As an instance of the license to which this liberty was extended, may be mentioned the Barton family who, in the fifteenth century, had granted to them letters of marque to prey upon the Portuguese in retaliation for the murder of John Barton, who was captured and beheaded by Portuguese. His sons conducted the enterprise with such thoroughness that they were able to pay their Scottish Royal master so well that they were never interfered with by him, and when he entrusted them with the task of reducing the Flemish pirates who levied toll on Scottish commerce, they sent him a few barrels filled with pickled human heads to show that they were not idle. The fame of this Scottish family became world wide, for they had now a powerful fleet and traded and fought and captured where they would, so that the reputation of the Scottish navy was great. One of the ships of the Barton family, the Lion, was second in size and armament only to the Great Harry itself. The death of Sir Andrew Barton is commemorated in a well-known ballad.
When vessels with two and more decks were constructed, the lower ports were cut so near the water that when the vessel heeled, or even a moderate sea was running, the guns could not be worked. The ports of the Mary Rose, which was the next largest ship to the Regent, at one time, and had a tonnage variously stated at 500 and 660 tons, though afterwards surpassed by the Sovereign, 800 tons, Gabriel Royal, 650 tons, and Katherine Forteless, or Fortileza, were but 16 inches above the water. She was lost, in 1545, through the water entering her lower ports when going about off Spithead, and her commander and six hundred men went down with her; the Great Harry had a narrow escape from a similar disaster at the same time.
A report on the Royal Navy in 1552 makes interesting reading. The fleet was overhauled, and twenty-four “ships and pinnaces are in good case to serve, so that they may be grounded and caulked once a year to keep them tight.” This is endorsed, “To be so ordered, By the King’s Command.” Other seven ships were ordered to be “docked and new dubbed, to search their treenails and iron work.” The Mrs. Grand, a name which no longer adorns the “Navy List,” a vessel carrying a crew of two hundred and fifty men, and having one brass gun and twenty-two iron guns, lying at Deptford, was recommended to be “dry-docked—not thought worthy of new making”; so she was ordered “To lie still, or to take that which is profitable of her for other Ships.” Six others were stated in the report—a document seemingly the work of a naval reform party—to be “not worth keeping,” but they were ordered “To be preserved, as they may with little charge.”
Queen Elizabeth, whose patriotism and naval enthusiasm were about equally in evidence, was careful of her men and ships, raised the pay of her officers and seamen, and took steps generally to have the navy and the naval resources strengthened and conserved. She seems to have had twenty-nine vessels in 1565. She also encouraged merchants to build large vessels, which could be converted into warships as occasion required. The exigencies of trading over sea, however, were such that many of the vessels required little to be done to them in the way of conversion. Vessels were also rated at from 50 to 100 tons more than they measured.
BREECH-LOADING GUN RECOVERED FROM THE
WRECK OF THE “MARY ROSE.”
In the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution. A spare chamber
is shown in the front.
“The Queen’s Highness,” a contemporary historian writes,[19] “hath at this present already made and furnished, to the number of One Hundred and Twenty Great Ships, which lie for the most part in Gillingham Road. Beside these, her Grace hath other in hand also; she hath likewise three notable Galleys, the Speedwell, the Tryeright, and the Black Galley, with the sight whereof, and the rest of the Navy-Royal, it is incredible to say how marvellously her Grace is delighted. I add, to the end that all men should understand somewhat of the great masses of treasure daily employed upon our Navy, how there are few merchant ships of the first and second sort, that being apparelled and made ready to sail, are not worth one thousand pounds, or three thousand ducats at the least, if they should presently be sold. What then shall we think of the Navy-Royal, of which some one vessel is worth two of the other, as the shipwright has often told me.”
Queen Elizabeth had, in 1578, twenty-four ships ranging from the Triumph, of 1,000 tons, built in 1561, to the George, of under 60 tons.
When the Spanish Armada arrived in the Channel in 1588, the British fleet, which numbered one hundred and ninety-seven vessels, included thirty-four belonging to the state. The remainder were ships of various kinds and sizes, mostly small, hired by the state or provided by private owners, and fitted out hastily for war purposes by their owners or the ports. The Cinque Ports, it should be remembered, which furnished a considerable number, were obliged by Henry VIII., in return for certain privileges, to supply him with fifty-seven ships, each containing twenty-one men and a boy, for fifteen days once a year at the ports’ expense, and it often happened that the ports had to find a greater number of vessels. After the fifteen days they received state pay. A similar arrangement held good at the time of the Armada. The largest ships in the English force are sometimes stated to have carried fifty-five or sixty guns, and one may have carried sixty-eight guns. The armament of the Triumph, which was the heaviest armed English vessel, comprised four cannon, three demi-cannon, seventeen culverins, eight demi-culverins, six sakers, and four small pieces. The Elizabeth Jones, of 900 tons, built in 1559, carried fifty-six guns, and the Ark Royal, Lord Howard’s flagship, launched in 1587, had fifty-eight guns and a crew of four hundred and thirty men, her tonnage being 800. The principal royal ships and the number of guns they carried were, as far as can be ascertained accurately: Ark Royal, fifty-five guns; Lion, thirty-eight; Triumph, forty-two; Victory, forty-two; Bonaventure, thirty-four; Dreadnought, thirty-two; Nonpareil, thirty-eight; Rainbow, forty; Vanguard, forty; Mary Rose, thirty-six; Antelope, thirty; and Swiftsure, forty-two. The Spanish ships were rather floating fortresses packed with soldiers, and desiring to come to close quarters so that the fight should be of the hand-to-hand description to which they were accustomed. The English ships were smaller, and though more numerous, of little more than half the total tonnage of the Armada, and were, on the whole, more lightly armed. Still, a large number of the English vessels carried what were long, heavy guns for those days, and they used them at short range when they assumed a windward position and attacked the Spanish rear, inflicting great damage and throwing the enemy into confusion. This defeat definitely established the cannon as the principal weapon for warfare afloat, and inaugurated a new era in the history of the world’s fighting navies.