Man on the Ocean: A Book about Boats and Ships

by R. M. Ballantyne

England under the Normans does not seem to have greatly desired to excel in maritime enterprise, but it was otherwise during the Plantagenet period. Henry the Second possessed a most formidable fleet, numbering some five hundred vessels of war. During the reign of his successor a novel artifice in naval warfare was resorted to by the English which merits notice. The English admiral caused a number of barrels of unslaked lime to be placed in his ships. Having brought his fleet to windward of the enemy—the French—he ordered water to be poured on the lime. This of course raised a great and dense smoke, which, being blown by the wind into the very faces of the French, prevented the latter from seeing on what quarter they were being attacked. A panic arose, and spread, among the French vessels, and the victory fell easily to the English.

The navy of Edward the Third numbered eleven hundred ships when he undertook the invasion of France. But the great majority of these were not properly men-of-war—in fact, there were only five fully equipped warships; the rest were for the most part merchant vessels converted into fighting ships and transports for the time being. The navy of King Philip of France, though numerically weaker, far surpassed that of the English king in point of equipment. Of the four hundred ships of which it consisted, no fewer than one hundred had, been built purposely for war, according to the best principles of naval architecture then known. Bows, catapults, javelins, and weapons of a like description were the engines of offence used on both sides, and with these much havoc was wrought at close quarters. The English were victorious, notwithstanding the more scientific equipment of their foes. The French ships were boarded, and the flower of King Philip’s naval force must that day have perished.

Henry the Seventh did much for the improvement of the English navy. It was during his reign that the Great Harry was built, which was really the first large ship built directly for the Royal Navy. Hitherto the vessels employed by England for national defence or offence had been supplied by certain maritime towns; but the Great Harry was the property of the people. She was built in 1488, and had port-holes for cannon in the lower deck, being the first vessel thus constructed. The Great Harry was subsequently far surpassed by another of King Henry’s ships, the Grace de Dieu, which was no less than one thousand tons burden, and carried seven hundred men and one hundred and twenty-two guns, (some writers mention only eighty guns) the largest of which were but eighteen-pounders. The Grace de Dieu was a four-masted vessel, and was built in 1515.

An epoch in England’s maritime history, which was in some respects the most brilliant and momentous, now falls to be mentioned; a period when England’s name became a synonym on the seas for everything that was most intrepid and successful in maritime enterprise; an era of daring adventure and splendid achievement, which at length established England as the first naval power among the nations of Europe.

Not without long and fierce struggle, however, was this supremacy won. The French, Spanish, and Dutch each and all in turn disputed England’s claim to the sovereignty of the seas. It is unnecessary to repeat here the oft-told tale of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, nor yet the almost as familiar story of our frequent naval encounters with the Dutch in the days of Admiral Blake and the great Dutch Admiral Van Tromp. Long and desperate those conflicts were, and nothing but indomitable courage and stubborn perseverance could have secured the victory for the English ships, for in almost every instance our foes were numerically the stronger.

In the thrice famous days of Nelson, it was still our “wooden walls” which carried the flag of England on from triumph to triumph. At the battle of Trafalgar the Victory and the French ship the Redoubtable were brought up close alongside of each other, and in this position poured volley after volley upon each other’s bulwarks, until water had to be thrown over the ships’ sides to prevent them igniting. The Victory was a grand ship in her time, yet she was not more than two thousand tons burden, and her guns were but one hundred and two in number.

But at last the day arrived when it became manifest that the glory of our “wooden walls” had set. In the prime of his intellectual and physical strength, the Emperor Louis Napoleon was a man of active and subtle brain, and it was to his ingenious invention that the first ironclad ship of war owed its birth. Floating batteries protected with iron plates were first employed during the Crimean War. It was becoming manifest that the great strides which were being made in the manufacture of cannon must necessitate an improved system of defensive armour for ships of war. No wooden vessel that could be constructed could be proof against the new guns that were now coming rapidly into use.

The French, as has been just indicated, were the first in the field with the new style of war-ships. La Gloire was built, and was quickly followed by our own Warrior. The frame of La Gloire was constructed of wood, but covered with an iron plating four and a half inches in thickness. The Warrior was built on an iron frame, and her armour-plating is of the same thickness as that of La Gloire; the lining is of solid teak eighteen inches thick, which is again backed by an inner coating of iron. The length of the Warrior is three hundred and eighty feet, but only about two-thirds of this is iron-plated.

At this time—the early days of ironclads—the heaviest shot that could be thrown by any gun was a sixty-eight pounder. Guns of this calibre the Warrior and her class were proof against. But the guns increased rapidly in size and power, and the thickness of the armour with which the ships were protected had to be increased in proportion. The class of war-vessels which succeeded the Warrior were entirely cased with iron plates, whose thickness has from time to time been increased. Since the first ironclad was built, then, a contest—for only such it can be called—has been going on between the cannon-maker and the ship-builder, the one striving to construct a gun which shall pierce the thickest armour which the ship can carry, the other adding inch upon inch to his armour plates, to the end that they may be shot-proof; and this contest may be said to be going on at this hour.

Will there ever be the same romance about the warships of the present day,—what those of the future will be like we do not care to speculate,—and the old “wooden walls” whose prowess on the high seas founded England’s maritime glory? Will a Dibdin ever arise to sing a Devastation or a Glatton? Can a Devastation or a Glatton ever inspire poetic thoughts and images? One would say that the singer must be endowed in no ordinary degree with the sacred fire whom such a theme as a modern ironclad turret-ship should move to lyric utterance. It has been said that all the romance of the road died out with the old coaching days; and certainly a locomotive engine, with its long black train of practical-looking cars, makes hardly so picturesque a feature in the landscape as one of the old stage-coaches with its red-coated driver, horn-blowing guard, and team of mettled greys; but a railway train is an embodiment of poetry compared with a turret-ship. But if it be true that poetry and romance must more and more cease to be associated with our navy, we must just accept the fact, for nothing is more certain than that, whatever the warships of the future may be, we can never again return to the days of the old wooden ships.