‘Yet could never see two ships builded of the like proportion by the best and most skilful shipwrights though they have many times undertaken the same ... because they trust rather to their judgment than their art, and to their eye than their scale and compass.’[837]
He says that they are too high out of the water, crank, and cannot carry their canvas or work their guns in a seaway; that they will not steer, and sometimes ‘their sides are not of equal proportion the one to the other,’ Waymouth, among other improvements, suggested a turret on the upper deck, moving on swivel and armed with ‘murtherers.’ In another paper he says that ‘the shipwrights of England and Christendom build ships only by uncertain and traditional precepts and by deceiving aim of their eye,’ and the resulting vessels, ‘cannot bear sail nor steer readily ... for want of art in proportioning of the mould and fitting of the masts and tackling.’[838]
It must, however, be borne in mind that for at least a quarter of a century English men-of-war had outsailed their antagonists, had weathered gales and fought actions, just as successfully as though they had been built on the most scientific modern principles. Waymouth himself was not successful as a commander at sea; perhaps he knew too much. But he was not alone in his criticisms. Ralegh, in his ‘Observations on the Navy,’ addressed to Prince Henry, says that there are six principal things required in a man-of-war, viz.: that she should be strongly built, swift, stout-sided, carry out her guns in all weathers, lie-to in a gale easily, and stay well. None of these things did the King’s ships do satisfactorily and ‘it were also behoofeful that his Majesty’s ships were not so overpestered and clogged with great ordnance ... so that much of it serves to no better use but only to labour and overcharge the ship’s sides.’ As a practical illustration of the shipwrights’ loose methods of calculation it may be mentioned that when the Prince Royal, the largest vessel of the reign, was built, Phineas Pett and Bright estimated that 775 loads of timber would be required, whereas 1627 loads were actually used, and the general increase in her cost by this error of judgment was £5908.[839] These laments did not lead to any great improvements in construction. Only a few of the vessels were in any way sheathed; in 1624 Dutch men-of-war could, literally, sail round English ones,[840] and their crankness was only imperfectly remedied by furring or girdling,[841] a method says the writer of the Nomenclator Navalis,[842] which is ‘a loss to owners and disgrace to builders and deserves punishment.... In all the world there is not so many furred as in England.’ That the advance was slow may be judged from the fact that in 1635 the Merhonour of 1589, and rebuilt in 1613, was still regarded as one of the fastest sailers in the Navy. The desire for more scientific construction and the growing importance of the shipbuilding industry may however be inferred from the incorporation of the Shipwrights’ Company in 1605. The association had existed as a fraternity from, at least, the fifteenth century, and was now of sufficient consequence to obtain a charter.
The Seamen.
An onlooker[843] said that the English were ‘good sailors and better pirates.’ Whatever their quality as seamen, or however doubtful their maritime morality, no greater care was taken now to preserve their health or improve their morals than had formerly been the case. It is true that the first article in every commission laid stress on the performance of divine service at least twice a day, while the singing of psalms at a change of watch was an old custom, but such humanising details as the punctual payment of wages,[844] a supply of eatable provisions, hospitals for the sick, and suitable clothes, had not yet recommended themselves to the authorities as modes either of obtaining men or of keeping them in the service. Ralegh writes, ‘They go with as great a grudging to serve in his Majesty’s ships as if it were to be slaves in the galleys.’ James I made no use of the Navy beyond fitting out the Algiers expedition of 1620, and commissioning a few ships, year by year, to serve in the narrow seas; but for these few vessels it was found equally difficult to obtain men and to retain them when caught, now that the incitements of Spanish prizes were wanting, while the mortality afloat was equal to that of the worst days of Elizabeth. The only occasion when a large number of men were required was for the fleet preparing in 1625, before the death of James, and then the Navy Commissioners wrote to Buckingham that ‘the pressed men run away as fast as we send them down.’[845] Captain Christian of the Bonaventure, almost a new ship, serving on the east coast, in 1623, wrote of ‘the weak, and I may truly say miserable state of this ship ... of 160 men there are but 70 persons of all sorts that at present is either fit or able to do the least labour in the ship.’[846] There was also a great infection and mortality on board the Garland. Captain Christian complains too of the quality of the men pressed; ‘of all the whole company when they are at the best there are not twenty helmsmen and but three that can heave a lead.’
These instances belong to the end of the reign but matters had not changed: they had only continued. In 1608 it was said that ‘the navy is for the greatest part manned with aged, impotent, vagrant, lewd, and disorderly companions; it is become a ragged regiment of common rogues.’[847] In the Algiers fleet one ship put ashore ninety-two sick men at Malaga at one time. A hospital ship, the Goodwill, accompanied this fleet but she was afterwards ‘commanded for other purposes’ and the invalids thrust ashore on the cold charity to be found in a Spanish port. But of course statistics of sickness and death are everywhere rarely referred to in comparison with salutes, state visits, and other affairs of personal dignity.
Although the sailor was not properly fed and paid even if he behaved well, he suffered sufficiently severe penalties for bad conduct. Flogging was so common that ‘some sailors do believe in good earnest that they shall never have a fair wind until the poor boys be duly ... whipped every Monday morning.’ Ducking, keelhauling, tongue-scraping, and tying up with weights hung round the neck ’till heart and back be ready to break’ were common punishments. ‘These will tame the most rude and savage people in the world,’ says Monson. If these punishments were older than Elizabeth they were semi-illegal customs and if connived at were not publicly recognised. They were now part of ordinary discipline and mark the downward progress of the sailor in self-respect and social estimation. They were easier and cheaper to apply than good government but they bore their Nemesis in the next reign. The old custom of lashing to the bowsprit a sailor who had four times slept on watch, and letting him drown or starve still existed.[848] Small wonder that the men ‘abhorred’[849] the employment of the crown, and that in 1625 the shipkeepers at Chatham included weavers, barbers, tailors, bakers, shoemakers, etc., ‘most of whom had never been to sea.’[850]
The Administration:—The Navy Officers.
The disorganisation of a service commonly presses most hardly on its weakest members; those of higher rank have usually sufficient influence to preserve their rights or, if unscrupulous, to help themselves to unlicensed gains in the general scramble. Nottingham was still at the head of the Navy as Lord Admiral, a post he retained till 1618. Englishmen will always remember him with respect as the commander of 1588, but a perusal of the various papers relating to the naval administration of this period compels one to conclude that while always ready to do his duty en grand seigneur, to command fleets, and to accept responsibility and decide when referred to, he took but a fingertip interest in those details of which successful organisation consists, while his implicit confidence in his subordinates was a disastrous weakness. Moreover he was now growing very old and had doubtless lost much of his former clearness of mental vision. During the lifetime of Hawkyns and under the keen supervision of the Queen and her ministers this neglect mattered little, but from 1596 onwards the conduct of the Navy Office degenerated rapidly. Langford had possessed no authority and Grevill, if weak, had not been Navy Treasurer long enough to do much good or harm, although signs were not wanting during the closing years of Elizabeth’s life that the able control that had made the Navy so terrible to England’s foes was relaxing. But the appointment in 1604[851] of Sir Robert Mansell was most unfortunate. Mansell, who was an indifferent seaman and an incapable and dishonest administrator, and whose only claim to the place was his relationship to, and favour with, Nottingham, remained in office until 1618, and the greater portion of this section is practically a record of his unfitness for his important charge.