In the eleventh century, at the battle of Durazzo, the Venetian ships, being hard pressed by the Italo-Norman fleet of Robert Guiscard, Duke of Puglia and Calabria, and unable to make for the land owing to the dropping of the wind, ranged themselves in a line, and bound themselves together, leaving but a small interval between each ship, just sufficient to allow their smaller vessels to row out, harass the enemy, and hasten back again. This style of battle was not a new one, being the reproduction of a manœuvre invented or employed for the first time by Scipio in the days of ancient Rome. When time had developed the progress of marine artillery, a fleet composed of large ships, in giving battle to one consisting of galleys, always presented their broadsides to their antagonists, since, in this position, the fire from their double row of cannon could do the galleys the most harm. This order of battle, however, was not always observed, particularly when the guns, owing to their great weight, were placed in the prow (Fig. 93).
At first, merely to preserve the wood, the ship-builders covered every part of the vessel exposed to the action of the air or water with a coating of pitch, but this sombre and uniform tint soon wearied the eye. A more brilliant colour, prepared with wax, was painted over the pitch; the costlier class of ships glistened in all the splendour of white, ultramarine, and vermilion, while pirates, and occasionally men-of-war, were covered with a coat of green paint, which, blending with the colour of the sea, prevented them from being distinguished at any distance. Gilding glistened on the vessels of the rich, and the sculptor’s chisel added busts and figures to the decoration of their bows and sterns. Even in this respect the Middle Ages still followed the traditions of antiquity.
The decorations of ships varied according to the caprice of owners and the fashion of the times. The Saracen dromon boarded and taken by Richard Cœur-de-Lion had one side coloured green and the other yellow. The Genoese at first painted their ships green; but in 1242, when they were at war with the Pisans, they coloured them white spotted with vermilion crosses, that is, “red crosses on a silver ground,” which resembled the arms of “Monsieur Saint-Georges.” Red was the colour generally adopted for ships’ hulls in the sixteenth century, though a pattern in black and white was sometimes added, and sometimes the ground was painted black and the pattern only vermilion.
Fig. 93.—Pontifical Galley with Sails and Oars, and provided with heavy Artillery.—Drawn by Breugel the Elder, and engraved by Fr. Huys (1550).
In 1525, when Francis I., made prisoner at the battle of Pavia, was taken to Barcelona, the six galleys which carried the captive sovereign and his suite were painted entirely black from the top of the masts to the water-line. This was not, however, the first time that ships had been known to put on mourning: for instance, the Knights of St. Stephen, in the fifteenth century, hid the brilliant hues of their Capitane,[6] and painted its sails, pennants, awnings, oars, and hull with black, and swore never to alter the sombre hue till their order had recaptured from the Turks a galley lost by the Pisans in an engagement which, however, had not been altogether inglorious for the vanquished.
Fig. 94.—Seal of Edward, Count of Rutland (1395).
Vessels in the Middle Ages, as in ancient times, had frequently gold-coloured and purple sails. The sails of seigniorial ships were generally brilliantly emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of the seignior (Fig. 94); the sails of merchant vessels and of fishing boats with the image of a saint, the patron figure of the Virgin, a pious legend, a sacramental word, or a sacred sign, intended to exorcise evil spirits, who played no inconsiderable part in the superstitions of the toilers of the deep. Different kinds of sails were originally employed to make signals at sea, but flags soon began to be used for this purpose. A single flag, having a different meaning according to its position, ordinarily sufficed to transmit all necessary orders in the daytime. At night its place was taken by lighted beacons. These flags, banners, standards, and pennants, most of them embroidered with the arms of a town, a sovereign, or an admiral, were made of some light stuff, taffeta or satin. Sometimes square, sometimes triangular, sometimes forked, each had its own use and signification, either for the embellishment of the vessel’s appearance or to assist in its manœuvring. The galleys were provided with a smaller kind of pennant, which was put up at the prow or fastened to the handle of each oar: these were purely for ornamental purposes, and were often trimmed with golden or silken fringes.
Amongst the most celebrated flags and standards of the French navy we must not omit to mention the baucents, a name that recalls the Bauséant, the banner of the Knights Templars. These flags, made of red taffeta, and sometimes “sprinkled with gold,” were only employed in the most merciless wars, for, says a document of 1292, “they signified certain death and mortal strife to all sailors everywhere.” In 1570, Marco-Antonio Colonna hoisted on his flag galley a pennant of crimson damask, which bore on both sides a Christ on the Cross between St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Emperor Constantine’s motto, In hoc signo vinces. The banner which Don Juan of Austria received at Naples, on the 14th of April, 1571, with the staff of supreme command over the Christian league, was made of crimson damask fringed with gold, on which were embroidered, besides the arms of the prince, a crucifix with the arms of the Pope, of the Catholic king, and of the republic of Venice, united by a chain, symbolical of the union of the three powers “against the Turk.”