1.—The Shipwrights.
It might be supposed that so ancient a craft as that of shipbuilding would have left some trace in contemporary records of its activities, the methods of its technique, and the personalities of those engaged in it. Yet although references to ships and shipping are frequent in the records of this country from the earliest times, and although the shipwright was a distinct class of workman at least as early as the tenth century—probably much earlier—no record of the methods in which he set about the design and construction of ships earlier than the end of the sixteenth century appears to have survived.
It may be presumed that those of our earlier kings who possessed a navy royal, and did not rely entirely on the support of the Cinque Ports and of the merchant shipping, would include among their servants some skilled man to perform the functions of a master shipwright, and if not to design, at any rate to look to the upkeep of the king's ships and to watch the construction in private yards of those intended for the royal service. But if the Clerk of the Ships, who first comes into notice in the reign of John, had any such subordinate, his existence before the end of the reign of Henry V is not known to us. It is, however, possible that, on occasion, this duty was performed by the king's carpenters, whose principal function seems to have been to keep the woodwork of the royal castles in repair. In 1337 forty oaks required in the construction of a galley, then being built at Hull for Edward III under the superintendence of William de la Pole, a prominent merchant of that town, were supplied by the Prior of Blyth, who was directed to hand them over to William de Kelm (Kelham), the king's carpenter (carpentario nostro).[5] The accounts for this galley have not survived, and there is no means of ascertaining whether William de Kelm had anything to do with the actual construction. Another galley and a barge were at the same time being built at Lynn under Thomas and William de Melcheburn. The accounts[6] show that the master carpenter (magister carpentariorum) of the galley was John Kech, who was paid at the rate of sixpence[7] a day and had under him six carpenters at fivepence a day, six 'clynckers' at fourpence, six holders at threepence, and four labourers (servientes) at twopence halfpenny. The master carpenter of the barge was Ralph atte Grene, who received the same rate of pay as Kech. Neither Kech nor Grene appear as the King's servants.
In 1421 the 'King's servant' John Hoggekyns, 'master carpenter of the king's ships,' was granted by letters patent a pension of fourpence a day, 'because in labouring long about them he is much shaken and deteriorated in body,' and this grant was confirmed in December of the following year on the accession of Henry VI. In 1416-18 Hoggekyns had built the Grace Dieu, 'if not the largest, probably the best equipped ship yet built in England.'[8]
With the sale of most of the royal navy on the death of Henry V, the need for a 'master carpenter of the King's Ships' must have passed away, and no trace of any further appointment of this character has been found for over a century. The construction of the Regent in 1486 was entrusted by Henry VII to the Master of the Ordnance, and it seems probable that the design of the Henri Grace à Dieu, built in 1514, was the work of the Clerk of the Ships, Robert Brygandin,[9] although the superintendence of her building was entrusted to William Bond (or Bound), who is described in 1519 as 'late clerk of the poultry, surveyor, and payer of expenses for the construction of the Henri Grace à Dieu and the three other galleys.'[10]
It is not until the later years of Henry VIII's reign that steps appear to have been taken to establish in the royal service a permanent body of men skilled in the art of shipbuilding. From the earliest times of which records exist it had been the practice to send out agents to the various ports to impress the shipwrights, caulkers, sawyers, and other workmen required for the construction and repair of ships of the Royal Navy. This system was no doubt satisfactory while the merchant ship and the royal ship presented no essential points of difference; the latter were, indeed, often let out to hire for mercantile purposes. But when the ship-of-war began to carry a larger number of guns than the trading ship found necessary for her protection—a change that may be roughly dated from the end of the fifteenth century—the methods of construction began to diverge, and the old system of casual impressment must have tended to become less and less satisfactory; so that when Henry, after remodelling the material of the Navy, turned, at the end of his reign, to the improvement of the Administration he no doubt saw the necessity of attracting permanently to his service men capable of directing the art of shipbuilding, as applied to ships of war, in the new channels in which it was henceforth destined to run.
Up to this point, the position of the shipwright—even of the Master Shipwright—was not an exalted one. He was classed among 'servants' and 'artificers,' and his pay was made the subject of legislation expressly designed to keep the wages of those classes as low as possible. In 'Naval Accounts and Inventories of the Reign of Henry VII, 1485-8 and 1495-7,' Mr. Oppenheim has edited material which illustrates the various rates paid to shipwrights, and has pointed out that these rates of pay 'had remained practically unaltered since the days of Henry V.' An Act of Parliament of 1495[11] laid down the following scale of payments:—
| From Candlemas to Michaelmas. | ||
| With meat and drink, a day | Without meat and drink, a day | |
| Master Ship Carpenter with charge of work and men under him | 5d. | 7d. |
| Other Ship Carpenter called a Hewer | 4d. | 6d. |
| An able Clincher | 3d. | 5d. |
| Holder | 2d. | 4d. |
| Master Caulker | 4d. | 6d. |
| A mean Caulker | 3d. | 5d. |
| Caulker labouring by the tide, for as long as he may labour above water and beneath water, shall not exceed for every tide | 4d. | — |
| From Michaelmas to Candlemas. | ||
| Master Shipwright | 4d. | 6d. |
| Hewer | 3d. | 5d. |
| Able Clincher | 2½d. | 4½d. |
| Holder | 1½d. | 3d. |
| Master Caulker | 3d. | 5d. |
| A mean Caulker | 2½d. | 4½d. |
This Act was repealed in 1496, but the same scale was fixed in 1514 by an Act[12] that was not repealed until 1562.