more likely that the seamen were beginning to take a combatant part instead of confining themselves to working the ship. Bows and arrows still formed an important part of the equipment, but although we have no similar list for shot the amount of powder shows the reliance now placed on artillery and musket fire. Incidentally, among remains of stores, we find ‘200 harquebus shot,’ 900 serpentine shot, 1350 iron ‘dyse,’ 8 darts for wildfire, to set the sails of an enemy’s ship on fire, and two chests of wildfire with quarrels.[233] Also ‘300 small and grete dyse of iern,’ 420 stone and 1000 leaden shot, 120 shot of iron ‘with cross bars,’ 22 ‘pecks for to hew gonstones’[234] and 74 arrows of wildfire.[235]

Ships, Galleys and Galleasses.

The well known picture of the embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover, on his way to the interview with Francis I in 1520, represents the Henry Grace à Dieu as the chief ship in the fleet. This was inherently improbable as the Henry drew too much water to enter either Dover or Calais harbours, but it can be proved to be incorrect from documentary evidence. The squadron consisted of the Great Bark, Less Bark, Kateryn Plesaunce, Mary and John, and two rowbarges.[236] The interview was originally proposed for 1519 and a year previously on 22nd May 1518, the Kateryn Plesaunce was commenced for the express purpose of carrying the King and Queen across the Channel.[237] She cost £323, 13s 9d, including the victualling and lodging expenses of the men working upon her, and required 80 tons of ballast.[238] In none of the accounts relating to men-of-war are there any details of extrinsic decoration, if it existed, and even in the Kateryn, intended for a royal pleasure trip there is only one charge of ten shillings for painting and gilding the ‘collere.’ House carpenters were employed for ‘the makynge of cabons and embowynge of wyndows,’ and although the chief cabin was wainscoted and lighted by 112 feet of glass, the Queen’s own cabin was cheaply furnished with a dozen ‘joined stools’ at tenpence apiece.

The Kateryn was sometimes called a bark and sometimes a galley and this leads us to the question of the classification of the royal vessels. If we accept without inquiry that of the list of 5th January 1548,[239] we find ships like the Anne Gallant, Unicorn, Salamander, Tiger, Hart, Antelope, Lion, Dragon, Jennet, Bull and Greyhound, described as galleys. But in Anthony’s list of 1546 the same vessels are called galleasses; obviously therefore the two words did not define particular types as rigidly as they do among naval archæologists to-day, or even as they did towards the end of the sixteenth century. The Kateryn galley of 1512 was a three masted vessel with bowsprit and fore and main topmasts, as was also the Rose another ‘galley’ of the early years of the reign.[240] Both were supplied with oars—thirty—as was usual with small vessels long after this date when the name galley had fallen into disuse. Another, the Sweepstake (of Henry VII), had a mizen mast,[241] and a sprit mast on the bowsprit,[242] so that it may be assumed that she also was a three-master although elsewhere she is described as ‘the king’s rowbarge called the Sweepstake.’[243]

In 1546 the Hart, Antelope, Tiger, and Bull are four-masted flush-decked ships, apparently pierced on a lower gun deck for nine pieces a side; the Anne Gallant and Grand Mistress four-masters, of 450 tons, with forecastle and poop, carrying guns on the upper and on a lower deck; the Greyhound, Lion, Jennett, and Dragon, are similar well-decked vessels with the addition of great stern and quarter galleries extending nearly the whole length of the poop and nearly one-third of the length of the vessel. The contradictions we have to face can be best exemplified by one example, the Greyhound, which in the 1548 list is called a galley, in a 1546 list said to be a copy of Anthony’s,[244] a galleass, and in that portion of Anthony’s manuscript remaining in the Museum, a ship.[245] This last authority, a series of original drawings, calls only the Greyhound, Lion, Jennett, and Dragon, ‘ships’ and the only point in which they seem to differ from the ordinary type is in the possession of the stern and quarter galleries. If these drawings are accurate, and they so far differ from each other as to lead us to suppose that they were intended to portray individual ships, it is impossible that any one of them can have been impelled by oars, although sweeps may have been occasionally and temporarily used for a particular purpose. They may have been worked from the gun-ports, in which case the Grand Mistress could only have used eight a side. The conclusion therefore is that the term galley did not imply an oared vessel of the Mediterranean type, such as we now associate with the word, but was applied first to light ships small enough to use sweeps when necessary, and later to an improved model, possibly built on finer lines than the heavy, slow moving hulks of the beginning of the reign, and expected to bear, to the ponderous 600 or 1000 ton battle ship, the same relation in speed that the real galley bore to a mediæval sailing vessel. A fleet formation of 1545 was of course based on that customary in an army and we have Van, Battle or main body, and Wing, arranged for. In that year some of the vessels just mentioned were not yet afloat, but the Salamander, Swallow, Unicorn, Jennett, Dragon, and Lion were included in the Battle. The Wing, composed of ‘galliasses and ships with ores,’ comprised among others, the Grand Mistress, Anne Gallant, and Greyhound. That they should have been classed with ‘the ships with ores,’ does not show that they were of the same order, but only that they were supposed to be sufficiently handy under sail to act with them.

There was therefore a certain number of ships, large and small, vaguely and uncertainly called galleys, possessing certain modifications on the normal type, and there is some reason to believe that the innovation, whatever may have been the particular change in form or structure, was due to Henry himself. He sometimes appears to have had his own designs carried out; a prize was to be altered ‘so as she now shall be made in every point as your Grace devised.’[246] In 1541 Chapuys wrote to the emperor:

‘The King has likewise sent to Italy for three shipwrights experienced in the art of constructing galleys, but I fancy that 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 was the inventor.’[247]

Chapuys must have been referring to the earlier Rose, Kateryn, and Swallow type, and possibly to others not now to be traced; but to the presence of the Italian shipwrights was undoubtedly owing the launch of the Galley Subtylle in 1544. ‘Subtylle’ was not an especial name, but was applied to a class more lightly built and quicker in movement than the ordinary galley. This was the only real galley built by him since it differed in no respect from the standard Mediterranean pattern, but in 1546 thirteen ‘rowbarges’ of twenty tons apiece were added to the Navy. These were rowing vessels, and unless intended for scouting or for towing and to give general assistance, it is difficult to see their utility as they were too small to engage with any chance of success. In the result they were sold within a year or two of Henry’s death. The sixteenth century galley service, such as it was, was forced on the English government by the action of Francis I in bringing his own and hired galleys round from the Mediterranean. It was always repugnant to the national temperament and soon languished when the exciting cause was removed. Although three or four galleys were carried on the navy list until 1629 the last years in which any served at sea were 1563 and 1586.