It was in 1599 that Edward Wright published his “Haven-finding Art.” In his volume “Certaine Errors in Navigation,” he complains of the errors in the proportions of the existing charts. These consisted in wrongly showing the distances of places. He speaks also of sailing “by a great Circle, which is to bee drawne by those two places,” and asserts that this is a better method than sailing always at right angles to the meridian. In practically all the charts of this age the surface was ruled with rhumb-lines from the thirty-two points of the compass, as is still the case to-day on certain Dutch charts. The origin of the word “rhumb” was Portuguese, and doubtless these lines appeared on the earliest Portuguese charts. In the first of these two books, Wright also furnished a table of variations of the compass in different parts of the world.

As to the practical side of navigation, Bourne exhorted his mariners to remember that the earth is a globe and not a “platforme,” as “generally the most parte of the seamen make their account.” The meridians, he reminded them, grow narrower towards the two poles. If one had occasion to voyage northward it were better to sail by the globe, he suggested. Therefore you should keep a perfect account of the ship’s course. Then resort to your globe and consider what place and parallel you are in (by means of the sun at day and the stars at night). Knowing where you are, set your globe to the elevation of your pole, and then turn to the place of your zenith and seek the opposite of it in your parallel, for then you know that in the same parallel is your east and west line. Then the just quarter of that circle to the pole must be divided into the eight points of your compass, doing so likewise on the other side.

From the southern voyages the “plats or cardes for the sea” were recommended. Bourne strongly advised against painting their compasses with so many colours on these charts and so many flags on the land, but bade them use the vacant places left on the paper for better objects, such as the time of high water at certain states of the moon, and the elevation of the land, in order that the appearance of the latter might not be mistaken. The use of sea cardes for navigating during long voyages he regards as very necessary for three reasons: they show you (1) how one place bears from another; (2) the distances between the places; (3) in what latitude any place is. But the master or pilot of the ship is also to bear in mind the effect of tides, currents, the surging of the sea or scantiness of the wind, which might put the ship to leeward of her course. Also in long voyages the wind might shift ahead, so the mariner must keep a perfect account of his courses and mark each new course on the chart, and pay regard to the “swiftnesse” or “slownesse” of the ships. If the weather be clear he was to take the true altitude of the pole, which will correct the ship’s course and give “a very neare gesse” how the port of destination bears and how far.

The compass was variously known in the Elizabethan age as the “sea-directorie,” the “nauticall box,” and the “sea-compasse.” Lightbody describes the bittacles as “little wooden pins for nailing the compass-box withal.” The first atlas was published in Dutch at Leyden in 1585 by Wagenaer. In this are to be found excellent coloured charts of the Narrow Seas. It is evident from these that there was a system of buoyage even in those days. There are barrel buoys, for instance, and basket beacons such as you can still find in use to-day in different parts of Holland. The sands on the port hand of the Swin Middle at the entrance to the Thames Estuary are shown marked by staff-and-triangle marks. This excellent atlas was soon translated into English, so that the elaborate sailing directions and the admirable little contours of the coast—crude but useful—could be placed at the service of English mariners. This English version was known as Wagenaer’s “Mariner’s Mirrour,” and there was also “The Sea Mirrour,” translated from the Dutch of William Johnson Blaeu by Richard Hynmers in 1625, which was another of the numerous nautical books of this time, containing instruction in practical navigation, sailing directions, charts, and contours.

The hourly or half-hourly glasses used on board were turned by the sentry, who struck the ship’s bell at every half-hour just as on shipboard to-day. The only means of keeping correct time in those days was by observing the heavenly bodies, and this gave time at ship. But frequently the navigators were many miles out in their longitude, since the latter is found by comparing the exact time at ship with the time by a chronometer showing the time at the prime meridian.

Nicholas Tartaglia, in his “Three Bookes of Colloquies concerning the Arte of Shooting,” published in the year of the Armada, gives an interesting illustration to indicate how one could know by the help of a gunner’s circle the number of miles or feet any ship lying in the roadstead was distant; and also how to measure height with a geometrical square. And Bourne, in his “Treasure for Traueilers” (1578), had a method for ascertaining the “waight of any shyp swimmyng on the water.” The reader will remember that when we were discussing Columbus we pointed out the lack of that useful instrument, the log and line, for indicating the distance which a vessel sailed. It was William Bourne who first published an idea for overcoming this difficulty in a somewhat ingenious manner. In his “Inventions and Devices” (1578), he gives a method whereby “to know the way or going of a ship, for to knowe how fast or softly that any ship goeth.” The idea is too complicated to be given here in detail, but practically it amounted to towing astern a tiny boat containing a paddle-wheel which revolved, and so by a species of clockwork registered the speed. Excepting that the patent log of to-day is helicular, there is much resemblance between the old and the new in at least the bare idea. But a little later—in the year 1637—Richard Norwood published, in his “Seaman’s Practice,” a whole chapter on the subject “Of dividing the Log-line and reckoning the Ship’s way.” The log-line was to be used in conjunction with the glass, and this method was little altered until the nineteenth-century invention of the patent log had to be brought about owing to the great speed of steamships.

Before we conclude this chapter we must not omit to say something of the improvement in naval strategy, tactics, and discipline during the Elizabethan period. You will remember that important campaign of 1587, when Drake took an expedition out to Cadiz, sunk and burnt an enormous quantity of the enemy’s tonnage, repulsed the attacks of the Mediterranean galleys—completely beating this type of craft at her own special game and in her own waters—captured large quantities of supplies intended for the Armada, and demonstrated himself to be no man of medieval conceptions, but a modern strategist by waiting at Cape St. Vincent, where he held the real key to the situation—able to prevent the fleets from Cartagena and Cadiz from reaching Lisbon. You will remember, too, that after terrorising the Spaniards and their galleys he set a course for the Azores, captured the mammoth San Felipe, homeward bound from the East Indies with a cargo that, reckoned in the money value of to-day, was worth over £1,000,000; and what was more, discovered from the ship’s papers the long-kept secrets of the East Indian trade. Finally, during that same historic voyage, when friction broke out between the modern strategist Drake and his medieval-minded vice-admiral William Borough, the latter was promptly court-martialled, tried on board the flagship by Drake, Fenner, and the other captains, and deposed from his command.

Now, what was the net result of all this? We may sum the matter up in the following statement. It gave the death-blow to the medieval methods of fighting and inaugurated the scientific idea of strategy. It demonstrated the fact that even in those circumstances when the big sailing ship was at her worst, viz. fighting in sheltered waters and in a flat calm, when the galley was certainly at her very best, yet the former could annihilate the latter. Contrariwise, the capture of the San Felipe showed that even the biggest ship afloat could be made a prisoner if only the captor went about the matter in the right way. And, finally, it inaugurated real naval discipline, even for the highest placed officer, and instituted the Court Martial.

And yet during the time of Elizabeth, though her admirals realised the value of strategy, yet they failed to understand fleet tactics. There was no regular order of battle. Howard’s fleet against the Armada in 1588 had been in action twice before it was organised into proper squadrons. During that nine days’ fighting the old idea of boarding, that had continued from the Greek and Roman days, through Viking and medieval times till the sixteenth century, was clearly giving way to the practice of broadside gunnery. But what is important to note is the fact that though the Elizabethan admirals were realising the superiority of the gun to the boarding pike, yet they had not become sufficiently logical to devise a battle order for enabling their guns to be used to the best advantage. Nevertheless, there was a partial appreciation of this important principle. The idea of fighting in line-ahead was certainly in their minds, and there was a tendency for the fleet to break up into groups, each group delivering its broadsides in succession on an exposed part of the enemy’s formation. A contemporary chart depicting the Armada and the English fleet at the different stages of fighting in the English Channel unquestionably shows the Queen’s ships standing out in line-ahead formation from Plymouth Sound, getting the weather gage of the enemy, and then firing into them from the windward side. Spanish evidence admits that the English were “in very fine order.” And it is quite curious to observe that though Spain and Portugal had led the way towards scientific seamanship and navigation, and England had followed, yet the Spaniards still looked upon gunnery as a dishonourable practice, still retained the medieval idea that gentlemen would fight only with swords; and therefore these South Europeans, unable to fight at a distance, used their best endeavours to close with our ships and carry on the contest after the manner of the tactics which Greek and Roman and Viking and Crusader had adopted.

It is true, also, that the Portuguese showed no little courage and enterprise in their shipbuilding. Some of their fifteenth-century caracks were four-deckers, of fifteen hundred and two thousand tons, with forty guns and a thousand sailors, soldiers, and passengers. And, even if they were not by disposition and natural endowment great sailors, yet they were splendid navigators. But they were never great shipbuilders in the scientific sense, since they built by rule of thumb. The Portuguese had, indeed, done much for cartography, and yet until the Dutch Gerard Mercator introduced his “Mappemonde” in 1569, containing a new method of projecting a sphere upon a plane, the problem of how to sail in a straight line over a curved figure still lacked solution. The Dutch Wagenaer, of whom we spoke just now, historically certainly owed a great deal to the achievements of the Portuguese and Spanish, but already by the year 1577 he had written on navigation. His charts of Dutch harbours and of the Narrow Seas were, for their limited purpose, of more value than any charts which had come from the South of Europe.

It has been well said by a careful writer that British seamanship has been historically the cause of British supremacy, and that most British sea fights have been decided by bringing single ships to close action, laying ship against ship. If this statement is true, it is especially applicable to the Elizabethan period, when seamanship was our strong point and tactics our weakest. Never before had English sailors reached such a high degree of proficiency therein; never in so short a time had it done so much to mould national history, and to lay the foundations of an Empire.