Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

For hundreds of years oars were the chief means of propulsion, the sails only being availed of when the wind was very favourable. To increase the speed of the vessels, bank after bank of oars was added until ships carrying as many as eighteen banks are averred to have been constructed—though the evidence of the correctness of the statement is a long way from being conclusive—and one historian even goes to the length of asserting that a ship having forty banks of oars was built, but this may be disbelieved. For the most part, ships having two, three, or four banks were preferred for war purposes, because of their handiness.

Greater ships were afterwards built and improvements made in the shape and size of the sails and spars used, and the number of masts was increased.

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Meanwhile in the Far North a seafaring nation was proving its worth. The wild men of the wilder North, the Danes, the Scandinavian Vikings—turbulent, adventurous and fierce, to whom fear was a word unknown—animated by the virile yet mystic mythology of the North, and inspired by the love of conquest and travel, now began to play their part in the world’s naval history. The Vikings produced the “long ship,” the “serpent,” daring in conception, marvellous in construction, possessing wonderful qualities as a sea-boat, fast under sail or oar, and of a beauty of outline and shape hardly to be excelled even now. Such were the vessels in which the Danes invaded England, and by building vessels as good as those of the Danes, and some rather better, King Alfred repulsed the invaders and implanted in the English that “habit of the sea” they have never lost. But the lesson of the Norsemen was destined to lie dormant for many a long year. Although the Romans had introduced the “long ship” for war purposes—so-called because it was longer in proportion to its beam than the merchant ships—the Mediterranean shipbuilders preferred as a whole to retain the heavy hull, and the form they believed best suited to their needs upon the tideless sea. Slave power was cheap, and was to be had for the trouble of capturing, and for many centuries oar-driven galleys were preferred over any vessel dependent upon sails only, and were to be found in the Mediterranean as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.

As ships of greater size were provided in the Middle Ages, huge erections in the shape of castles were added at the bow and stern: great, unwieldy craft which contemporary historians likened to floating islands. The Venetian and Genoese republics elevated the art of constructing oared galleasses to its highest, and ere long Spain took the lead in producing warships with dimensions and power of armament which made her the chief maritime power of the world.

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In England, owing to alternate periods of stimulation and neglect by the authorities, the progress of shipbuilding was spasmodic. The roughness of the waters round our coasts, and along the Atlantic coasts of France, the Low Countries and North Western Europe, caused greater dependence to be placed in small vessels having good sea-going qualities and using sail whenever possible. The Great Harry was begun in the reign of Henry VII. and finished in the reign of his uxorious successor, and is interesting as indicating that shipbuilders in England were even then able to turn out a sea-going vessel superior to anything afloat. Henry VIII. established royal shipbuilding yards at Woolwich and Deptford, and thus founded the modern navy, but few warships for the King’s service were built there in his time, and during his reign and for many a long year after it was the custom to hire merchant vessels and arm them—if they were not already armed to protect themselves against pirates—to augment the national fleet. Religious, no less than national, rivalry contributed, albeit unconsciously, to the development of the efficacy of the warship as a fighting unit. The enmity between Britain and Spain culminated, in Elizabeth’s reign, after a series of daring attacks by reckless Englishmen upon the Spanish fleet in preparation for the great attack upon England, in the dispatch of the Armada. Hawkins and one or two others foresaw that the advantage would lie with the fleet which could be most effectively manœuvred. The disparity between the Armada and the British fleet was not so great as many writers have represented, either in the size or number of the vessels; but the British vessels on the average were smaller, faster, and better handled; in other words, efficiency told against sheer weight of numbers. This was the last great sea-fight on the ocean in which oared ships took part; they were no match for their smaller and more speedy sailing antagonists.

Structurally, most of the vessels of this time, the larger especially, were disfigured by high sterncastles, but early in the seventeenth century this encumbrance and many others had disappeared. Thence to the nineteenth century the development of warships was marked mainly by continual increases in their size, improving their form of hull and, consequently, their speed and buoyancy; augmenting their sail area and perfecting the square-rigged system; and adding to the number of gun decks and the number of guns carried; until the grand wooden three-deckers swept the seas in all their ponderous pride and majesty. Ships of the line of various ratings played their part, and were ably seconded by frigates, brigs, cutters, sloops and bomb-ketches. All these were in vogue less than a century ago, and though not forgotten, are looked upon as historical and romantic and interesting curiosities.

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In the weapons, no less than in the ships, the changes have been marvellous. For many centuries after ships were adopted for war, the fighting was done by soldiers carried aboard them. The human machines, the rowers, had to attend exclusively to their oars, for on them the safety or success of the fighting men depended. The main idea was to get to close quarters and fight hand to hand with javelin or sword, spear or battleaxe; bows and arrows were used when possible, and missiles hurled by hand were not despised. The ram, in various forms, affixed to the bows in such a manner as to strike the enemy’s ship below or above the water-line, or both, was used with fearful effect in many a stubbornly fought engagement.