Flags, etc.
Men on deck were sheltered by waistcloths of canvas above the bulwarks which were painted in oil colours; the Merhonour required 542 yards. Sometimes the waistcloths were used for the forecastle and poop while the waist itself was protected by nettings.[829] Men-of-war alone seem to have been entitled to wear a flag at the main, ‘the earl’s ship after the taking of the carrack very undutifully bore his flag in the main top which no subject’s ship ought to presume to do.’ The St George’s cross was generally used; the flag shown on the ensign staff of the Elizabethan man-of-war is of green and white, the Tudor colours, and is one that was in common use during the sixteenth century. In 1592 the Levant Company was permitted to use ‘the armes of Englande with the redd crosse in white over the same as heretofore they used.’[830] Representations of saints on flags had ceased but other emblems were still in use; falcons, lions, the royal arms, and ‘her Maiesties badges in silver and gold,’ are mentioned. We have ‘sarcenets of divers colours’ for ensigns, red and blue say for banners, red say for streamers, and red and white cloth for flags.[831] The Cadiz fleet of 1596 had four large flags, one white, one orange tawney, one blue, and one crimson, ‘which were appointed to be so made for the distinguishing of the four squadrons of the flete.’[832] This appears to have been the earliest distinction of squadrons by flags, afterwards shown by the red, white, and blue. The salute to the flag was upheld under circumstances where it might have been more diplomatic to escape the necessity of claiming it. When Anne of Austria was expected to travel by sea to Spain to marry Philip, De Guaras wrote, ‘although it is quite incredible it is generally affirmed that when our fleet passes, the English fleet will force it to salute. This absurdity sounds like a joke but it is asserted by persons of weight who assure us that the admiral bears orders to do all manner of wonderful things if our fleet does not salute.’ It is said, however, that they had to salute.
It speaks sufficiently for the courage of the Elizabethan sailor that during the whole of the reign only two English men-of-war were captured by Spain, and then only after desperate fighting against overwhelming superiority of force.[833] It speaks equally well for his seamanship afloat and the skill and good workmanship of shipwrights ashore that, with the exception of the small Lion’s Whelp, no dockyard built ship was lost by stress of weather, by fire, or by running aground. During the same years, and sometimes during the same gales, that the English ships weathered successfully, whole Spanish fleets foundered at sea.
JAMES I
1603-1625
The Condition of the Navy.
On 24th March 1603 the weapon forged by Henry VIII, and wielded by Elizabeth, fell into the feeble hand of James Stewart. Elizabeth left England supreme at sea; the Royal Navy bequeathed by the Queen to her successor was by far the finest fleet of men-of-war then afloat, for it was not until the close of the sixteenth century that Spain and Holland commenced to build ships for purely fighting purposes.[834] The men who manned it were renowned for hardihood, daring, and smart seamanship; and its organisation as controlled by the great seamen of her reign was more efficient and smoother in its working than any other of the departments of state.[835] Even in 1558 the days were in reality long past when Spanish fleets were to be feared, and when the Bay of Biscay could be proudly called ‘the Spanish Sea’; but it was due to Elizabeth’s sagacity that the weapon which was to slay the Goliath threatening European civilisation was at once recognised and unhesitatingly used. Until 1558 the supremacy even of the Channel, often hardly contested, had been only occasionally gained. Elizabeth was the first of English sovereigns throughout the whole of whose reign the national flag flew supreme and triumphant in the English Channel. That she was aided by the legacy of a fleet, by the helplessness of France, by changing economic conditions at home, by the revolt of the United Provinces abroad, and possibly by the wisdom of far-seeing advisers, may have made her task easier, but these things do not detract from the praise due to her discernment. The student, perhaps too often reasoning with a knowledge of results, may sometimes feel anger with Elizabeth but hardly contempt. James arouses no qualification of emotion. He commenced his reign with a fleet ‘fit to go anywhere and do anything;’ he allowed it to crumble away while spending on it more money during peace than Elizabeth did during war; he chose the most unfit men to manage it at home and command it abroad, and the results of his weak and purposeless rule were seen in the shameful fiasco of 1625 and the degradation of English prestige. Had not Buckingham reorganised the Admiralty in 1618 there would shortly have been no Navy to rouse the jealousy of foreign powers. The Regency of 1423 deliberately destroyed the Navy either from ignorance or from motives now unknown; James followed the same course with the best intentions and could doubtless have justified all his actions in choice Latinity. It will be seen that he took an even keener personal interest in the Navy than did Elizabeth, but the lack of controlling capacity so disastrously shown in other affairs was equally fatal to naval administration. The naval records of his reign are but a sorry collection of relations of frauds, embezzlements, commissions of inquiry, and feeble palliatives.
The first wish of the new monarch was to obtain peace with Spain, a desire for which modern historians have unanimously praised him, although it may be at least a matter for debate whether the continuance of war until Spain was bled to death would not have been ethically justifiable, politically expedient, and commercially profitable. On 23rd June 1603, a proclamation was issued recalling all vessels which had been sent out with hostile intent, and thus ending the lucrative privateering speculations which, when undertaken on a small scale, had so long provided occupation and profit for English sailors and merchants. The last important prize taken by the Queen’s ships was the St Valentine, a Portuguese carrack captured by Sir R. Leveson in 1602, and its cargo was sold in 1604 for upwards of £26,000.[836]
Shipbuilding.
The improvements in construction that marked the close of the sixteenth century have already been noticed and first, among these may be placed the increase in length and decrease in height above water attributed to Sir John Hawkyns. But the greater demand for faster and more seaworthy ships had not produced models satisfactory to the more critical experts of this generation. Shipbuilding was not yet a science and seemed in some respects to have even retrograded from the standard of the last years of Henry VIII. The subsequent tendency to overload ships, however small, with towering poop and forecastle structures, although it can be explained by the necessity for providing increased accommodation, can scarcely be considered an improvement on the earlier type. Captain George Waymouth, who appears to have been considered an authority on the theory and practice of shipbuilding and navigation, and who was several times called to report independently on the workmanship displayed on the royal ships, was very severe on his professional contemporaries, and writes that he