Chapter XII: Introduction: The Navy Before 1509 (10)

The total is 135 and the report says that there are 656 more between 40 and 100 tons besides ‘an infinite number’ of small barks. Yet this return can hardly be complete as it does not correspond, in many instances, with the tonnage measurements of a list of March 1576 which is a schedule of such vessels built since 1571.[790] This list is of value as showing the rapid progress now being made in the construction of comparatively large vessels, a progress which could only be the result of a demand caused by increasing trade:—

+-------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| |Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|Tons|
| | 100| 120| 130| 140| 150| 160| 170| 180| 200| 240| 260|
| +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
|London | | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | | 1 | 1 | | | 2 |
|Lee | | | 2 | 1 | | | | | | | |
|Exmouth | 1 | | | 1 | | | | | | | |
|Kingsbridge | | 1 | | | | | | | | | |
|Bristol | | 1 | | | | 1 | | | 1 | | |
|Plymouth | | | | 1 | | | | 1 | 1 | | |
|Hull | | | 1 | | 1 | | | 2 | | | |
|Newcastle | | | 2 | 1 | | | | | | | |
|Southwold | | | | | | | 1 | | | | |
|Cley | | 2 | | | | | | | | | |
|Yarmouth | 2 | | | | | 1 | | | | | |
|Orwell | | | | | 1 | | | | | | |
|Chester | | | | 1 | | | | | | | |
|Ipswich | | 2 | | | | 1 | | | | | |
|Looe | | | | | | 1 | | | | | |
|Fowey | | | | | | | | | | 1 | |
|Aldborough | | | | 2 | | | | | | | |
|Harwich | | 1 | | | | | | | | | |
|Wells | | | | 1 | | 1 | | | | | |
+-------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+

In the year ending with Easter 1581 there were 413 English ships, of 20 tons and upwards ‘coming from ports beyond seas’ and discharging in London, but no doubt many of the smaller of these, making short voyages, were reckoned more than once.[791]

The authorities encouraged merchants and shipowners not only by legislation but with that personal interest to which the human heart responds more promptly than to legal enactments however profitable the latter may promise to be. When the Levant Company was founded its promoters were called before the Council, thanked and praised for building ships of suitable tonnage for the trade, and urged to go forward ‘for the kingdom’s sake.’ The Levant Company returned at first 300% profit to its shareholders but in the sixteenth century ‘the kingdom’s sake’ was a factor, always more or less present, in the action of the merchant class, nor was the commendation of the lords of the Council considered a matter of small importance. In a national as well as in a private sense it was fortunate that most of these chartered Companies were originally successful. The next certificate is of 1582 and gives:—

+-----------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Between|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |80 |
| |Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|Ton|and|
| |100|110|120|130|140|150|160|180|200|220|240|250|300|500|100|
| +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|London | 10| 5| 11| 7| 14| 1| 6| 3| 2| | 3| | | | 23|
|Harwich | 6| | | | 1| | | | | | | | | | 1|
|Lee | 2| | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2|
|Cley | 2| | | | | | | | | | | | | | 1|
|Wiveton | 4| | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2|
|Blakeney | 1| | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2|
|Lynn | 1| | | | 1| | | | | | | | | | 1|
|Yarmouth | 3| | | | | | | | 1| | | | | | 2|
|Wells | 2| | | | | | 1| | | | | | | | 3|
|Aldborough | 4| | 3| | 1| 1| 3| 1| 2| | | | | | 4|
|Ipswich | 8| | | | | | | | | | | | | | 6|
|Southampton| 3| | | | 1| | | | 1| | 1| | 1| 1| 2|
|Bristol | 2| | 2| | | 1| 1| | 1| | | 1| 1| | 2|
|Hull | 2| 2| 1| 2| 2| | | 1| | 1| | | | | 7|
|Newcastle | 1| | | 2| 6| 3| 1| 2| 1| 1| | | | | 8|
|Poole | 2| | 2| 1| 1| | | | | | | | | | 1|
|Topsham | | | | | | | | | | | | 1| | | |
|Southwold | | | | | 1| | 1| | | | | | | | 2|
|Orford | | | | | 1| | | | | | | | | | |
|Fowey | | | 3| | | | | | | | | | | | |
|Exmouth | | | 1| | | | | | | | | | | | |
|Kenton | | 1| 1| | | | | | | | | | | | |
|Cockington | | | | 2| | | | | | | | | | | 1|
|Northam | 1| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|Weymouth | | | 1| | 1| 1| | | | | | | | | |
+-----------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

The number of vessels of 100 tons and upwards is therefore 177, a very respectable increase from 1577, allowing for wrecks and other sources of loss. Besides the 70 vessels between 80 and 100 tons there are 1383 measuring from 20 to 80 tons. Another return, a year later, is made out on the same system as regards division of tonnage, but by counties; it will be observed that the results do not altogether coincide:—[792]

+---------------+--------+--------+--------+
| |100 tons|Between |Between |
| | and | 80 and | 60 and |
| |upwards |100 tons|80 tons |
| +--------+--------+--------+
|London | 62 | 25 | 44 |
|Essex | 9 | 40 | 145 |
|Norfolk | 16 | 80 | 145 |
|Suffolk | 27 | 14 | 60 |
|Cornwall | 3 | 2 | 65 |
|Yorkshire | 11 | 8 | 36 |
|North Parts | 17 | 1 | 121 |
|Lincolnshire | 5 | | 20 |
|Sussex | | | 65 |
|Devonshire | 7 | 3 | 109 |
+---------------+--------+--------+--------+

+---------------+--------+--------+--------+
| |100 tons|Between |Between |
| | and | 80 and | 20 and |
| |upwards |100 tons|80 tons |
| +--------+--------+--------+
|Dorsetshire | 9 | 12 | 51 |
|Bristol | 9 | 12 | 327 |
|Isle of Wight | | | 29 |
|Southampton | 8 | 7 | 47 |
|Kent | | | 95 |
|Cinque Ports | | | 220 |
|Cumberland | | | 12 |
|Gloucestershire| | | 29 |
|Lancaster } | | | |
|and Chester } | | | 72 |
+---------------+--------+--------+--------+

There is a certificate, said to be of 1588,[793] but it bears too close a resemblance to the _Harleian MS._ to be considered trustworthy. The 1582 list and the _Harleian MS._ differ somewhat but they are sufficiently alike in classification and totals to show that they belong to nearly the same period; the _Cottonian MS._ is the same in form and almost exactly the same in results, and must be wrongly dated. There is no other list of ships belonging to this reign, but there are occasional references which show that the subject was not neglected. For February 1589 there is a note of large merchantmen at sea during that month; thirteen of 2940 tons are ‘in the Straights,’ five in ‘Barbaria’ and three bound there, five for Bordeaux, eleven for Middleburgh, and six at sea ‘adventuring.’[794] The total tonnage is 7220. Evidently the government was kept well informed of the position of the trading vessels it might possibly require for transport or warfare. Notwithstanding the various encouragements to native owners the foreign carrying trade was by no means destroyed for, in the year ending September 1596, no fewer than 646 ‘strangers’ ships’ came to London.[795] In Jan. 1597 there were 197 vessels entered inwards at London; two were from Stade, two from Tripoli, one from Venice, six from Spain, twenty-six from Bordeaux, ten from Dantzic, three from Hamburg, one from Scotland, and most of the others from the Low Countries.[796]

With the certificates of ships there was sometimes a return of the men available to man them. It has been noticed that there was seldom much difficulty in obtaining crews, and the table below points to a growth of the maritime population commensurate with the increase of shipping:—

+-----------------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+
| | 1560[797]|1565-6[798]| 1570[799]| 1582[800]|
| +----------+-----------+----------+----------+
|Cornwall | 1703 | | 1064 | 1918 |
|Devon | 1268 | | 1264[801]| 2165 |
|Dorset | 255 | 347 | 318 | 645 |
|Hampshire | 296 | 167 | 342 | 470 |
|Sussex | 400 | | 321 | 513 |
|Cinque Ports | 396 | 1024 | | 952 |
|Essex | 565 | 1549 | 385 | 693 |
|Suffolk | 415 | 1161 | 1156 | 1282 |
|Norfolk | 178 | 975 | 1112 | 1670 |
|Lincolnshire | 229 | 234 | | 449 |
|Kent | | | | 243 |
|Yorkshire | 542 | | 505 | 878 |
|Cheshire[802] | 135 | | | 324 |
|Gloucestershire | 203 | | | 220 |
|Pembrokeshire | 392 | | | |
|Northumberland | 37 | | | 851 |
|Somerset | | | 63 | 512 |
|London and }| | | | |
|River of Thames }| | | | 2286[803]|
|Cumberland | | | | 212 |
+-----------------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+

The certificate from which the last column is taken shows that in 1582 there were 1488 masters, 11,515 seamen, 2299 fishermen, and 957 London watermen available for service. A fleet of 24 Queen’s ships required about 3700 seamen; an auxiliary fleet of 24 armed merchantmen about 3000, so that except when exposed to the strain of a year like 1588 the resources of the country in men were fully equal to any demand likely to be made upon them.

[Sidenote: Piracy and Privateering.]

During the reign of Elizabeth piracy appears to have almost attained the dignity of a recognised profession, and some notice of its extent is necessary to enable us to recognise the difficulties amid which commerce was extending. In 1563 there were some 400 known pirates in the four seas; and men of good family, who subsequently acquired official rank in the royal service—Champernounes, Killigrews, Careys, Horseys, and Oglanders—had made their earliest bids for fortune as Channel rovers. Occasionally, when an important personage was inconvenienced, a spasmodic effort was made and dire punishment followed. In 1573, the Earl of Worcester, while travelling to France as the bearer of a christening present from Elizabeth to the infant daughter of Charles IX, was attacked between Dover and Boulogne and, although he saved the gold salver he was entrusted with, eleven or twelve of his attendants were killed and wounded and property stolen to the value of £500. This led to steps that resulted in the capture of some hundreds of pirates, but only three were hanged. On the whole, Elizabeth made fewer efforts to deal with the evil than either her sister or brother did; sometimes ships were sent to sea for the purpose but there were no continuous endeavours such as they made. And although pirates were frequently taken few were executed, and their aiders and abettors on shore, a class that included merchants, country squires, and government officials, were always let off with a fine. In truth the English rover was more than half patriot; if he injured English commerce he did infinitely more hurt to that of France and Spain, and he only differed in degree from the semi-trading, semi-marauding expeditions on a large scale, in which the Queen herself took a share, and for which she lent her ships.

At first Elizabeth sent out even fewer ships than her predecessors had commissioned to clear the Channel; she tried, as usual, to make those principally interested do the work of the crown. Commissions were granted to merchants to equip vessels to catch pirates, their reward taking the form of a permission to recoup themselves out of captured cargo. But even if pirate plunder was recaptured the owners were little better off as the men were commonly serving ‘for the spoyle onely without any wagies allowed them by hir Hignes,’ and the spoil seldom covered their wages. In 1574 both Hull and Bristol were authorised to equip ships at their own expense to deal with the scourge, and as late as 1600 petitioners were cynically informed that Royal ships could not be spared for convoy duty and that the merchants interested should get together ten or twelve vessels ‘by voluntary contributions from subjects.’[804] Proclamation followed proclamation without effect and it was not until 1577 that a really serious attempt was made to crush the freebooters; Palmer and Holstock were sent to sea with a squadron, and searching inquiries were instituted to ascertain the persons who dealt with them ashore and helped them. Southampton was a flourishing centre; not only did the mayor release captured men, but there were brokers in the town who made a business of negotiation between owners and pirates for the return of ships and merchandise taken by the latter.[805] Among the persons fined for dealing with pirates we find the mayor of Dartmouth, the lieutenant of Portsmouth, the deputy searcher of the customs there; the deputy of the Vice-Admiral of Bristol trading with them and taking bills from them,[806] the sheriff of Glamorganshire, and Wm. Wynter, a relative of the Surveyor of the Navy. Wm. Hawkyns, brother of the Navy Treasurer, and Rich. Grenville, the famous captain of the _Revenge_, were both up before the Council for piracy.[807] A well-known pirate, Atkinson, escaped from Exeter gaol, it was supposed with the connivance of the mayor; the mayor accused the sergeant of the Admiralty, and the evidence seems to show that they were both involved. Sometimes a pirate cargo must have been very valuable; one was made up of 434 ‘elephants’ teeth,’ cochineal, wine, and ‘Spanish aquavitæ.’ If in need of supplies the pirate captain could always reckon on sympathy and assistance ashore, and Cardiff was a recognised headquarters where necessaries could be obtained. If caught by weather and in distress he could usually rely on local help. One vessel, being driven ashore, was deserted by her crew, a proceeding which, if due to fear, was unnecessarily hasty. A local magnate, Sir Rich. Rogers, got assistance, refloated the vessel, and restored her to the captain, accepting a tun of wine and a chest of sugar in acknowledgment.[808] Yet the government dealt tenderly with these men. Of the many names of pirate captains continually recurring in the Elizabethan papers there is not one known to have been executed although some were captured.

In 1584 it was said that ‘wee and the French are most infamous for our outrageous, common, and daily piracies,’ and naturally the State Papers are full of petitions for redress and compensation, and with commissions of inquiry issued to the various local authorities. Claim and counterclaim from Englishman, Scotchman, Frenchman, Dane, and Hamburger, follow in endless confusion. In 1586 a correspondent wrote to Burghley ...

‘being at St Malo last month he heard that sixteen of their
ships had been rifled or taken by Englishmen ... and that their
hatred of the English was such that our merchants dared not
walk about in public ... men in authority to recover their
unthriftiness sell their lands, buy ships, and command the
captain and company not to return without assurance of a very
great sum.’[809]

On the other hand, Bristol, in 1574, had formally complained of St Malo in that ‘by common consent’ they had set forth seven vessels to prey upon Bristol commerce. The court of Admiralty had granted Bristol merchants permission to seize St Malo ships and goods, which perhaps explains the letter to Burghley just quoted.[810] In 1584 the French ambassador stated that in the preceding two years English pirates had plundered Frenchmen of merchandise to the value of 200,000 crowns; the only answer given was the general statement that Englishmen had lost more by French pirates. There is a list, 47 pages long, of piracies committed by the English on Portuguese subjects alone.

Between 1564 and 1586 Englishmen had spoiled the Scotch—who were said to ‘take it unkindly’—of goods valued at £20,717, and restitution had been made to the amount of £3483. But between 1581-5, the Scotch had plundered the English to the sum of £9268, and had restored only £140; from this proportion it may be concluded that the Scot was more successful than the Frenchman in adapting himself to the fashionable pursuit of the time.[811] Nor were the injured persons exposed only to the loss of their property. A Bayonne ship was captured by a Bristol privateer in 1591 and the owners came to England to obtain redress, but after vainly expending 500 crowns they were, ‘fain to leave off their suit and return to France and save their lives.’ But the Englishman did not fare better in France. In 1572 the _Pelican_ of London, belonging to alderman Wm. Bond and others, was seized by French pirates, the master and crew, twenty-three in number, murdered, and goods valued at £4000 taken with her. The thieves and the receivers were both well known and the owners commenced a suit in the parliament of Brittany; but after fruitlessly expending £1000 prefer to ‘leave all in the hands of God rather than prosecute any more suits in France.’[812] Frequently there was little disguise about ownership. In 1580 three Hamburg merchants petition that their ships were despoiled by ‘one called the _Henry Seckforde_ whereof is owner, Henry Seckforde, Esq., one of the gentlemen of your Majesty’s privy chamber.’[813] If business at sea was languishing, the pirate did not disdain to vary his methods; some Dunkirkers planned, and nearly succeeded in carrying out, the abduction of Sir John Spencer, known as ‘rich Spencer’ on his way to his country house at Islington.

Occasionally, but very rarely, the pirate changed his allegiance. Nicholas Franklin deposes:—[814]

‘A year ago was with Captain Elliott when they took a flyboat
of which captain Elliot made a man-of-war: they went to
Helford in Cornwall and brought in a Dieppe prize.... John
Killigrew, captain of the castle there, warned them to be off
as he was expecting the _Crane_ one of the Queen’s ships;
thereupon Elliott gave him nine bolts of Holland cloth and a
chest and they sailed to Cork ... thence back to the Channel
and took four Scotch and Irish ships, thence to the Isles of
Bayonne.’[815]

Here they met some Spaniards, and his crew wanted to fight, but Elliot and his officers drew their swords and forced the men to surrender. Elliot was given the command of a Spanish galleon and, from another paper, it appears that he was afterwards the cause of some Englishmen being racked.

If letters of marque were given they only faintly veiled the real character of the proceedings. In 1586 letters of reprisal were granted to Diggory Piper in the _Sweepstakes_ of London, an appropriate name for a privateer. He was authorised to attack Spanish and Portuguese ships; he commenced with some Flemings, continued with two French traders, and finished with a Dane having goods worth £3000 on board.[816] In view of the fact that at various times letters of reprisal to the amount of £140,000 were issued to only a few places,[817] the amount of unlicensed robbery done under cover of such letters can be imperfectly imagined. Sometimes the proceedings were straightforward enough and, as an illustration of their manner of dealing with Spanish ships and the privateersman’s contempt for odds, a relation of one of these encounters is given subsequently.[818]

[Sidenote: Stores.]

In 1579 the stores, such as canvas, cordage, masts, anchors, etc., at Deptford and on board the ships were valued at £8000, and it was only considered necessary to replenish the stock up to £14,000.[819] For some time whatever was used in any given year was replaced the following year; thus stores to £1662, 11s 8d and £831, 11s 1d were used in 1580 and 1581, and were ordered to be made good in 1581 and 1582. The heavy expenses caused by the war upset this arrangement, and in 1589 we find a payment of £8921, 8s 8d for the balance, still owing, of stores bought in 1587. In 1602 there were at Deptford, 551 cables and hawsers, 26 bolts of canvas, 45 masts and 660 spars, 31,220 ft. of timber, 36 barrels of pitch and tar, besides compasses, flags, etc. Chatham had only 10 cables but 54 bolts of canvas, 124 masts and 1076 spars; Woolwich had timber only.[820] Masts were obtained from the Baltic and varied in length from twelve to thirty-four yards, the latter size being twenty-eight hands in circumference at the partners, and eighteen and two-thirds at the top end. Anything under six hands at the partners was accounted a spar.[821] In 1588 masts of twenty-nine and thirty yards were £26, and £31. In the year of Elizabeth’s accession Dantzic cordage cost £13, 6s 8d a ton. Subsequently cables were chiefly purchased from the Russia Company and went up in price until in 1597 Russian cordage ‘of perfect good stuff’ was costing £23, 10s a ton.[822] For the heaviest anchors the rule was to give a half inch in the circumference of the cable for every foot of beam; a ship with thirty-eight feet of beam would therefore have some cables nineteen inches in circumference. The length was 100 fathoms, and the weight of one fourteen inches round was 34 cwt. 3 qrs. 14 lbs. in white, and 43 cwt. 35 lbs. tarred. A large number of cables, cablettes and hawsers were carried. Although in the preceding table on p. 124 the _Merhonour_, like the other big ships, is allowed seven cables, there were ordered for her in 1589, two of 18 inches circumference weighing five tons; four of 17 inches weighing nine tons; two of 16 inches weighing four tons; and one of 12 inches weighing one ton and a quarter.[823]

Until about 1585 the custom of the principal Officers themselves to sell the Queen minor stores, such as canvas, tar, etc., if it excited comment or suspicion, does not seem to have been stopped; from Burghley’s notes on the subject it appears from that time to have been no longer allowed.[824] Nevertheless in 1589 Hawkyns and Borough were accused of still selling to the crown through third persons, but the force of the charge is vitiated by the usual proposal of the informer, that he should act as an inspector of canvas, of course with a salary.[825] The heaviest anchor made was of 30 cwt., but they were usually much smaller; the _Merhonour_ had one of 25 cwt., four of 22 cwt., three of 20 cwt., and one of 12 cwt.[826] The price of these was £1 10s per cwt. as against £1 2s in the beginning of the reign. The following is an abstract of the prices of other stores but there were many different qualities in each article which explains large variations in the price:—

{ Polldavy (1558) 40s a bolt
{ English Midrenex (1569) 28s a bolt
Canvas { British[827] do. (1569) 33s 4d a bolt
{ British do. (1581) 28s a bolt
{ English do. (1581) 30s a bolt
{ Ipswich canvas (1590) 29s a bolt

{ Compass and straight } (1567) 8s and
{ Oak and elm } 9s a ton
Timber { Oak (1587) 18s a load
{ Elm (1594) 18s a load
{ Oak knee (1594) 20s a load
{ do. (1598) 22s to 27s a load

Spanish Iron (1567) £13 a ton
English do. do. £10 a ton
Spanish do. (1572) £14 a ton

Rosin (1567) £8 a ton
do. (1590) £8 a ton

Tar (1567) £4 and £5 a last[828]
do. (1592) £6 a last
do. (1598) £8 a last

Train oil (1567) £11, 10s & £14 a ton
do. (1587) £20 a ton
do. (1590) £17 a ton

{ 12 inch (1571) 1s per 100
Tree-nails { 36 inch (1571) 3s per 100
{ 36 inch (1590) 4s 6d per 100

[Sidenote: Flags, etc.]

Men on deck were sheltered by waistcloths of canvas above the bulwarks which were painted in oil colours; the _Merhonour_ required 542 yards. Sometimes the waistcloths were used for the forecastle and poop while the waist itself was protected by nettings.[829] Men-of-war alone seem to have been entitled to wear a flag at the main, ‘the earl’s ship after the taking of the carrack very undutifully bore his flag in the main top which no subject’s ship ought to presume to do.’ The St George’s cross was generally used; the flag shown on the ensign staff of the Elizabethan man-of-war is of green and white, the Tudor colours, and is one that was in common use during the sixteenth century. In 1592 the Levant Company was permitted to use ‘the armes of Englande with the redd crosse in white over the same as heretofore they used.’[830] Representations of saints on flags had ceased but other emblems were still in use; falcons, lions, the royal arms, and ‘her Maiesties badges in silver and gold,’ are mentioned. We have ‘sarcenets of divers colours’ for ensigns, red and blue say for banners, red say for streamers, and red and white cloth for flags.[831] The Cadiz fleet of 1596 had four large flags, one white, one orange tawney, one blue, and one crimson, ‘which were appointed to be so made for the distinguishing of the four squadrons of the flete.’[832] This appears to have been the earliest distinction of squadrons by flags, afterwards shown by the red, white, and blue. The salute to the flag was upheld under circumstances where it might have been more diplomatic to escape the necessity of claiming it. When Anne of Austria was expected to travel by sea to Spain to marry Philip, De Guaras wrote, ‘although it is quite incredible it is generally affirmed that when our fleet passes, the English fleet will force it to salute. This absurdity sounds like a joke but it is asserted by persons of weight who assure us that the admiral bears orders to do all manner of wonderful things if our fleet does not salute.’ It is said, however, that they had to salute.

It speaks sufficiently for the courage of the Elizabethan sailor that during the whole of the reign only two English men-of-war were captured by Spain, and then only after desperate fighting against overwhelming superiority of force.[833] It speaks equally well for his seamanship afloat and the skill and good workmanship of shipwrights ashore that, with the exception of the small _Lion’s Whelp_, no dockyard built ship was lost by stress of weather, by fire, or by running aground. During the same years, and sometimes during the same gales, that the English ships weathered successfully, whole Spanish fleets foundered at sea.

JAMES I

1603-1625

[Sidenote: The Condition of the Navy.]

On 24th March 1603 the weapon forged by Henry VIII, and wielded by Elizabeth, fell into the feeble hand of James Stewart. Elizabeth left England supreme at sea; the Royal Navy bequeathed by the Queen to her successor was by far the finest fleet of men-of-war then afloat, for it was not until the close of the sixteenth century that Spain and Holland commenced to build ships for purely fighting purposes.[834] The men who manned it were renowned for hardihood, daring, and smart seamanship; and its organisation as controlled by the great seamen of her reign was more efficient and smoother in its working than any other of the departments of state.[835] Even in 1558 the days were in reality long past when Spanish fleets were to be feared, and when the Bay of Biscay could be proudly called ‘the Spanish Sea’; but it was due to Elizabeth’s sagacity that the weapon which was to slay the Goliath threatening European civilisation was at once recognised and unhesitatingly used. Until 1558 the supremacy even of the Channel, often hardly contested, had been only occasionally gained. Elizabeth was the first of English sovereigns throughout the whole of whose reign the national flag flew supreme and triumphant in the English Channel. That she was aided by the legacy of a fleet, by the helplessness of France, by changing economic conditions at home, by the revolt of the United Provinces abroad, and possibly by the wisdom of far-seeing advisers, may have made her task easier, but these things do not detract from the praise due to her discernment. The student, perhaps too often reasoning with a knowledge of results, may sometimes feel anger with Elizabeth but hardly contempt. James arouses no qualification of emotion. He commenced his reign with a fleet ‘fit to go anywhere and do anything;’ he allowed it to crumble away while spending on it more money during peace than Elizabeth did during war; he chose the most unfit men to manage it at home and command it abroad, and the results of his weak and purposeless rule were seen in the shameful fiasco of 1625 and the degradation of English prestige. Had not Buckingham reorganised the Admiralty in 1618 there would shortly have been no Navy to rouse the jealousy of foreign powers. The Regency of 1423 deliberately destroyed the Navy either from ignorance or from motives now unknown; James followed the same course with the best intentions and could doubtless have justified all his actions in choice Latinity. It will be seen that he took an even keener personal interest in the Navy than did Elizabeth, but the lack of controlling capacity so disastrously shown in other affairs was equally fatal to naval administration. The naval records of his reign are but a sorry collection of relations of frauds, embezzlements, commissions of inquiry, and feeble palliatives.

The first wish of the new monarch was to obtain peace with Spain, a desire for which modern historians have unanimously praised him, although it may be at least a matter for debate whether the continuance of war until Spain was bled to death would not have been ethically justifiable, politically expedient, and commercially profitable. On 23rd June 1603, a proclamation was issued recalling all vessels which had been sent out with hostile intent, and thus ending the lucrative privateering speculations which, when undertaken on a small scale, had so long provided occupation and profit for English sailors and merchants. The last important prize taken by the Queen’s ships was the _St Valentine_, a Portuguese carrack captured by Sir R. Leveson in 1602, and its cargo was sold in 1604 for upwards of £26,000.[836]

[Sidenote: Shipbuilding.]

The improvements in construction that marked the close of the sixteenth century have already been noticed and first, among these may be placed the increase in length and decrease in height above water attributed to Sir John Hawkyns. But the greater demand for faster and more seaworthy ships had not produced models satisfactory to the more critical experts of this generation. Shipbuilding was not yet a science and seemed in some respects to have even retrograded from the standard of the last years of Henry VIII. The subsequent tendency to overload ships, however small, with towering poop and forecastle structures, although it can be explained by the necessity for providing increased accommodation, can scarcely be considered an improvement on the earlier type. Captain George Waymouth, who appears to have been considered an authority on the theory and practice of shipbuilding and navigation, and who was several times called to report independently on the workmanship displayed on the royal ships, was very severe on his professional contemporaries, and writes that he

‘Yet could never see two ships builded of the like proportion
by the best and most skilful shipwrights though they have
many times undertaken the same ... because they trust rather
to their judgment than their art, and to their eye than their
scale and compass.’[837]

He says that they are too high out of the water, crank, and cannot carry their canvas or work their guns in a seaway; that they will not steer, and sometimes ‘their sides are not of equal proportion the one to the other,’ Waymouth, among other improvements, suggested a turret on the upper deck, moving on swivel and armed with ‘murtherers.’ In another paper he says that ‘the shipwrights of England and Christendom build ships only by uncertain and traditional precepts and by deceiving aim of their eye,’ and the resulting vessels, ‘cannot bear sail nor steer readily ... for want of art in proportioning of the mould and fitting of the masts and tackling.’[838]

It must, however, be borne in mind that for at least a quarter of a century English men-of-war had outsailed their antagonists, had weathered gales and fought actions, just as successfully as though they had been built on the most scientific modern principles. Waymouth himself was not successful as a commander at sea; perhaps he knew too much. But he was not alone in his criticisms. Ralegh, in his ‘Observations on the Navy,’ addressed to Prince Henry, says that there are six principal things required in a man-of-war, viz.: that she should be strongly built, swift, stout-sided, carry out her guns in all weathers, lie-to in a gale easily, and stay well. None of these things did the King’s ships do satisfactorily and ‘it were also behoofeful that his Majesty’s ships were not so overpestered and clogged with great ordnance ... so that much of it serves to no better use but only to labour and overcharge the ship’s sides.’ As a practical illustration of the shipwrights’ loose methods of calculation it may be mentioned that when the _Prince Royal_, the largest vessel of the reign, was built, Phineas Pett and Bright estimated that 775 loads of timber would be required, whereas 1627 loads were actually used, and the general increase in her cost by this error of judgment was £5908.[839] These laments did not lead to any great improvements in construction. Only a few of the vessels were in any way sheathed; in 1624 Dutch men-of-war could, literally, sail round English ones,[840] and their crankness was only imperfectly remedied by furring or girdling,[841] a method says the writer of the _Nomenclator Navalis_,[842] which is ‘a loss to owners and disgrace to builders and deserves punishment.... In all the world there is not so many furred as in England.’ That the advance was slow may be judged from the fact that in 1635 the _Merhonour_ of 1589, and rebuilt in 1613, was still regarded as one of the fastest sailers in the Navy. The desire for more scientific construction and the growing importance of the shipbuilding industry may however be inferred from the incorporation of the Shipwrights’ Company in 1605. The association had existed as a fraternity from, at least, the fifteenth century, and was now of sufficient consequence to obtain a charter.

[Sidenote: The Seamen.]

An onlooker[843] said that the English were ‘good sailors and better pirates.’ Whatever their quality as seamen, or however doubtful their maritime morality, no greater care was taken now to preserve their health or improve their morals than had formerly been the case. It is true that the first article in every commission laid stress on the performance of divine service at least twice a day, while the singing of psalms at a change of watch was an old custom, but such humanising details as the punctual payment of wages,[844] a supply of eatable provisions, hospitals for the sick, and suitable clothes, had not yet recommended themselves to the authorities as modes either of obtaining men or of keeping them in the service. Ralegh writes, ‘They go with as great a grudging to serve in his Majesty’s ships as if it were to be slaves in the galleys.’ James I made no use of the Navy beyond fitting out the Algiers expedition of 1620, and commissioning a few ships, year by year, to serve in the narrow seas; but for these few vessels it was found equally difficult to obtain men and to retain them when caught, now that the incitements of Spanish prizes were wanting, while the mortality afloat was equal to that of the worst days of Elizabeth. The only occasion when a large number of men were required was for the fleet preparing in 1625, before the death of James, and then the Navy Commissioners wrote to Buckingham that ‘the pressed men run away as fast as we send them down.’[845] Captain Christian of the _Bonaventure_, almost a new ship, serving on the east coast, in 1623, wrote of ‘the weak, and I may truly say miserable state of this ship ... of 160 men there are but 70 persons of all sorts that at present is either fit or able to do the least labour in the ship.’[846] There was also a great infection and mortality on board the _Garland_. Captain Christian complains too of the quality of the men pressed; ‘of all the whole company when they are at the best there are not twenty helmsmen and but three that can heave a lead.’

These instances belong to the end of the reign but matters had not changed: they had only continued. In 1608 it was said that ‘the navy is for the greatest part manned with aged, impotent, vagrant, lewd, and disorderly companions; it is become a ragged regiment of common rogues.’[847] In the Algiers fleet one ship put ashore ninety-two sick men at Malaga at one time. A hospital ship, the _Goodwill_, accompanied this fleet but she was afterwards ‘commanded for other purposes’ and the invalids thrust ashore on the cold charity to be found in a Spanish port. But of course statistics of sickness and death are everywhere rarely referred to in comparison with salutes, state visits, and other affairs of personal dignity.

Although the sailor was not properly fed and paid even if he behaved well, he suffered sufficiently severe penalties for bad conduct. Flogging was so common that ‘some sailors do believe in good earnest that they shall never have a fair wind until the poor boys be duly ... whipped every Monday morning.’ Ducking, keelhauling, tongue-scraping, and tying up with weights hung round the neck ’till heart and back be ready to break’ were common punishments. ‘These will tame the most rude and savage people in the world,’ says Monson. If these punishments were older than Elizabeth they were semi-illegal customs and if connived at were not publicly recognised. They were now part of ordinary discipline and mark the downward progress of the sailor in self-respect and social estimation. They were easier and cheaper to apply than good government but they bore their Nemesis in the next reign. The old custom of lashing to the bowsprit a sailor who had four times slept on watch, and letting him drown or starve still existed.[848] Small wonder that the men ‘abhorred’[849] the employment of the crown, and that in 1625 the shipkeepers at Chatham included weavers, barbers, tailors, bakers, shoemakers, etc., ‘most of whom had never been to sea.’[850]

[Sidenote: The Administration:—The Navy Officers.]

The disorganisation of a service commonly presses most hardly on its weakest members; those of higher rank have usually sufficient influence to preserve their rights or, if unscrupulous, to help themselves to unlicensed gains in the general scramble. Nottingham was still at the head of the Navy as Lord Admiral, a post he retained till 1618. Englishmen will always remember him with respect as the commander of 1588, but a perusal of the various papers relating to the naval administration of this period compels one to conclude that while always ready to do his duty _en grand seigneur_, to command fleets, and to accept responsibility and decide when referred to, he took but a fingertip interest in those details of which successful organisation consists, while his implicit confidence in his subordinates was a disastrous weakness. Moreover he was now growing very old and had doubtless lost much of his former clearness of mental vision. During the lifetime of Hawkyns and under the keen supervision of the Queen and her ministers this neglect mattered little, but from 1596 onwards the conduct of the Navy Office degenerated rapidly. Langford had possessed no authority and Grevill, if weak, had not been Navy Treasurer long enough to do much good or harm, although signs were not wanting during the closing years of Elizabeth’s life that the able control that had made the Navy so terrible to England’s foes was relaxing. But the appointment in 1604[851] of Sir Robert Mansell was most unfortunate. Mansell, who was an indifferent seaman and an incapable and dishonest administrator, and whose only claim to the place was his relationship to, and favour with, Nottingham, remained in office until 1618, and the greater portion of this section is practically a record of his unfitness for his important charge.

Under a different Treasurer the other officers might have performed their duty sufficiently well. As it was they fell in with the prevailing spirit. Trevor remained Surveyor until 1611 when he was replaced by Sir Richard Bingley and in the same year Sir Guildford Slingsby succeeded Palmer. In the victualling branch Marmaduke Darell, now a knight, surrendered his former patent and received a fresh one, on 16th August 1603, directed to him and Sir Thomas Bludder. As the fee still remained at its original £50 a year the profit came out of the provisions and was unwillingly provided by the men. In 1612 this patent was in turn surrendered and replaced by one of 31st January appointing Sir Allen Apsley in conjunction with Darell. By this new patent all the storehouses and other buildings at Tower Hill, the dockyards, and elsewhere were henceforth attached to the department; hitherto they had been held by the crown and only lent at pleasure. Marmaduke Darell died in 1622, and a new patent of 8th January 1623 nominated his son Sampson Darell to act with Apsley. There was no change in the victualling rate until 1623, when it reached sevenpence halfpenny and eightpence, for harbour and sea rates respectively.

In 1617, shortly before they were superseded, the functions of the officers were thus defined. The Comptroller’s duties were to check the accounts of the Treasurer, and Surveyor of victualling, to inspect stores and storekeepers’ books. The Surveyor to inspect ship, wharves, houses, chain, and ships on return from sea, and draw out indents for ships’ stores. The Clerk to keep minutes of resolutions and attend the yearly general survey. The Treasurer’s duties were financial and involved a general superintendence.[852]

Mansell’s delinquencies can be best treated separately, but both he and Nottingham dealt liberally with officers employed at sea or ashore. Nottingham himself obtained in 1609 and 1611 two pensions from James I, during the supremacy of the Howard faction with the king, amounting together to £2700 a year; and it is characteristic of James that the larger of these pensions, of £1700 a year, was granted when the commission of 1608 was sitting and when its disclosures must have been well known. As though all ranks knew what was coming the festivities commenced with the death of Elizabeth. High festival was held on the ships and the pursers petitioned for an allowance of £200, being the cost of general entertainment given by the captains for a month to all who came on board.[853] When Mansell went to sea, he gave himself, as rear-admiral, thirty shillings a day, although Sir Fulke Grevill, when discharging the same office in 1599, received only sixteen and eightpence a day. Admirals were appointed for the north, south, east, and west coasts, for the narrow seas, and for Ireland, all at liberal rates of pay. In one year, when only seven ships were in commission, there were three admirals and four vice-admirals serving, ‘so that the navy was like an army of generals and colonels.’[854] In 1602, with twenty-six vessels at sea the pay of the superior officers was less than during any one of the four or five years before the storm burst on Mansell and Nottingham in 1618. Again, ‘we find ... that these admirals and vice-admirals with their twenty shillings and ten shillings per diem, together with the allowance of their retinue and other advantages, are ... so contented on land that they cannot brook the seas and get captains under them as substitutes in their absence.’[855]

Lavish travelling expenses were allowed, and even some of the inferior officers were generously permitted to benefit by the stream of wealth circulating among the higher officials. Worn out ships were put in commission both to use up stores and to provide appointments for the dependants of those in place; the only result being that they lay in harbour as a ‘safe sanctuary for loose persons.’ The cost of piloting the thirteen ships which took the Princess Elizabeth over to Flushing was £208, and thereon it is remarked that the whole piloting charges for 286 ships during the last five years of Elizabeth did not amount to more. The Comptroller of the Navy, when he went from London to Chatham, charged £9, 9s 11d for travelling expenses, and the Surveyor required £19, 16s for the same journey, ‘it being the duty of his place,’ the Commissioners indignantly annotate, while even a deputy took £8 or £10 when he went. Mansell himself was almost sublime; he afterwards claimed £10,000 for travelling expenses during his term of office.[856] New posts were freely created and equally freely paid. Besides the various admirals who did nothing, there were a captain-general and two vice-admirals of the narrow seas, a storekeeper at Woolwich at £54, ‘while the store not worth forty shillings,’ and a surveyor of tonnage whose duty it was to survey merchant ships of 100 tons and upwards claiming the bounty, and who was accused on all sides of embezzling half the sums paid by the crown to the merchants.

[Sidenote: The Administration:—Sir Robert Mansell.]

When Mansell resigned, he sent in to the Commissioners of 1618, only an uncertified abstract of his payments for the preceding five years. The Commissioners remarked that ‘they being noways vouched or subscribed by the officers we can give no satisfaction of the state of his accounts, being only his own assertions,’[857] and the criticism fairly generalises Mansell’s system of financial control even where not tainted with absolute fraud. Notwithstanding his defiance of the abortive order for inquiry issued in 1613, and his consequent temporary imprisonment, he was sufficiently in favour three years later to receive a present of £10,000 from the king on the occasion of his marriage.[858] Proved dishonesty or incapacity barred no one from the favour of James I, provided the culprit was sufficiently good-looking or had influential friends; and although the evidence laid before the Commission of 1608 and the Commissioners’ report thereon should have amply sufficed to send Mansell to the Tower, his ascendancy with Nottingham enabled him to continue in office for a further ten years. Shortly after his appointment he and Sir John Trevor, the Surveyor of the Navy took steps to provide all the requisite stores themselves, thus making large gains on the articles sold by them to the king, and in direct contempt of the rules made by Burleigh twenty years before. Not only was timber ordered three or four times over for the same purpose,[859] but on that item alone Mansell was accused of making a fraudulent profit of £5000 in some four years, and, in conjunction with Sir John Trevor, of obtaining upwards of £7000 in the same time by the differences between the prices paid for pitch, tar, masts, etc., and those charged to the crown.[860] He, Pett, and Trevor, were joint owners of a ship built of government materials and furnished with government stores, which was hired to the king as a transport to go to Spain when Nottingham went there as ambassador in 1605, and for which the State paid, but ‘the same ship was at that time employed in a merchant’s voyage and so entered in the custom-house books.’[861]

Hawkyns had introduced the practice of paying over money at once to merchants supplying the various requisites for the Navy on deduction of threepence in the pound, an allowance they were well pleased to make in view of the prompt payment, while he had to wait long for his accounts to be settled. Mansell still deducted the threepence but did not pay. He stopped sixpence a month from the seamen’s wages for the Chatham Chest, but ‘falls presently into raging passions and pangs when they call for it.’[862] But Mansell was by no means the only one of the superior officers who helped himself out of this fund. Charges of embezzlement, in its crudest form, were made against him in that he certified for more wages than were actually paid—£1000 in one year alone—and that he retained the proceeds of such government stores as were sold.[863] It must be remembered that these accusations were not anonymous attacks, such as were made against Hawkyns, but charges deliberately formulated by a court of inquiry which he never dared to face. It may be truer to say that he was indifferent; it is possible that a portion of his ill-earned fortune went in purchasing immunity. And it is an argument in favour of this view that his dismissal from office did not destroy his influence at court. He was chosen to command the expensive and resultless Algiers expedition of 1620-21, and his subsequent disgrace was due to causes independent of his failure as a seaman or his dishonesty as an administrator.

[Sidenote: The Administration:—Abuses and Remedies.]

Norreys, writing to Sir John Coke about the Navy in 1603, says ‘To say truth the whole body is so corrupted as there is no sound part almost from the head to the foot; the great ones feed on the less and enforce them to steal both for themselves and their commanders.’[864] Abuses unknown during the lifetime of Hawkyns had sprung into existence shortly after his death, although they might have been then easily checked had Grevill been succeeded by one determined to destroy them. Delay in paying off ships, to the discontent of the men and extra expense of the government, combinations between captains, pursers, and victuallers to return false musters, and the practice of selling appointments to minor posts were all, according to reliable evidence begun about 1597 or 1598.[865] We know that theft was prevalent enough under Elizabeth, but it occurred in the shape of peddling offences, committed by the delinquents at their peril, that the authorities did their best to crush, instead of an organised system in which the latter took the lion’s share. Under James ‘the chief Officers bear themselves insolently, depending on powerful friends at court;’ and ‘the shipwrights and others are ordered, commanded, and countermanded in their work by chief Officers who know nothing about it, so that the meanest merchantman is better rigged and canvassed than the royal ships.’ The insolence and ignorance here described speak of conditions very different from those that had obtained under the iron hand of Elizabeth. In 1608 the scandal caused by these and other circumstances was so great as to compel inquiry, whether the determining cause was the contrivance of Sir Robert Cotton or of others. A commission was issued to the Earls of Nottingham and Northampton, Lord Zouch, Sir Ed. Wotton, Sir Julius Cæsar, Cotton, and others, of whom only Nottingham was an experienced seaman, and he never attended their meetings.[866] The sittings of the commission extended from May 1608 until June 1609; they commenced with an ‘elegant’ speech from the Earl of Northampton, a voluminous report was compiled, and the only punishment the culprits experienced was that of suffering ‘an oration’ from James, in which he trusted that the guilty persons would behave better in future, and with that patient and saintly hope the proceedings ended. How some of his hearers must have longed for one hour of the dead Queen.