Ancient and Modern Ships, Part 1: Wooden Sailing Ships

by Sir George Charles Vincent Holmes

The Genoese ships were smaller. Two of them were of identical dimensions, viz. length of keel, 49½ ft.; length over all, 75 ft.; beam, 10 ft. The figure given for the beam appears to be too small in this case, if the dimensions of the mast, 70½ ft., are correct, for such a long mast could hardly have been carried in so narrow a boat. These vessels had two decks, and are said to have had stabling for fifty horses each; but this latter statement cannot be true if the dimensions are accurately given.

We have very little information about the ships of the end of the thirteenth and commencement of the fourteenth centuries. There is a list in existence of Cinque Ports ships which were fitted out in 1299 to take part in the war against Scotland. They were thirty in number. More than half of them had complements of two constables and thirty-nine mariners, and the smallest had one constable and nineteen mariners. There is also a statement of the tonnage and complements of ships intended for an expedition to Guienne in the year 1324, which throws some light on the size of the vessels employed in the Scottish expedition. From it we learn that a ship of 240 tons had 60 mariners and officers; one of 200 tons, 50; vessels between 160 and 180 tons, 40; of 140 tons, 35; of 120 tons, 28; of 100 tons, 26; of 80 tons, 24; and of 60 tons, 21. From the above we may infer that the largest vessels in the Cinque Ports' squadron of 1,299 were from 160 to 180 tons. The measure of a ton in those early days was probably the cubic space occupied by a tun of wine of 252 gallons in the hold of a ship.

We possess one representation of an English ship of the date of this expedition to Guienne. It was engraved on the seal of the Port of Poole in the year 1325 (Fig. [30]). It is remarkable as the earliest known instance of an English ship fitted with a rudder at the stern instead of the side-rudder, or paddle, which had been in use from the very earliest times. We also notice in this ship a further development of the stern and forecastles, which, however, were not as yet fully incorporated with the structure of the hull.

The reign of Edward III., which commenced in 1327, was, in consequence of the wars with Scotland and France, one of great naval activity. After some years of desultory naval warfare in the Channel, a famous sea fight took place at Sluys, in Dutch Flanders, about ten miles north-east of Blankenberghe, in the year 1340. The English fleet consisted of about 200 ships under the personal command of Edward III. The allied French and Genoese fleet numbered, according to the English king, 190, and was composed of ships, galleys, and barges, while some of the chroniclers have put its numbers at as many as 400 sail, but this would probably include many small craft. The battle resulted in the capture, or destruction, of nearly the whole French fleet. The English are said to have lost 4,000 men killed, and the French 25,000. In one vessel, named the Jeanne de Dieppe, captured by the Earl of Huntingdon, no fewer than 400 dead bodies were found. The latter figure shows that some very large vessels were used at this battle.

Fig. 30.—Poole seal. 1325.

Edward III. caused a gold noble to be struck in 1344 bearing the representation of a ship almost precisely similar to the vessel on the seal of Poole, of about twenty years earlier (Fig. [30]). It is fitted with a rudder at the stern, and we may therefore conclude that at this period the side-rudder, or clavus, had disappeared from all important vessels. The fore and stern castles were, in most cases, temporary additions to merchant ships, to adapt them for purposes of warfare. In fact, nearly all the sailing-ships used in naval warfare down to, and even after the fourteenth century, appear to have been employed as merchant vessels in time of peace; and this remark applies even to the king's ships. It was, no doubt, the introduction of artillery that first caused the sailing warship to be differentiated from the merchantman. Although gunpowder for military purposes is said to have been used on land as early as 1326, and although iron and brass cannon are mentioned amongst the stores of three of the king's ships in 1338, nevertheless, the battle of Sluys and the subsequent naval engagements in the reign of Edward III. appear to have been fought without artillery. It was not till the last quarter of the fourteenth century that guns became at all common on board ship.

In the year 1345 Edward III. invaded France, and was accompanied by a fleet of from 1,000 to 1,100 ships, besides small craft. Two hundred of these vessels were employed after the king's landing in ravaging the northern coasts of France and destroying the hostile shipping.

In the year 1347 Edward organised another great naval expedition against France, this time in order to give him the command of the sea during his siege of Calais. The fleet was drawn from all the ports of the kingdom, and small contingents came from Ireland, Flanders, Spain, and the king's own possession of Bayonne. There are two lists in existence of the numbers of ships and men contributed by each port to this expedition. They agree very closely. According to one of them, the united fleet consisted of 745 ships, and 15,895 mariners, or an average of about twenty mariners to each ship. This figure, of course, does not include the fighting men. About fifty of these vessels were fighting ships fitted with castles, and the remainder were barges, ballingers (which appear to have been a kind of large barge), and transports. The largest contingents, by far, came from Yarmouth, which contributed 43 ships and 1,950 men; Fowey sent 47 ships and 770 men; and Dartmouth supplied 32 ships and 756 men; while London, independently of the king's own vessels, sent only 25 ships manned with 662 men.