Chapter XIV: Introduction: The Navy Before 1509 (12)

The price of ordnance was from £12 to £15 a ton, and the manufacture was still retained in a few hands, its exportation without licence being strictly forbidden. In 1619 orders were issued that casting was to be confined to Sussex and Kent, that guns were to be landed at or shipped from the Tower wharf only, and that East Smithfield was to be the one market place for their sale or purchase. These were practically the Elizabethan regulations, now perhaps fallen into neglect, renewed. Guns could be proved only in Ratcliff fields, and all pieces were to have on them at least two letters of the founder’s name, with the year and the weight of the gun. The founders had still to give bond for £1000 as a surety against illegal exportation, and once a year to send in a report of the number and description of the guns cast and to whom they had been sold.[935] These precautions were not unneeded, but did not prevent the secret sale to foreign buyers any more than similar restrictions had availed during the reign of Elizabeth. The royal forts themselves were turned into marts for these and other unlawful transactions. Upnor Castle is described as ‘a staple of stolen goods, a den of thieves, a vent for the transport of ordnance.’ The person holding the post of ‘King’s Gun-founder,’ and therefore licensed purveyor of government ordnance, was accused of transgressing largely.[936] The method was to require payment beforehand, the purchaser taking the risk of seizure; the guns were then shipped under cover of a warrant authorising them to be sent to London, but once at sea they went to the Continent instead of the river.

[Sidenote: Salutes and Flags.]

A few stone shot were still carried and the price of iron shot varied between £10 and £13 a ton,[937] and its expenditure in saluting was liberal. It was only about this time that gunners were directed to fire blank charges in these marks of respect, an order that was long disregarded. Attempts were made to check the too lavish use of munition for salutes, the amount of which depended mainly on the goodwill of the officers and the stores of the ship. Gunners were ordered not to shoot without the captain’s permission, and they were forbidden to fire at ‘drinkings and feastings.’ They were further directed to ‘salute no passengers with more than one piece, or three at the most, except the person be of quality and the occasion very great, and that for volleys of honour no bullets be spent,’ and the captain was not to fail to lock up the powder room if he went ashore. These regulations were not very effective. In 1628 the fleet lying at Plymouth ‘shot away £100 of powder in one day in drinking healths.’[938] Another writer says that salutes should be ‘always of an odd number but of no particular number.’ An even number signified the death of the captain, master, or master gunner at sea during the voyage. Of a kindred nature to the love of display by noise was that of display by flags. The _Prince Royal_ was supplied with eight flags, five ancients, and fifty-seven pennants; these however were of some use in the primitive attempts at signalling, which, however, do not appear to have advanced in complexity beyond the point reached a century before. Night signalling had progressed to a greater extent. Two lights from the flagship, answered by one from the others, was the order to shorten sail; three lights astern, placed vertically, to make sail; a ‘waving’ light on the poop, to lie to; and a ship in distress was expected to hang out ‘many’ lights in the shrouds.[939] An order of 13th April 1606 authorised all ships to wear a flag containing the St George’s and St Andrew’s crosses in the main top; at the fore top the flags of their respective countries were worn.

[Sidenote: Men-of-war Crews and Discipline.]

One great alteration was made in this reign in the manning of men-of-war. It had always been customary to place soldiers, in the proportion of one-third of the total complement, on board vessels equipped for service. This practice no longer obtained; in 1619 the Commissioners wrote:—

‘Indeed till the year ‘88 soldiers and mariners were then
usually divided but that and later experience hath taught us
instead of freshwater soldiers (as they call them) to employ
only seamen.’[940]

This marks the completion of the change from the days when the sailors were not called upon to be more than spectators of the actual fighting. The crew as a whole was not reduced, ships being heavily armed and the spars of a man-of-war being equal to those of a merchantman of much greater tonnage.

We have now the ‘station list’ of the _Speedwell_ of thirty guns which gives the following division of duties in action: eighteen gunners and forty-eight men for the battery, fifty small arms men, fifty to work the ship and man the tops, four in the powder room, four carpenters below, three trumpeters, three surgeons and mate, four stewards, three cooks, and three boys. Complaint, however, was more than once made that nearly one-third of a crew were officers or non-combatants. It will be noticed from this list that the vessel was only prepared to man one broadside at the time—in this resembling much later practice—and that the arrangements implied plenty of sea room and a stand-off fight. At this time English seamen shrank from boarding; memories of the enormous Spanish galleons with their overpoweringly strong crews, and the tactics that had defeated them, were too fresh in the mind of the English sailor to permit him to have that confidence in his ship and himself that he subsequently obtained. It has already been noticed that when this ship, the _Speedwell_, was lost there was an utter absence of subordination among the crew, but this lack of discipline appears to have been more or less present at all times. In 1625, when we were at war with Spain, the _Happy Entrance_, _Garland_, and _Nonsuch_ were left lying in the Downs, with no officers and only a few men on board, because it was Christmas time and everyone was on shore merrymaking.[941] At an earlier date Coke said that ships rode in the Downs or put into port while the captains went to London, or hardly ever came on board, and the men ran away.[942]

[Sidenote: The Results of the Reign.]

Fortunately the services of the Royal Navy were never needed in earnest during the reign of James. How it would have broken down under the direction of Mansell may be inferred from the steady decrease in the number of seaworthy ships, and the increasing disorganisation of every department, during each year of his retention of office. The administration of the Commissioners was both competent and honest, but the grievous results of Mansell’s treasurership were too plainly shown during the earlier years of the next reign, when fleets were once more sent to sea. Ships might be replaced and open peculation checked, but the deeper wounds of spirit and discipline caused by fourteen years of license among the higher officials, and fourteen years of heartless chicanery suffered by those more lowly placed were not so readily healed, and bore their fruits for long afterwards in the habitual dishonesty of officials and workmen, in the disloyalty and half-heartedness of the seamen, and later, in the shameless knaveries that disgraced the Navy office at the close of the century, many of which had their origin under Mansell’s rule. The Commissioners were hampered in their efforts by want of money, an embarrassment from which Mansell suffered little.

Nor can the King be absolved from the responsibility of permitting Mansell’s misdeeds. He knew at least as early as 1608 of the iniquities daily occurring in every branch of the service, but he contented himself with making ‘an oration.’ He was ready enough to act as an amateur arbiter on technical details, to superintend launches, to visit the ships, and to give them euphuistic names, but that portion of his kingly office which involved protecting the helpless and punishing the guilty was sufficiently satisfied by ‘an oration.’ And had not Buckingham desired to be Lord Admiral, we have no reason to suppose that James I would have seen any cause for interference merely on behalf of seamen who were starved and robbed, or of the English people whose chief defence was being destroyed, and whose money went to enrich a ring of thieves. So far had the traditions of Plantagenet and Tudor kingliness degenerated into Stewart ‘kingcraft.’

CHARLES I

1625-1649