One of the most lucrative, if exciting, professions which was far from unpopular during Elizabeth’s reign was that of fitting out a small fleet of two or three ships, roving about the seas, especially off the coast of Spain, attacking and, when fortunate, capturing a ship homeward bound with treasure from the West Indies. In spite of the distinguished Englishmen who were engaged in this, in spite of the excellent training it afforded to our seamen, it can only be condemned as illegal and piratical, although for a long time it was winked at. James I., however, on his accession determined to take away from it any semblance of approval. He did his best to bring an end to these marauding expeditions, but for all that they went on persistently though not overtly. Captain John Smith, a distinguished sailor of this time, who was also the first Governor of Virginia, has left us a lively account depicting an imaginary engagement to illustrate the working of a ship of this date. It is to be found in “An Accidence or The Pathway to Experience necessary for all young seamen ... written by Captaine John Smith sometimes Governour of Virginia and Admirall of New England,” printed in London in 1626. As it shows in actual use the very details of the ship and equipment we mentioned in the last chapter, I cannot refrain from quoting at length the following graphic description. I give it just as it was printed, substituting only modern spelling and punctuation:
“A sail! How stands she? To windward, or leeward? Set him by the compass. He stands right ahead, or on the weather bow, or lee bow. Out with all your sails: a steady man to the helm. Sit close to keep her steady. Give chase or fetch him up. He holds his own. No: we gather on him. Out goeth his flag and pennants or streamers, also his colours, his waist-cloths and top-armings. He furles and slings his mainsail. In goes his spritsail and mizzen. He makes ready his close fights[93] fore and after: well, we shall reach him by and by. What? Is all ready? Yea, yea. Every man to his charge. Dowse your topsail. Salute him for the sea—hail him. ‘Whence your ship?’ ‘Of Spain: whence is yours?’ ‘Of England.’ ‘Are you merchants or men of war?’ ‘We are of the sea.’ He waves us to leeward for the King of Spain and keeps his luff. Give him a chase piece, a broad side and run ahead. Make ready to tack about, give him your stern pieces. Be yare[94] at helm: hail him with a noise of trumpets.
“We are shot through and through, and between wind and water. Try the pumps. Master, let us breathe and refresh a little. Sling a man overboard to stop the leak. Done, done! Is all ready again? Yea, yea. Bear up close with him. With all your great and small shot charge him. Board him on his weather quarter. Lash fast your grappling irons and sheer off. Then run stem-lines the midships. Board and board[95] or thwart the hawse. We are foul on each other. The ship’s on fire. Cut anything to get clear, and smother the fire with wet cloths. We are clear, and the fire out. God be thanked. The day is spent, let us consult. Surgeon, look to the wounded, wind up the slain. With each a weight or bullet at his head and feet. Give three pieces for their funerals. Swabber, make clean the ship. Purser, record their names. Watch, be vigilant to keep your berth to windward, and that we lose him not in the night. Gunners, spunge your ordinances. Soldiers, scour your pieces. Carpenters, about your leaks. Boatswain and the rest, repair the sails and shrouds. Cook, see you observe your directions against the morning watch. Boy! Hulloa, master, hulloa! Is the kettle boiled? Yea. Boatswain, call up the men to prayer and breakfast.
“Boy, fetch my cellar of bottles. A health to you all fore and aft. Courage, my hearts, for a fresh charge. Master, lay him aboard luff for luff. Midshipmen, see the tops and yards well manned with stones and brass balls. To enter them at shrouds and every squadron else at their best advantage, sound drums and trumpets and St. George for England. They hang out a flag of truce. Stand in with him, haul him amain, abaft, or take in his flag. Strike their sails and come aboard, with the captain, purser and gunner, with your commission, cocket or bills of loading. Out goes their boat. They are launched from the ship side. Entertain them with a general cry. God save the captain, and all the company, with the trumpets sounding. Examine them in particular, and then conclude your conditions with feasting, freedom or punishment, as you find occasion. Otherwise if you surprise him or enter perforce, you may stow the men, rifle, pillage or sack and cry a prize.”
Perhaps we may be allowed to add a word further in explanation of the duties of the officers taken also from this little book. The captain was not necessarily a seaman. His authority was to command the whole company and keep them in order. The lieutenant was to assist the captain and—hence the word—in his absence to take his place. The captain also directed a fight, while the master was really the sailing master and gave orders to the sailors, taking charge of the ship as long as she was on the high seas: but “when they make land” the pilot “doth take charge of the ship till he bring her to harbour.” The duties of the sailors included hoisting sails, getting the tacks aboard, hauling the bowlines and steering the ship. The Yonkers were the young men whose work was to take in the topsails, furl and sling the mainsail, to do all the bowsing or tricing, and take their turn at the helm. In the setting of watches, the master chose one and the mate the other.
As to the ship herself we find that the planking of a vessel of 400 tons was to be four inches thick, ships of 300 tons to have three-inch planking, and small ships two-inch, but never less than this. Between the beams of the deck and the orlop there were to be six feet of head-room, and ten ports on each side upon the lower orlop. A flagstaff was over the poop. A jeer-capstan was only to hoist the sails of big ships, being raised by hand on small vessels. Smith mentions using in a “faire gaile your studding sayles,” and confirms the use of the mizzen topsail. One interesting item that he enumerates is obviously what we now know by the name of drogue or sea-anchor. Smith calls it a “drift sail.” Manwayring describes the drift sail as “a sail used under water, being veered out right ahead, having sheets to it, the use whereof is to keep a ship’s head right upon the sea in a storme. Also it is good, where a ship drives in fast with a current, to hinder her driving in so fast, but it is most commonly used by fishermen in the North Seas.” Smith mentions also the cross-jack yard as being now in use.
During James I.’s reign the East India Company, encouraged by the King, endowed with a new charter, began to flourish considerably. An important new vessel was built for them called the Trade’s Increase, but she was careened whilst abroad at the end of her first voyage, in order to have some repairs made to her hull. She fell over on to her side and was burnt by the Javanese. Her size was 1100 tons, and the loss of so large a vessel in those days was a severe blow. This was not the only occasion in which an English ship was thrown away in this manner. Manwayring, writing of the contemporary practice of careening, says that if a ship wanted attention below the waterline, as for instance her seams to be caulked, when the vessel could not be conveniently put ashore and in ports where the tide does not dry right out, the method was to take out most of the ballast and guns. Then by her side was brought a lower ship to which tackles were attached, by means of which the larger vessel was hauled down on to her side, care being taken at the same time not to strain the masts too much. Some ships which were not naturally top-heavy did not careen without difficulty, but English ships, having still fairly high decks, careened somewhat easily. The Dutch, through the shallowness of the water off their coasts, could not have a deep draught, and in consequence their decks were not built high. And because they were the reverse of top-heavy it was with great difficulty that a Dutchman was careened.
In 1603 James built three new ships for the Navy, and five years later the Ark Royal of Elizabeth’s reign was rebuilt and renamed the Anne Royal. In 1608 the keel was laid for the Prince Royal, a ship of 1200 tons, whose appearance will be found in Fig. 60. This illustration is from a picture in the Trinity House, and is here reproduced by kind permission of the Elder Brethren. She was the largest and finest ship that had ever been designed for the English Navy, and was the finest man-of-war of her time. She was both built and designed under the supervision of Phineas Pett, Master of Arts of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a distinguished member of a distinguished family which, from the reign of Henry VIII. right down to William and Mary kept up a continuous line of naval builders and architects. An unsuccessful attempt was made to launch her on September 24, 1610, when it was found that the dock head at Woolwich was too narrow to allow her to get through. She was eventually launched successfully, however, at a later date. She was a three-decker in the sense that she had two full batteries and an upper deck armed. Gorgeously decorated with carvings and paintings the Prince Royal was double-planked, and with but slight modifications, chiefly in respect of her decoration, would not be dissimilar to the ships built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed so slight, comparatively, were the developments that took place between this and the time of the Battle of Trafalgar that the ships of the early Stuarts would not have looked out of place among the ships of Nelson’s fleet. Between now and the close of the eighteenth century the similarity between men-of-war and merchantmen was so close as to make distinction practically impossible. That, too, will account for the fact of the English in the foregoing imaginary encounter by Smith asking whether the Spanish vessel were a merchant or man-of-war. We have made so many changes between the two classes of ships since then that it is a little difficult at first to realise this.
In the design of the Prince Royal, many of the old-fashioned conventionalities went by the board, and, as is always the case with a daring innovation, hostile criticisms were not scarce. Some of these, however, were justified, for when a Commission was appointed to report on the design, it was found that more than double the number of loads of timber were used than had been estimated for. The Prince Royal had a figurehead representing the King’s son on horseback, after whom she was named. Her dimensions were: length of keel, 114 feet; beam, 44 feet. She was pierced for 64 guns and carried 55. This number was restricted in order to guard against the excessive top-weight. In action the vacant portholes would be filled by guns from the opposite side of the ship. The reader will notice how close the similarity is between the hull of this ship and that of the merchantman in Fig. 59, of this period, taken from Furttenbach. The disappearance of the high poop and forecastles is particularly obvious. Three lanterns were carried at the poop, and subsequently this vessel was cut down smaller. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the lowest decks of ships carried the bread and other store-rooms, the cables, the officers’ cabins as well as some of the crew. The second deck was about 6 feet above and pierced with nine ports aside.
By 1624, James’ navy contained four ships of the first rank, viz., the Prince Royal, the Bear, the Merhonour and the old Ark Royal, now called the Anne Royal. Besides these there were fifteen of the second rank, nine of the third, and four of the fourth, as well as some hoys. It is curious to find, too, the existence still, in the navy, of four galleys. They were a source of constant expense, being never used now that the value of big ships had been realised, and they were eventually ordered to be sold out of the service.
Charles I. took the liveliest interest in the Navy, and under him naval architecture continued its progression. The first additions he was responsible for were not of big ships, but of the sea-going pinnesses of about 50 tons and under, equipped with both oars and sails. They were square-rigged, three-masted, and had two decks. They were, however, sparred and ordnanced far too heavily. In spite of the fact that England had built a few large ships during the last century, she had not been conspicuously active in this respect. Far easier and cheaper had it been to capture the pick of the enemy’s fleet, and then to refit them and turn the prizes into English men-of-war. But this lethargy was beginning to disappear. Pett was one of the chief influences in regard to this, and it was he who, having closely studied the lines of a fine French ship lying in British waters, learned some of the improvements that afterwards were embodied in the ships of our country.
The Sovereign of the Seas in Fig. 61, reproduced from an engraving in the British Museum, after the picture by Van der Velde, owes her design to Pett also. The reader will see how much nearer his craft approaches to the old wooden walls of the eighteenth century. Built in 1637, this vessel was for the next generation the admiration and envy of foreign nations. Like the Prince Royal at a later date, she was cut down in 1652 to a two-decker, having been found somewhat crank. But as originally constructed, the Sovereign of the Seas was a three-decker—the first of her kind—and her measurements, probably taken on the gun-deck, were: 169 feet 9 inches long, by 48 feet 4 inches beam, the depth of her hold being 19 feet 4 inches. She had a tonnage of 1683 burthen, and her anchor weighed 60 cwt. Designed by one member of the Pett family, Phineas, she was built under the supervision of Peter Pett. In 1684 she was practically rebuilt and then renamed the Royal Sovereign, but twelve years later had the misfortune to be burnt accidentally at Chatham, yet not before she had done excellent service under Blake and others during the seventeenth century wars. Notice in the illustration that instead of the rare use of the topgallant at the main, she carries them on all three masts: further still, observe the fact that by now royals have come into use for the first time. The fore and main have them stowed with yards lowered.[96] Originally the Sovereign of the Seas had four masts. She carried over 100 guns; had a figurehead; and the beak-head, though somewhat similar to that of the Prince Royal, is placed lower, while the length of the ship is proportionately greater, and the original tubby appearance of the Prince Royal is improved upon. There is a medal of the time of Charles I., commemorating the Declaration of Parliament of 1642. On one side is shown a conventionalised design of this or a similar ship, showing both topgallants and royals, the latter stowed.
Comparing a ship of the seventeenth century with a modern sailing craft of the same tonnage, the most striking defects that would appear in the former were the clumsiness in proportions. The lowness of the bow and the height of the stern seem to us nowadays ridiculous: so they were. But it was just one of the stages reached in the transition from those lofty forecastles and stern-castles that we saw originate in early times. But masts and spars were now no longer the stumpy items they had been. There was an improvement, too, in the existing rule of tonnage-measurement. Up to 1628 it had been far from reliable, being reckoned by the capacity for storing so many tuns of wine. From the time of Henry V. and long after, ton as applied to shipping denoted the capacity to hold a barrel measuring 42 cubic feet in the hold below deck. Therefore a vessel of 900 tons was capable of holding 900 such barrels. As the barrels were circular and could not be packed close together, the tonnage was really greater than what was given.[97] But from 1628 it was to be estimated from the length of the keel, leaving out the false post (a piece bolted to the after edge of the main sternpost), the greatest breadth within the plank, the depth from that breadth to the upper edge of the keel, and then to multiply these and divide the result by one hundred.[98]
We have seen how, in the sixteenth century, the greatest rivals of the English were the Spaniards. Now, in the seventeenth century, it was the Dutch. Gradually they had been getting stronger and stronger until about the middle of the seventeenth century they had reached their zenith in prosperity and power. They had accumulated considerable wealth, were building fine, capable ships, and about the time we are speaking of had no equals in either of these possessions. Before the close of the sixteenth century we have seen them engaging on the first Arctic Expedition and inventing a new rig for small vessels. All through the reigns of James and Charles I. they had gone on developing. It was not until about the close of Elizabeth’s reign that Holland had commenced to build ships purely for fighting purposes, but by the year 1624 their men-of-war were the superior of ours. They kept their ships well, and we find incidentally that it was the practice of the Dutchmen to tallow the bottom of their ships while the English had allowed their vessels to become overgrown with weeds and barnacles below the water-line. The competition between the two countries set ablaze so much jealousy that an explosion was bound to come sooner or later. It did come during the Commonwealth, but though the Civil Wars of Charles I. had the same ill effects on our Navy as the Wars of the Roses, yet under Blake the Dutch were beaten, our Navy became again the finest in the world, and settled for the future the position which English fleets should occupy in respect of other nations. Highly ruinous as this war was to Dutch shipping and commerce, it meant the rise of our own Navy and merchant service. True, our vessels were slower under sail than the Dutchmen, yet we were more solidly built and armed more heavily. One result of the war in 1654, not a little gratifying to our pride, remained in the acceptation by the enemy that henceforth all Dutch ships, whether men-of-war or of the merchant service, on meeting any English men-of-war in British seas should strike their flags and lower topsails. Another and more practical result was that many valuable Dutch ships passed into our Navy as prizes.
During the Dutch hostilities was employed, for the first time, by the English, a man-of-war named the Constant Warwick, which was the successor of the galleasse and the immediate precursor of the frigate of the eighteenth century. Originally the name “frigate” (French, frégate) was only known in the Mediterranean: it was then used as applied to the galleasse type of craft, having oars plus sails. But it was the English who were the first to appear on the ocean, says “Falconer’s Marine Dictionary,” with frigates denoting “a light, nimble ship, built for the purpose of sailing swiftly.” The Constant Warwick was of 315 tons. Before the end of the Commonwealth the frigate was given finer lines to her underwater body, whilst the height of the hull above water was reduced and the keel lengthened. The rake fore and aft was lessened, so that the extreme length over all became diminished in proportion to the length of the keel. In spite of the obvious improvements which would ensue from this alteration, there was one vessel, the Gainsborough, which Mr. Oppenheim cites, that was unable to beat to windward. These new frigates were built at first without forecastles, but afterwards, except in the case of the fifth and sixth-rates, they were added to the larger ships. They were somewhat under-canvassed rather than the reverse. The longboat was still towed astern as we saw in an earlier century, the pinnace and skiff being stowed on board. Although during the Commonwealth the ornate decoration of ships was restricted, gilding being entirely stopped, yet in 1655 Mr. Oppenheim states that this restriction was relaxed. The figurehead, the arms on the stern and the two figures on the stern gallery were to be gilt, but elsewhere the hull was to be black and picked out in gold where there was carving. In spite of all that we can bring against Cromwell it is only fair to say that he exercised a considerable amount of good on behalf of the Navy and English commerce. In addition to settling the Dutch troubles, there had been another matter affecting our shipping that needed attention. For some time the piratical people of Algiers had made the seas to be so dangerous as practically to have throttled over-ocean trade. Cromwell, however, in his own determined manner undertook an expedition to the Mediterranean under the command of Blake, and secured relief for our commerce from the attacks by which it had been harassed.
From “Two Discourses of the Navy: 1638 and 1659,” by John Hollond,[99] we are able to gather some further information as to the material used for ships of the English Navy during the Commonwealth. Thus, the second of these discourses, written the year before Cromwell died, mentions that there were three kinds of hemp in use, viz.: Russian, which was the cause of considerable complaint because it lasted only a year, while home-made hemp endured for eighteen months; Rhine band being another variety, and Riga band the third. But there appears to have been a good deal of trickery and dishonesty generally going on at this time in connection with hemp and cordage.
As to the timber, English oak was used for straight, curved (referred to as “compass”), and knee timbers. Ash was used for blocks and tholes, &c., while elm and beech were used for the planking below the waterline and also for the keel. There was in this century a great dearth of timber, and the royal forests had seriously deteriorated. As a result, foreign planking was imported in large quantities from abroad, and especially the Baltic. In this may be found the explanation for the speed with which our ships decayed. In Charles II.’s time the planks and timbers were fastened with tree-nails or hard wooden pins. Those who have not forgotten their undergraduate days will be interested to hear that the best trees for this purpose were grown at Shotover and Stow Wood, Oxfordshire.
With regard to the iron used, by 1636 there were as many as three hundred iron works in the country. Iron nails were stolen in such large quantities that the systematic marking of Navy stores was begun about the time of the Restoration. A proclamation of 1661 introduced the broad arrow, as a Government mark on timber and anchors.
We pass now to the time of Charles II.[100] Following up the zeal of the ancestors of his house, Charles showed a very real interest in the Navy. In spite of all his follies, in spite of his libertinism and effeminacy, Charles had one great outstanding series of good deeds to his name in having done more for the English Navy than perhaps any English rulers before him. Navigation and naval architecture went ahead rapidly: the Greenwich Royal Observatory and the Nautical Almanac were founded, the science of astronomy encouraged, and yachting in this country given such an impulse as is still felt to this day.
The total strength of the Navy at the Restoration was 156, this number being made up of the following entities: first-rates, second-rates, third-rates, fourth-rates, fifth-rates, sixth-rates, hoys (small sloop-rigged merchant vessels adapted for war purposes), hulks (for transporting horses, &c.), sloops, ketches, pinks and yachts. Sir Walter Raleigh refers[101] to “hoyes” of Newcastle as needing a slight spar-deck addition fore and aft. He speaks of them as being ready in stays and in turning to windward. They drew but little water, and carried six demi-culverin and four sakers. Manwayring defines the ketch somewhat vaguely as “a small boate such as uses to come to Belingsgate with mackrell, oisters &c.” The ketch was a two-masted ship, not necessarily fore and aft rigged as we speak of them nowadays, but with the mainmast stepped well aft.[102] Descended from the Dutch galliot, the ketch was especially used at the end of the seventeenth century as a “bomb-ketch.” The illustration in Fig. 62 is from an old French print in the United Service Museum, Whitehall, where it is called a “Galiote à bombe.” Bomb ketches were first employed by Louis XIV. in the bombardment of Algiers with great success. They were about 200 tons burthen, and built very strongly, so as to bear the downward recoil of the mortars. The reason for the large triangular space left between the mainmast and the bowsprit is to give plenty of room for the mortar to fire. The hold was closely packed with old cables, cut into lengths, the yielding elastic qualities of the packing assisting in taking up the force of the recoil.[103] The stamp used by the Hakluyt Society on their publications is ketch-rigged. About the time of the beginning of Charles II., the fore and aft ketch would be rapidly developing. The pink was also of Dutch extraction. She is—for the Dutch craft have scarcely altered since the seventeenth century—a cutter or yawl-rigged small open boat, and clinker-built.
About 1660 Chatham was the most important of the royal dockyards, Pett being in charge there. Sir Anthony Dean made a report on the state of the Navy in 1674, at the close of the Third Dutch war. As a result the sum of £300,000 was voted by Parliament to build twenty ships as suggested by Sir Anthony. As to the comparative strength of the European nations at this time, the following list is instructive. On April 24, 1675, England had ninety-two ships carrying twenty to one hundred guns and upwards: France had ninety-six ships and Holland one hundred and thirty-six. As we mentioned just now, the shallowness of the Dutch waters prohibited the building of big ships, so that they were unable to build three-deckers, and the largest ships carried no more than eighty or ninety guns. In addition to the figures quoted above, we must add three fireships to the English, four to the French, and forty to the Dutch fleets.
The £300,000 voted by Parliament was really with a view of meeting the increase in the French Navy. It was during the first year of the reign of our Charles II. that young Louis XIV. took the government of the French into his own hands. There was then practically no French Navy in existence, if we except a handful of frigates. But three years before Sir Anthony Deane’s recommendation was approved by Parliament, France had increased her fleet to fifty ships of the line, besides a large number of frigates and small craft. It was during Louis’ regime, in fact, that England had to look, not to Spain, nor to the Dutch for signs of possible trouble on the sea, but to France, which rose rapidly to a position of the first importance as a naval power. Thus, English first-rates were to be built not with a view of the shallow-draught Dutchmen but in order to be able to contend with the fine French fleet whose vessels were the superior to ours in size, though our first-rates were capable of standing an enemy’s battery better than most ships.
English second-rates had the advantage financially of needing fewer men. They drew less water, carried a smaller weight of ordnance, but by reason of the fire from their three decks were able to render a good account of themselves in battle. Fourth-rates served only as convoys, and likewise the fifth-rates. In Pepys’s time England had as many as thirty-six fourth-rates.
We are able to gather a good deal of information respecting naval matters of the time from Pepys’s Diary. In the early part of the reign war with the Dutch had broken out again, and in 1667 the Dutch had actually sailed up the Thames estuary and burnt our ships in the Medway. In spite of the ultimate good results to the English Navy under Charles II., the daring and pluck which had been so conspicuous in the Elizabethan seamen appear to have been not always alive. But what worse evidence could be wished of the condition of the English character of the time when we remember that while a Dutch fleet of eighty ships burned the forts of Sheerness and ascended the Medway as far as Chatham, capturing and destroying our men-of-war, Charles II. “amused himself with a moth-hunt in the supper room, where his mistresses were feasting in splendour”? Under the date of July 4, 1666, Pepys writes in his diary:
“With the Duke, all of us discoursing about the places where to build ten great ships: the King and Council have resolved on none to be under third-rates; but it is impossible to do it, unless we have more money towards the doing it than yet we have in any view. But, however, the show must be made to the world. In the evening Sir W. Pen came to me, and we walked together, and talked of the late fight. I find him very plain, that the whole conduct of the late fight was ill; that two-thirds of the commanders of the whole fleet have told him so: they all saying, that they durst not oppose it at the Council of War, for fear of being called cowards, though it was wholly against their judgment to fight that day with the disproportion of force, and then we not being able to use one gun of our lower tier, which was a greater disproportion than the other. Besides, we might very well have staid in the Downs without fighting, or anywhere else, till the Prince could have come up to them; or at least, till the weather was fair, that we might have the benefit of our whole force in the ships that we had. He says three things must be remedied, or else we shall be undone by this fleet. First, that we must fight in a line, whereas we fight promiscuously, to our utter and demonstrable ruine: the Dutch fighting otherwise; and we, whenever we beat them. Secondly, we must not desert ships of our own in distress, as we did, for that makes a captain desperate, and he will fling away his ship, when there are no hopes left him of succour. Thirdly, the ships when they are a little shattered must not take the liberty to come in of themselves, but refit themselves the best they can, and stay out—many of our ships coming in with very small disableness. He told me that our very commanders, nay, our very flag-officers, do stand in need of exercising among themselves, and discoursing the business of commanding a fleet: he telling me that even one of our flagmen in the fleet did not know which tacke lost the wind, or kept it, in the last engagement. He says it was pure dismaying and fear that made them all run upon the Galloper, not having their wits about them: and that it was a miracle they were not all lost.”
From his entry made on October 20, 1666, we gather that the “fleet was in such a condition, as to discipline, as if the Devil had commanded it.... Enquiring how it came to pass that so many ships had miscarried this year ... the pilots do say that they dare not do nor go but as the Captains will have them, and if they offer to do otherwise the Captains swear they will run them through. He [i.e. Commissioner Middleton] says that he heard Captain Digby (my Lord of Bristoll’s son, a young fellow that never was but one year, if that, in the fleet) say that he did hope he should not see a tarpawlin [i.e. a sailor] have the command of a ship within this twelve months.”
And again on October 28:
“Captain Guy to dine with me, and he and I much talk together. He cries out on the discipline of the fleet, and confesses really that the true English valour we talk of, is almost spent and worn out.”
It was Pepys who urged that ships should be built of greater burden, stronger and beamier, for at that time the men-of-war needed to be girdled round the hull. They were crank-sided, could not well carry their guns on the upper decks, especially in bad weather, and not enough room was left for the carrying of stores and victuals. He gives the following comparison between the two principal ships of the French, Dutch and English:
French
Soll Royall (more correctly Le Soleil Royal), 1940 tons.
Royall Lewis (Le Royal Louis), 1800 tons.
Besides these, two others were 140 feet long on the keel with 48 feet beam.
Dutch
The White Elephant, 1482 tons.
Golden Lion, 1477 tons.
The former was 131 feet long on the keel, the latter 130 feet. Both had 46·9 feet beam, drew 19 feet 8 inches of water, and carried three decks.
English
The Royal Charles, “with the girdling of 10 inches measure,” was 1531 tons.
The Prince (says Pepys) “is full as big now girdled and as long on the gun-deck as the Charles, but having a long rake they measure short on the keel or she would be 1520 tons.”
It must be observed in reference to the above figures that the Dutch ships had a greater rake forward and would measure much bigger, being very beamy. Pepys mentions that “the excellent French and Dutch ships with two decks are more in number and much larger than our third-rates.”
The Soleil Royal mentioned above was a fine three-masted ship of the line, carrying 108 guns. She was a worthy example of the high state of excellence reached by the French naval architects of this period. She was lost, however, when the combined English and Dutch fleets in 1692 defeated the French off Cape La Hogue. This was a decisive blow to another of those plans for the invasion of England, and the naval battle in which the French fleet was utterly destroyed has been regarded by historians as the greatest naval victory won by the English between the defeat of the Armada and the battle of Trafalgar.
We give in Fig. 63 an illustration of the Royal Charles mentioned above. This delightful picture is from a photograph of a model in the South Kensington Museum. Built at Portsmouth in 1672 to the designs of Sir Anthony Deane, she carried 100 guns: her length was 136 feet, beam 46 feet, depth 18 feet 3 inches, draught 20 feet 6 inches. The arms of England and the lantern that ornamented her stern are still preserved in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, for the Royal Charles was one of those vessels which were either captured or destroyed when the Dutch came up to Chatham in 1667. In the beautiful model before us the ports are correctly gilded. The rake and length of the bowsprit are in accordance with the information that has been handed down to us. At the extreme end of the latter will be seen the sprit topmast, up which the sprit topsail was hoisted. A jackstaff is at the top of the sprit topmast. The present model does not show topgallant yards, but as we know from Heyward they were found in the inventory of this ship. Below the sprit topmast and on the bowsprit will be noticed the spritsail yard now kept fixed to the bowsprit.
As to what vessels of the seventeenth century looked like under way the delightfully realistic picture which Mr. Charles Dixon has painted for our frontispiece will materially help our imagination. And here perhaps we may say a word regarding the subject of the flags carried at this period. After the union of England and Scotland in 1603 all British vessels flew the Union flag of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew in the maintop for a time, English and Scotch ships also carrying their national colours in the foretop. Ensigns of red, white or blue with the St. George’s Cross on a white canton next to the ensign staff were also commonly carried until the time of the Commonwealth. But on May 5, 1634, it was ordered that men-of-war alone were to fly the Union flag in future, and that merchantmen according to their nationality were to fly the St. George’s or the St. Andrew’s flag merely. This rule ended in February, 1649, when Parliament directed men-of-war to fly as an ensign the St. George’s Cross on a white field.[104] The Union flag was carried on the sprit topmast as shown in the frontispiece, and to-day the Jack is still seen at the bows of our men-of-war, though they be built of wood no longer.
Edward Heyward in his book just mentioned gives still further details of contemporary ships. The rule which he mentions for ascertaining the length of the mainmast was that it should be half the length of the keel and once the length of the beam put together. The mainstay was to be in thickness half of the diameter of the mainmast. The shrouds were to be one half the thickness of the stay, and the topmast shrouds to be one half the main shrouds’ thickness. One ton of hemp required three barrels of tar. As to the ship’s boats of the Sovereign, her longboat measured 50 feet 10 inches long, 12½ feet broad, and 4¼ feet deep. Her pinnace was 36 feet long, 9½ feet broad, 3¼ feet deep. Her skiff was 27 feet long, 7 feet broad, and 3 feet deep. Fourth-rates only carried a longboat and a pinnace, fifth-rates carrying simply a longboat, while sixth-rates had only a 22-feet boat.
The Prince mentioned in the above list was the Prince Royal of James I.’s reign. Her career had been a distinctly varied one. As originally launched she was the Victory belonging to Elizabeth’s reign. She fought against the Armada, having been turned into a galleon two years before the fight. In 1610 as stated she had been rebuilt and called the Prince Royal, but this “rebuilding” was during this period something far more than any moderate adaptation. After the death of Charles I. her name was called during the Commonwealth the Resolution, and at the Restoration this was changed yet again to the Royal Prince. According to Le Sieur Dassie in his “L’Architecture Navale” printed in Paris in the year 1677, Le Soleil Royal had a tonnage of 2500 as well as 120 guns and 1200 men. Le Royal Louis had the same tonnage and the same number of guns, but only a thousand men. He gives also a very full and interesting inventory of un vaisseau du premier rang of 2000 tons. Every detail is mentioned even to the ornements de chapelle. Very confusing is the naming of the three masts as used by the French at this time and embodied in Dassie’s work. Thus, as we hinted in a previous chapter, the foremast is the misaine, the main is the grand mast, while the mizzen is the mast d’artimont, or exactly the reverse of what we should have expected them to be named. From such a work as Dassie’s and, some years later, of Jean Bernoulli in his “Essay d’Une Nouvelle Théorie de la Manœuvre des Vaisseaux,” printed at Basle in 1724, we see how at last the scientific study of naval architecture had begun to make headway. The action of heavy bodies passing through the liquid sea, the relation of speed to design, were being slowly understood. Finally in 1794 the same scientific treatment was applied to sails. In “A Treatise Concerning the True Method of finding the proper area of the sails for Ships of the Line and from thence the length of masts and yards,” by F. H. af. Chapman, printed in London, the area of the sails in regard to the stability of ships is thoroughly entered into.
The illustration in Fig. 64 is of a model of a Dutch man-of-war now in the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall. It is supposed to be of contemporary date, belonging roughly to the period of Louis XIV’s. rule, 1661-1715. The rigging may be relied upon, but the model is too broad in proportion to her length. The guns are also exaggerated in size, but for all that it may serve to assist the reader in visualising the ships of what was so important a maritime Power. The notable characteristic of the Dutch and French craft of the seventeenth century as opposed to the English was that the two former had their sterns terminating squarely, while the English rounded the lines of the stern above water more. This foreign characteristic of the square stern is everywhere noticeable in the contemporary paintings and engravings of Holland. Over and over again we see the overhanging stern gallery, with the transom stern below, going in (so to speak), for the gallery above to project out. We find it in the earliest yachts of Holland, in the Dutch East Indiamen as well as the ships of the line. The reader will recollect at an earlier period we referred to the “tumble-home” which had become a new phase in naval architecture consequent on the introduction of cannon on board ship. This during the ensuing two centuries had been overdone, so that the upper deck bore a ridiculously narrow proportion to the width of the ship at the water-line, but the Dutch in the height of their naval knowledge were the first of the nations to relinquish it. It is to the Dutch of the last part of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries that we owe the beginnings of the fore-and-aft rig and of yachting as we mentioned earlier. But in order that our attention may not be distracted from the history of the squaresail, it will be more convenient to deal with the development of the smaller craft in Chapter IX.
We have already referred to the great influence for good exercised on the English Navy by Dutch and French naval architects. Among the points of superiority which the smaller French craft possessed over ours was that their lower guns were as much as four feet above the water, an improvement that made for greater safety. They could also stow four months’ provisions, whereas our frigates were narrower and sharper, and carried their guns little more than three feet clear of the water, having space only for ten weeks’ provisions. It was as improvements on these defects that the Resolution and Rupert had been built by Sir Anthony Deane. During the reign of Charles II., also, Sir Philip Howard made an invention for sheathing his Majesty’s ships with lead in preference to using wooden boards with a layer of tar and hair between the sheath and the ship, the whole having been covered outside with a composition of sulphur, oil and other ingredients. The old method of sheathing with elm boards had been introduced by Hawkins during Elizabeth’s reign, but it does not appear to have been successful, for in a report dated October 12, 1587, the chief shipwrights state that the Bonaventure, which had been treated according to Hawkins’ method, had decayed timbers under her sheathing. But the reader will recollect that as far back as the reign of Edward VI. the ships that voyaged to the North-East under Chancellor and Willoughby had part of their underbody covered with thin sheets of lead, while the ancients of the time of Caligula and even before, had also adopted this method of preserving the hulls of ships. So Howard was really a reviver rather than an inventor.
Still, since complaint had been made that Hawkins’ method necessitated frequent cleaning, and the roughness of the wood-sheathed bottom interfered with the sailing abilities, Howard’s plan was adopted. The first experiment of using his milled lead sheathing was made on the Phœnix at Portsmouth in 1670-71, and afterwards on the Dreadnought, the Henrietta, and others in 1672. The Phœnix was careened at Sheerness in 1673, after two voyages to the Straits, and inspected by the King himself. In the same year Howard’s new method was finally adopted for the Navy by the Lords of the Admiralty. Considerable opposition was made by some critics, who rightly pointed out that the action of the lead was to corrode very rapidly the iron nails and rudder-irons of the ship, and eventually in 1682 the Navy Board reported against a further use of this sheathing.
An experiment of quite a different nature was made in 1674 in utilising cypress trees from the new colony of Virginia. They were said to be large enough for the masts of yachts, and both lighter and tougher than fir, which was then being used. It is curious how persistently the galley endeavoured, in spite of every discouragement, to make its reappearance in England. This, however, was owing to the success with which it had flourished in the Mediterranean. In 1666 the Duke of Florence presented Charles II. with two of the best galleys that could be built, one of which went from Leghorn to Tangier. Anthony Deane, the younger, subsequently built a galley called the James at Blackwall; another, called the Charles, was built at Woolwich, by Phineas Pett the younger, the date of both being 1676. They were classed in Pepys’s “Register of the Royal Navy” as fourth-rates. From the naval papers of the period we find that 1000 loads of timber will build a third-rate of 1000 tons. A ship of 1000 tons costs £10 a ton to build, and the life of a ship was about thirty years. Great merchant ships cost from £6 to £8 2s. 6d. to build, but merchantmen of 250 tons cost from £5 to £7 a ton.
By the end of the seventeenth century the sailing ship had reached a stage in development which, till the close of the eighteenth century, altered but little. Naval architecture, thanks to French influence, was progressing. Eddystone lighthouse was built, and Dampier had undertaken his famous voyage to Australia. The naval authorities had by now become firmly convinced of the folly of the high-charged decks, with the enormous rake ascending from the low bows to the lofty stern. But another change was also beginning to take place. For some time it had been customary when a fleet of ships voyaged in company to have them rigged as nearly as possible with spars and sails of the same size, so that in the event of anything carrying away, each ship would be able to supply the other with a sail, or spar, or rope of the proper dimensions. Later, as ships became bigger and carried more sails and spars, this idea had been extended to the individual ship. Thus, soon after the Revolution, Cloudesley Shovel advocated the supplying of two spare topmasts to every ship, and fitting spritsails in such a manner that when necessity arose they might serve as main topsails. The yards, too, of spritsail, topsail, mizzen topsail, and main topgallant were to be made so as to be interchangeable. By about the beginning of the eighteenth century, the triangular headsails are seen on full-rigged Dutch ships, whilst the lateen mizzen still continues. The reader will recollect that this shaped headsail had first been introduced on the Dutch sloops of the sixteenth century, with their foresail working on a stay as to-day, having a sprit mainsail, resembling that of the modern Thames barge, but with no jib for the present. Now, in the century we are discussing, the Dutchman uses the same shaped headsail for his big ships, the spritsail underneath the bowsprit still remaining. In course of the first half of the eighteenth century this innovation spread to France and to England. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, also, besides the fore staysails, main and foretopmast staysails and main topmast studding sails were in use in our ships. The cables were each 100 fathoms long, made of 21-inch hemp, and the bower anchors weighed 74 cwts. for a first-rate. The length of the longboats was 36 feet, the pinnaces 33 feet, and the skiff 27 feet. The heaviest guns were 42-pounders.[105] By the middle of the eighteenth century the staysails and triangular headsails had become quite common, and two instead of one spritsail are found under the bowsprit. The sprit topmast disappears, but the jackstaff is used in its place to fly the Union Jack when at anchor, being taken in when under way, otherwise it would hinder the working of the triangular headsails. An important change now takes place in the mizzen. The reader will recollect that for several hundred years it had been used in its Mediterranean triangular shape on European ships. Instead of the yard coming quite low down, as in Fig. 63 of Charles II.’s ship, the angle the yard makes with the mizzen mast is nearer to a right angle. Thus, instead of the sail being triangular it is rectangular, having four sides instead of three. The next stage is to cut off that part of this sail which projects forward of the mast, though the yard itself is still allowed to extend ahead of the mast without having any canvas on its forward end. The luff of the sail is laced to the mast, hoops not being used. Finally, by at least 1768, the portion of the yard still found without any canvas is lopped off, and the vangs which had been used all the time for the mainsail of the sloops are seen coming down from the peak to the stern. Also, following the example of the contemporary Dutch fore-and-afters, there is no boom. If the reader will now look at the mizzen of the corvette model in Fig. 69 he will see this penultimate stage clearly shown. The final stage comes later when a boom is added, and that, too, may be traced for its origin to the Dutch fore-and-afters, which, discarding the sprit extending diagonally across the mainsail, added a tiny gaff and a much longer boom, the sail being loose-footed. Instead of the long bowsprit of the early Stuarts, the middle of the eighteenth century saw this mast-like projection cut into two pieces, so as to make bowsprit and jib-boom. Topgallants now become far more frequently used.
After the Revolution, at the end of James II.’s reign, the three ranks of Admiral, Vice-Admiral, and Rear-Admiral, were established, and the practice of having red, blue, and white ensigns, which had been introduced during the time of Charles I., continued. These ensigns were shown on an ensign staff, each having a cross of St. George on a white field in the upper canton. The Jack flown on the staff on the bowsprit was blue with a white saltire and a red cross with white fimbriation over all. Signals were made, not by a combination of flags, but by changing the position of flags.