Fig. 73.—The Coque.—From a Miniature in a Manuscript Virgil of the Fifteenth Century (Riccardi Library, Florence).
In 1545, Francis I. had a magnificent carack constructed in Normandy, so richly decorated, with such lofty decks and towers, and so capitally appointed, that it was called the Great Carack. It was anchored in the roadstead of Havre-de-Grâce. Henry VIII. ordered one equally splendid (Fig. 74), in which he intended to embark when he started to meet his brother sovereign at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold. The French vessel was about to set sail at the head of a powerful fleet dispatched to meet the English. The King, desirous of inspecting it, boarded it on the eve of its departure, accompanied by a numerous and brilliant court. A collation had been prepared for him and his suite, the band was playing, salutes were thundering out in his honour, and he himself was in the midst of his inspection of the floating citadel, when suddenly cries of alarm were heard. A fire had broken out between decks; it burnt with astonishing rapidity, and, before help could be efficiently rendered, the whole of the rigging was in flames. In a few hours all that remained of the Great Carack was an immense hull, half consumed, aground on the beach, upon which the sea was casting up the corpses of those of the crew who were killed by the discharge of its cannons during the progress of the conflagration.
Fig. 74.—Man-of-War in which Henry VIII., King of England, embarked in 1520 at Dover to come to France.—From a Drawing by Holbein.
The galliot occupied an intermediate place between the ship properly so called and the large galley. It was, in fact, a slighter vessel, longer and narrower in the beam than all other kinds of ships. Galliots were sometimes, but not often, propelled by oars (Fig. 76). The ordinary build of galliot, whose poop consisted of two rounded quarter circles, separated by the rudder-post, had two decks; the largest of all had three. Two remarkable galliots are mentioned in history, one of which was an exact model of the celebrated Great Carack. It was built at Venice to carry three hundred guns and five hundred soldiers, besides its own crew of sailors, but while still in the lagoons it was caught in a tremendous hurricane. Being severely tossed by the wind and the waves, its rolls threw the whole of its heavy ordnance to the port-side, and, being unable to right itself, it turned over, and went down in sight of the town.
Fig. 75.—Spanish Ship of the End of the Fifteenth Century.—From an Engraving in the “Arte del Navegar,” by Peter of Medina.
Merely mentioning the palandres, the hourques, the pataches, and the mahones, which were smaller than the galliot, but which had certain advantages of their own, we come to a craft whose diminutive dimensions have not prevented it from acquiring a kind of historical renown, in consequence of the important events at the close of the fifteenth century in which it played a part. The craft we refer to is the caravel (Fig. 77), which had the honour of carrying Columbus to the New World. The design of the caravel was taken from the caravo, a small barque used by the Spaniards. The grace, the lightness, the fine outlines, and the speed of the caravel, recommended it to the hardy mariners who sailed, in search of new continents, across the Atlantic Ocean. Narrow at the poop, wide at the prow, carrying a double tower at its stern, and a single one at its bows, the caravel carried four vertical masts and one inclined one. Two square sails were bent from the foremast, while the three others each bore a single triangular one (Fig. 78). The caravel sailed as well against the wind as before it, and tacked as easily as a row boat; so, at least, we are told in the log of the first voyage of Columbus.
Fig. 76.—Three-masted Galley, with Square Sails, of the Sixteenth Century.—From a Picture by Raphael in the Cathedral of Sienna.