Chapter XI: The Reed Era 264 (1)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOUR
FROM PICTURES BY W. L. WYLLIE, R.A.

PAGE

SUBMARINES IN THE CHANNEL _Frontispiece_

WARSHIP OF THE TIME OF KING ALFRED 3

RICHARD I. IN ACTION WITH THE SARACEN SHIP 13

BATTLE OF SLUYS 25

PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR, 1912 31

THE “GRACE DE DIEU,” 1515 39

THE SPANISH ARMADA, 1588 51

THE END OF A “GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER” 55

BLAKE AND TROMP--PERIOD OF THE DUTCH WARS 77

BATTLESHIPS OF THE WHITE ERA AT SEA 117

THE “FOUDROYANT,” ONE OF NELSON’S OLD SHIPS 143

BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR, 1805 173

THE END OF AN OLD WARSHIP 191

A TRAFALGAR ANNIVERSARY 205

THE OLD “INVINCIBLE,” 1872 293

SHIP PHOTOGRAPHS

“SALAMANDER,” PADDLE WARSHIP 217

OLD SCREW WOODEN LINE-OF-BATTLESHIP “LONDON” 221

“WARRIOR” 251

“ACHILLES” (WITH FOUR MASTS) 259

“MINOTAUR” (AS A FIVE-MASTER) 261

“BELLEROPHON” 269

“ROYAL SOVEREIGN” 273

“WATERWITCH” 277

“CAPTAIN” 289

“VANGUARD” 297

“HOTSPUR” AS ORIGINALLY COMPLETED 309

“DEVASTATION” AS ORIGINALLY COMPLETED 313

PORTRAITS

PHINEAS PETT 67

SIR ANTHONY DEANE 93

GENERAL BENTHAM 155

JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL 245

SIR E. J. REED 265

PLANS, DIAGRAMS, ETC.

PHINEAS PETT’S “ROYAL SOVEREIGN” 71

POSITIONS OF THE FLEETS AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 167

EARLY BROADSIDE IRONCLADS 255

REED ERA BROADSIDE SHIPS 281

REED ERA TURRET SHIPS 285

RAMS OF THE REED ERA 301

BREASTWORK MONITORS 305

THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET.

I.

THE BIRTH OF BRITISH NAVAL POWER.

The birth of British naval power is involved in considerable obscurity and a good deal of legend. The Phœnicians and the Romans have both been credited with introducing nautical ideas to these islands, but of the Phœnicians there is nothing but legend so far as any “British Navy” is concerned. That the Phœnicians voyaged here we know well enough, and a “British fleet” of the B.C. era _may_ have existed, a fleet due to possible Phœnicians who, having visited these shores, remained in the land. Equally well it may be mythical.

Whatever share the ancient Britons may have had in the supposed commercial relations with Gaul, it is clear that no fleet as we understand a fleet existed in the days of Julius Cæsar. Later, while England was a Roman province, Roman fleets occasionally fought upon British waters against pirates and in connection with Roman revolutions, but they were ships of the ruling power.

Roman power passed away. Saxons invaded and remained; but having landed they became people of the land--not of the sea. Danes and other seafarers pilaged English shores much as they listed till Alfred the Great came to the throne.

Alfred has been called the “Father and Founder of the British Fleet.” It is customary and dramatic to suppose that Alfred was seized with the whole modern theory of “Sea Power” as a sudden inspiration--that “he recognised that invaders could only be kept off by defeating them on the sea.”

This is infinitely more pretty than accurate. To begin with, even at the beginning of the present Twentieth Century it was officially put on record that “while the British fleet could prevent invasion, _it could not guarantee immunity from small raids_ on our great length of coast line.” In Alfred’s day, one mile was more than what twenty are now; messages took as many days to deliver as they now do minutes, and the “raid” was the only kind of over-sea war to be waged. It is altogether chimerical to imagine that Alfred “thought things out” on the lines of a modern naval theorist.

In actual fact,[1] what happened was that Alfred engaged in a naval fight in the year 875, somewhere on the South Coast. There is little or no evidence to show where, though near Wareham is the most likely locality.

In 877 something perhaps happened to the Danes at Swanage, but the account in Asser is an interpolated one, and even so suggests shipwreck rather than a battle.

In 882 (possibly 881) two Danish ships sank: “the rest” (number not recorded) surrendered later on.

In 884 occurred the battle of the Stour. Here the Saxon fleet secured a preliminary success, in which thirteen Danish ships were captured. This may or may not have been part of an ambush--at any rate the final result was the annihilation of King Alfred’s fleet.

In 896 occurred the alleged naval reform so often alluded to as the “birth of the British Navy”--those ships supposed to have been designed by Alfred, which according to Asser[2] were “full nigh twice as long as the others ... shapen neither like Frisian nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him that they would be most efficient.”

Around these “early Dreadnoughts” much has been weaved, but there is no evidence acceptable to the best modern historians that Alfred really built any such ships--they tend to reject the entire theory.

The actual facts of that “naval battle of the Solent” in 897 from which the history of our navy is popularly alleged to date, appear to be as follows:

There were nine of King Alfred’s ships, manned by Frisian pirates, who were practically Danes. These nine encountered three Danish vessels in a land-locked harbour--probably Brading--and all of them ran aground, the Danish ships being in the middle between two Saxon divisions. A land fight ensued, till, the tide rising, the Danish ships, which were of lighter draught than the Saxon vessels, floated. The Danes then sailed away, but in doing so two of them were wrecked.

All the rest of the story seems to be purely legendary. Our real “island story”--as events during the next few hundred years following Alfred clearly indicate--is not that of a people born to the sea; but the story of a people forced thereto by circumstances and the need of self-preservation.

It is a very unromantic beginning. There is a strange analogy between it and the beginning in later days of the Sea Power of the other “Island Empire”--Japan. Japan to-day seeks--as we for centuries have sought--for an historical sequence of the “sea spirit” and all such things as an ideal islander should possess. Neither we nor they have ever understood or ever properly realised that it was the Continentals who long ago first saw that it was necessary to command the sea to attack the islanders. The more obvious contrary has always been assumed. It has never been held, or even suggested, that the Little Englander protesting against “bloated naval armaments,” so far from being a modern anachronism, an ultra-Radical or Socialist exotic, may really claim to be the true exponent of “the spirit of the Islanders” for all time. That is one reason why (excluding the mythical Minos of Crete) only two island-groups have ever loomed big in the world’s history.

When Wilhelm II of Germany said: “_Unsere Zukunft liegt auf dem Wasser_,” he uttered a far more profound truth than has ever been fully realised. Fleets came into being to attack Islanders with.

The Islanders saw the sea primarily as a protection existing between them and the enemy. To the Continental the sea was a road to, or obstacle between him and the enemy, only if the enemy filled it with ships. The Islanders have ever tended to trust to the existence of the sea itself as a defence, except in so far as they have been taught otherwise by individuals who realised the value of shipping. Those millions of British citizens who to-day are more or less torpid on the subject of naval defence are every whit as normal as those Germans who, in season and out, preach naval expansion.

The explanation of all this is probably to be found in the fact that the earliest warfare known either to Continentals or to Islanders was _military warfare_. The ship as at first employed was used entirely as a means of transport for reaching the enemy--first, presumably, against outlying islands near the coast, later for more over-sea expeditions.

Ideas of attack are earlier than ideas of defence, and the primary idea of defence went no further than the passive defensive. King Alfred, merely in realising the offensive defensive, did a far greater thing than any of the legendary exploits associated with his history. The idea was submerged many a time in the years that followed, but from time to time it appeared and found its ultimate fruition in the Royal Navy.

Yet still, the wonder is not that only two Island Empires have ever come into existence, but that any should have come into existence at all. The real history of King Alfred’s times is that the Continental Danes did much as they listed against the insular Saxons of England, till the need was demonstrated for an endeavour to meet the enemy on his own element.

In the subsequent reigns of Athelstan and Edmund, some naval expeditions took place. Under Edgar, the fleet reached its largest. Although the reputed number of 3,600 vessels is, of course, an exaggerated one, there was enough naval power at that time to secure peace.

This “navy” had, however, a very transient existence, because in the reign of Ethelred, who succeeded to the throne, it had practically ceased to exist, and an attempt was made to revive it. This attempt was so little successful that Danish ships had to be hired for naval purposes.

A charter of the time of Ethelred II exists which is considered by many to be the origin of that Ship Money which, hundreds of years later, was to cause so much trouble to England. Under this, the maintenance of the Navy was made a State charge on landowners, the whole of whom were assessed at the rate of producing one galley for every three hundred and ten hides of land that they possessed.

This view is disputed by some historians, who maintain that the charter is possibly a forgery, and that it is not very clear in any case. However, it does not appear to have produced any useful naval power.

That naval power was insufficient is abundantly clear from the ever increasing number of Danish settlements. In the St. Bride’s Day massacre, which was an attempt to kill off the leading Danes amongst the recent arrivals, further trouble arose; and in the year 1013, Swain, King of Denmark, made a large invasion of England, and in the year 1017, his son Canute ascended to the throne.

Under Canute, the need of a navy to protect the coast against Danish raids passed away. The bulk of the Danish ships were sent back to Denmark, forty vessels only being retained.

Once or twice during the reign of Canute successful naval expeditions were undertaken, but at the time of the King’s death the regular fleet consisted of only sixteen ships. Five years later, an establishment was fixed at thirty-two, and remained more or less at about that figure, till, in the reign of Edward the Confessor trouble was caused by Earl Godwin, who had created a species of fleet of his own. With a view to suppressing these a number of King’s ships were fitted out; but as the King and Godwin came to terms the fleet was not made use of.

Close following upon this came the Norman invasion, which of all the foolhardy enterprises ever embarked on by man was theoretically one of the most foolish. William’s intentions were perfectly well known. A certain “English fleet” existed, and there was nothing to prevent its expansion into a force easily able to annihilate the heterogeneous Norman flotilla.

How many ships and men William actually got together is a matter upon which the old chroniclers vary considerably. But he is supposed to have had with him some 696 ships[3]; and since his largest ships were not over twenty tons and most of them a great deal smaller, it is clear that they must have been crowded to excess and in poor condition to give battle against anything of the nature of a determined attack from an organised fleet.

No English fleet put in appearance, however. Harold had collected a large fleet at Sandwich, but after a while, for some unknown reason, it was dispersed, probably owing to the lateness of the season. The strength of the fleet collected, or why it was dispersed, are, however, immaterial issues; the fact of importance is that the fleet was “inadequate” because it failed to prevent the invasion. A neglected fleet entailed the destruction of the Saxon dominion.

II.

THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET ERAS.

William the Conqueror’s first act on landing was to burn all his ships--a proceeding useful enough in the way of preventing any of his followers retiring with their spoils, but inconvenient to him shortly after he became King of England. Fleets from Denmark and Norway raided the coasts, and, though the raiders were easily defeated on shore, the pressure from them was sufficient to cause William to set about recreating a navy, of which he made some use in the year 1071. In 1078 the Cinque Ports were established, five ports being granted certain rights in return for policing the Channel and supplying ships to the King as required. But the amount of naval power maintained was very small, both in the reign of William the First and his successors.

Not until the reign of Henry II was any appreciable attention paid to nautical matters. Larger ships than heretofore were built, as we assume from records of the loss of one alleged to carry 300 men. It was Henry II who first claimed the “Sovereignty of the British Seas” and enacted the Assize of Arms whereby no ship or timber for shipbuilding might be sold out of England.

When Richard I came to the throne in 1189, fired with ambition to proceed to the Crusades, he ordered all ports in his dominions to supply him with ships in proportion to their population. The majority of these ships came, however, from Acquitaine. The fleet thus collected is said to have consisted of nine large ships, 150 small vessels, thirty galleys, and a number of transports. The large ships, which have also been given as thirteen in number, were known at the time as “busses.” They appear to have been three-masters. The fleet sailed in eight divisions. This expedition to the Holy Land was the first important over-sea voyage ever participated in by English ships, the greatest distance heretofore traversed having been to Norway in the time of Canute. This making of a voyage into the unknown was, however, not quite so difficult as it might at first sight be supposed to be, because there is no doubt whatever that the compass was by then well-known and used. Records from 1150 and onwards exist which describe the compass of that period. A contemporary chronicler[4] wrote of it:--

“This [polar] star does not move. They [the seamen] have an art
which cannot deceive, by virtue of the _manite_, an ill brownish
stone to which iron spontaneously adheres. They search for the
right point, and when they have touched a needle on it, and fixed
it to a bit of straw, they lay it on water, and the straw keeps it
afloat. Then the point infallibly turns towards the star; and when
the night is dark and gloomy, and neither star nor moon is visible,
they set a light beside the needle, and they can be assured that
the star is opposite to the point, and thereby the mariner is
directed in his course. This is an art which cannot deceive.”

The compass would seem to have existed, so far as northern nations were concerned, about the time of William the Conqueror. Not till early in the Fourteenth Century did it assume the form in which we now know it, but its actual antiquity is considerably more.

In connection with this expedition to the Holy Land, Richard issued a Code of Naval Discipline, which has been described as the germ of our Articles of War. Under this Code if a man killed another on board ship, he was to be tied to the corpse and thrown into the sea. If the murder took place on shore, he was to be buried alive with the corpse. The penalty for drawing a knife on another man, or drawing blood from him in any manner was the loss of a hand. For “striking another,” the offender was plunged three times into the sea. For reviling or insulting another man, compensation of an ounce of silver to the aggrieved one was awarded. The punishment for theft was to shave the head of the thief, pour boiling pitch upon it and then feather him. This was done as a mark of recognition. The subsequent punishment was to maroon a man upon the first land touched. Severe penalties were imposed on the mariners and servants for gambling.

Of these punishments the two most interesting are those for theft and the punishment of “ducking.” This last was presumably keel-hauling, a punishment which survived well into the Nelson era. It is to be found described in the pages of Marryat. It consisted in drawing the offender by ropes underneath the bottom of the ship. As his body was thus scraped along the ship’s hull, the punishment was at all times severe; but in later days, as ships grew larger and of deeper draught, it became infinitely more cruel and heavy than in the days when it was first instituted.

The severe penalty for theft is to be noted on account of the fact that, even in the early times, theft, as now, was and is recognised as a far more serious offence on ship board than it is on shore--the reason being the greater facilities that a ship affords for theft.

On his way to the Holy Land, Richard had a dispute at Sicily with the King of France, out of which he increased his fleet somewhat. Leaving Sicily, somewhere between Cyprus and Acre he encountered a very large Saracen ship, of the battle with which very picturesque and highly coloured accounts exist. There is no doubt that the ship was something a great deal larger than anything the English had ever seen heretofore, although the crew of 1,500 men with which she is credited by the chroniclers is undoubtedly an exaggeration.

The ship carried an armament of Greek fire and “serpents.” The exact composition of Greek fire is unknown. It was invented by the Byzantines, who by means of it succeeded in keeping their enemies at bay for a very long time. It was a mixture of chemicals which, upon being squirted at the enemy from tubes, took fire, and could only be put out by sand or vinegar. “Serpents” were apparently some variation of Greek fire of a minor order, discharged by catapults.

In the first part of the attack the English fleet was able to make no impression upon the enemy, as her high sides and the Greek fire rendered boarding impossible. Not until King Richard had exhilarated his fleet by informing them that if the galley escaped they “should be crucified or put to extreme torture,” was any progress made. After that, according to the contemporary account, some of the English jumped overboard and succeeded in fastening ropes to the rudder of the Saracen ship, “steering her as they pleased.” They then obtained a footing on board, but were subsequently driven back. As a last resource King Richard formed his galleys into line and rammed the ship, which afterwards sank.

The relation of Richard’s successor, King John, to the British Navy, is one of some peculiar interest. More than any king before him he appears to have appreciated the importance of naval power, and naval matters received more attention than heretofore. In the days of King John the crews of ships appropriated for the King’s service were properly provisioned with wine and food, and there are also records of pensions for wounds, one of the earliest being that of Alan le Walleis, who received a pension of sixpence a day for the loss of his hand.[5]

King John is popularly credited with having made the first claim to the “Sovereignty of the Seas” and of having enacted that all foreign vessels upon sighting an English one were to strike their flags to her, and that if they did not that it was lawful to destroy them. The authenticity of this is, however, very doubtful; and it is more probable that, on account of various naval regulations which first appeared in the reign of King John, this particular regulation was fathered upon him at a later date with the view to giving it an historical precedent.

In the reign of King John the “Laws of Oleron” seem to have first appeared, but it is not at all clear that they had any specific connection with England. They appear rather to have been of a general European nature. The gist of the forty-seven articles of the “Laws of Oleron,” of which the precise date of promulgation cannot be ascertained, is as follows:--[5]

“By the first article, if a vessel arrived at Bordeaux, Rouen, or
any other similar place, and was there freighted for Scotland, or
any other foreign country, and was in want of stores or provisions,
the master was not permitted to sell the vessel, but he might with
the advice of his crew raise money by pledging any part of her
tackle or furniture.

“If a vessel was wind or weather bound, the master, when a change
occurred, was to consult his crew, saying to them, “Gentlemen, what
think you of this wind?” and to be guided by the majority whether
he should put to sea. If he did not do this, and any misfortune
happened, he was to make good the damage.

“If a seaman sustained any hurt through drunkenness or quarrelling,
the master was not bound to provide for his cure, but might
turn him out of his ship; if, however, the injury occurred in
the service of his ship, he was to be cured at the cost of the
said ship. A sick sailor was to be sent on shore, and a lodging,
candles, and one of the ship’s boys, or a nurse provided for him,
with the same allowance of provisions as he would have received on
board. In case of danger in a storm, the master might, with the
consent of the merchants on board, lighten the ship by throwing
part of the cargo overboard; and if they did not consent, or
objected to his doing so, he was not to risk the vessel but to
act as he thought proper; on their arrival in port, he and the
third part of the crew were to make oath that it was done for the
preservation of the vessel; and the loss was to be borne equally by
the merchants. A similar proceeding was to be adopted before the
mast or cables were cut away.

“Before goods were shipped the master was to satisfy the merchants
of the strength of his ropes and slings; but if he did not do so,
or they requested him to repair them and a cask were stove, the
master was to make it good.

“In cases of difference between a master and one of his crew, the
man was to be denied his mess allowance thrice, before he was
turned out of the ship, or discharged; and if the man offered
reasonable satisfaction in the presence of the crew, and the master
persisted in discharging him, the sailor might follow the ship to
her place of destination, and demand the same wages as if he had
not been sent ashore.

“In case of a collision by a ship undersail running on board one at
anchor, owing to bad steering, if the former were damaged, the cost
was to be equally divided; the master and crew of the latter making
oath that the collision was accidental. The reason for this law
was, it is said, ‘that an old decayed vessel might not purposely
be put in the way of a better.’ It was specially provided that all
anchors ought to be indicated by buoys or ‘anchor-marks.’

“Mariners of Brittany were entitled only to one meal a day,
because they had beverage going and coming; but those of Normandy
were to have two meals, because they had only water as the ship’s
allowance. As soon as the ship arrived in a wine country, the
master was, however, to procure them wine.

“Several regulations occur respecting the seamen’s wages, which
show that they were sometimes paid by a share of the freight. On
arriving at Bordeaux or any other place, two of the crew might go
on shore and take with them one meal of such victuals as were on
board, and a proportion of bread, but no drink; and they were to
return in sufficient time to prevent their master losing the tide.
If a pilot from ignorance or otherwise failed to conduct a ship
in safety, and the merchants sustained any damage, he was to make
full satisfaction if he had the means to; if not, he was to lose
his head; and, if the master or any one of the mariners cut off
his head, they were not bound to answer for it; but, before they
had recourse to so strong a measure, ‘they must be sure he had not
wherewith to make satisfaction.’

“Two articles of the code prove, that from an ‘accursed custom’ in
some places, by which the third or fourth part of ships that were
lost belonged to the lord of the place--the pilots, to ingratiate
themselves with these nobles, ‘like faithless and treacherous
villains,’ purposely ran the vessel on the rocks. It was therefore
enacted that the said lords, and all others assisting in plundering
the wreck, shall be accursed and excommunicated, and punished as
robbers and thieves; that ‘all false and treacherous pilots should
suffer a most rigorous and merciless death,’ and be suspended to
high gibbets near the spot, which gibbets were to remain as an
example in succeeding ages. The barbarous lords were to be tied to
a post in the middle of their own houses, and, being set on fire
at the four corners, all were to be burned together; the walls
demolished, its site converted into a marketplace for the sale only
of hogs and swine, and all their goods to be confiscated to the use
of the aggrieved parties.

“Such of the cargoes as floated ashore were to be taken care of
for a year or more; and, if not then claimed, they were to be
sold by the lord, and the proceeds distributed among the poor, in
marriage portions to poor maids and other charitable uses. If, as
often happened, ‘people more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad
dogs,’ murdered shipwrecked persons, they were to be plunged into
the sea till they were half-dead, and then drawn out and stoned to
death.”

Those laws, unconnected though they appear to be with strictly naval matters, are none the less of extreme interest as indicating the establishment of “customs of the sea,” and the consequent segregation of a “sailor class.” It has ever to be kept very clearly in mind that there was no such thing as a “Navy” as we understand it in these days. When ships were required for war purposes they were hired, just as waggons may be hired by the Army to-day; nor did the mariners count for much more than horses. The “Laws of Oleron,” however, gave them a certain general status which they had not possessed before; and the regulations of John as to providing for those engaged upon the King’s service--though they in no way constituted a Royal Navy--played their part many years later in making a Royal Navy possible, or, perhaps, it may be said, “necessary.” Necessity has ever been the principal driving force in the naval history of England.

To resume. The limitations of the powers of the master (_i.e._ captain) in these “Laws of Oleron” deserve special attention. “Gentlemen, what think you of this wind?” from the captain to his crew would be considered “democracy” carried to extreme and extravagant limits in the present day; in the days when it was promulgated as “the rule” it was surely stranger still! Little wonder that seamen at an early stage segregated from the ordinary body of citizens and became, as described by Clarendon in his “History of the Rebellion” a few hundred years later, when he wrote:--

“The seamen are a nation by themselves, a humorous and fantastic
people, fierce and rude and resolute in whatsoever they resolve or
are inclined to, but unsteady and inconstant in pursuing it, and
jealous of those to-morrow by whom they are governed to-day.”

To this, to the earlier things that produced it, those who will may trace the extreme rigour of naval discipline and naval punishments, as compared with contemporaneous shore punishments at any given time, and the extraordinary difference at present existing between the American and European navies. The difference is usually explained on the circumstance that “Europe is Europe, and America, America.” But “differences” having their origin in the “Laws of Oleron” may play a greater part than is generally allowed.

The year 1213 saw the Battle of Damme. This was the first real naval battle between the French and English. The King of France had collected a fleet of some “seventeen hundred ships” for the invasion of England, but having been forbidden to do so by the Pope’s Legate, he decided to use his force against Flanders. This Armada was surprised and totally destroyed by King John’s fleet.

After the death of John the nautical element in England declared for Henry III, son of John, and against Prince Louis of France, who had been invited to the throne of England by the barons. Out of this came the battle of Sandwich, 1217, where Hubert de Burgh put into practice, though in different form, those principles first said to have been evolved by Alfred the Great--namely, to attack with an assured and complete superiority.

Every English ship took on board a large quantity of quick-lime and sailed to meet the French, who were commanded by Eustace the Monk. De Burgh manœuvred for the weather gauge. Having gained it, the English ships came down upon the French with the wind, the quick-lime blowing before them, and so secured a complete victory over the tortured and blinded French. This is the first recorded instance of anything that may be described as “tactics” in Northern waters.

The long reign of Henry III saw little of interest in connection with nautical matters. But towards the end of Henry’s reign a private quarrel between English and Norman ships, both seeking fresh water off the Coast of Bayonne, had momentous consequences. The Normans, incensed over the quarrel, captured a couple of English ships and hanged the crew on the yards interspersed with an equal number of dead dogs. Some English retaliated in a similar fashion on such Normans as they could lay hands on, and, retaliation succeeding retaliation, it came about that in the reign of Edward I, though England and France were still nominally at peace, the entire mercantile fleets of both were engaged in hanging each other, over what was originally a private quarrel as to who should be first to draw water at a well.

Ultimately the decision appears to have been come by “to fight it out.” Irish and Dutch ships assisted the English. Flemish and Genoese ships assisted the Normans and French. The English to the number of 60 were under Sir Robert Tiptoft. The number of the enemy is placed at 200, though it was probably considerably less. In the battle that ensued the Norman and French fleets were annihilated.

This battle, even more than others of the period, cannot be considered as one of the battles of “the British fleet.” It is merely a conflict between one clique of pirates and traders against another clique. But it is important on account of the light that it sheds on a good deal of subsequent history; for the fashion thus started lasted in one way and another for two or three hundred years.

Nor were these disputes always international. Four years later than the fight recorded above, in 1297, the King wished to invade Flanders with an army of 50,000 men. The Cinque Ports being unable to supply the requisite number of ships to transport this army, requisitions were also made at Yarmouth. Bad blood soon arose between the two divisions, with the result that they attacked each other. Thirty of the Yarmouth ships with their crews were destroyed and the expedition greatly hampered thereby.

Two events of importance in British naval history happened in the reign of Edward I. The first of these, which took place about the year 1300, arose out of acts of piracy on foreigners, to which English ships were greatly addicted at that time. In an appeal made to Edward by those Continentals who had suffered most from these depredations, the King was addressed as “Lord of the Sea.” This was a definite recognition of that sea claim first formulated by Henry II and which was afterwards to lead to so much fighting and bloodshed.

The second event was the granting of the first recorded “Letters of Marque” in the year 1295. These were granted to a French merchant who had been taking a cargo of fruit from Spain to England and had been robbed by the Portuguese. He was granted a five year license to attack the Portuguese in order to recoup his loss.

In the reign of Edward II the only naval event of interest is, that when the Queen came from abroad and joined those who were fighting against the King, the nautical element sided with her.

The reign of Edward III saw some stirring phases in English history. With a view to carrying on his war against France, Edward bestowed considerable attention on naval matters, and in the year 1338, he got together a fleet stated to have consisted of 500 vessels. These were used as transports to convey the Army to France, and are estimated to have carried on the average about eighty men each.

Meanwhile, the French had also got together a fleet of about equal size, and no sooner had the English expedition reached the shores of France than the whole of the south coast of England was subjected to a series of French raids. Southampton, Plymouth and the Cinque Ports were sacked and burned with practical impunity. These raids continued during 1338 and 1339; the bulk of the English fleet still lying idle on transport service at Edward’s base in Flanders. A certain number of ships had been sent back, but most of these had been as hastily sent on to Scotland, where their services had been urgently needed. Matters in the Channel culminated with the capture of the two largest English ships of the time. A fleet of small vessels hastily fitted out at the Cinque Ports succeeded in destroying Boulogne and a number of ships that lay there, but generally speaking the French had matters very much their own way on the sea.

Towards the end of 1339, Edward and his expedition returned to England to refit, with a view to preparing for a fresh invasion of France during the following summer.

As Edward was about to embark, he learned that the French King had got together an enormous fleet at Sluys. After collecting some additional vessels, bringing the total number of ships up to 250 or thereabouts, Edward took command and sailed for Sluys, at which port he found the French fleet. He localised the French on Friday, July 3rd, but it was not until the next day that the battle took place.

The recorded number of the enemy in all these early sea fights requires to be accepted with caution. For what it is worth the number of French ships has been given at 400 vessels, each carrying 100 men. The French, as on a later occasion they did on the Nile, lay on the defensive at the mouth of the harbour, the ships being lashed together by cables. Their boats, filled with stones, had been hoisted to the mast-heads. In the van of their fleet lay the _Christopher_, _Edward_, and various other “King’s ships,” which they captured in the previous year.

The English took the offensive, and in doing so manœuvred to have the sun behind them. Then, with their leading ships crowded with archers they bore down upon the main French division and grappled with them. The battle, which lasted right throughout the night, was fought with unexampled fury, and for a long time remained undecisive, considerable havoc being wrought by the French with the then novel idea of dropping large stones from aloft. The combatants, however, were so mixed up that it is doubtful whether the French did not kill as many of their own number as of the enemy; whereas, on the other side, the use of English archers who were noted marksmen told only against those at whom the arrows were directed. Furthermore, the English had the tactical advantage of throwing the whole of their force on a portion of the enemy, whom they ultimately totally destroyed.

This Battle of Sluys took place in 1340. In 1346, after various truces, the English again attacked France in force, and the result was the Battle of Cressy. A side issue of this was the historic siege of Calais, which held out for about twelve months. 738 ships and 14,956 men are said to have been employed in the sea blockade.

Up to this time the principal English ship had been a galley, _i.e._, essentially a row boat. About the year 1350 the galley began to disappear as a capital ship, and the galleon, with sail as its main motive power, took its place. Also a new enemy appeared; for at that time England first came into serious conflict with Spain.

To a certain extent the galleon was to the fleets of the Mid-Fourteenth Century much what the ironclad was to the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, or “Dreadnoughts” at the end of the first decade of the Twentieth Century.

The introduction of this type of vessel came about as follows:--

A fleet of Castillian galleons, bound for Flanders, whiled away the monotony of its trip by acts of piracy against all English ships that it met. It reached Sluys without interference. Here it loaded up with rich cargoes and prepared to return to Spain. The English meanwhile collected a fleet to intercept it, this fleet being in command of King Edward himself, who selected the “cog _Thomas_” as his flagship.

The English tactics would seem to have been carefully thought out beforehand. The Castillian ships were known to be of relatively vast size and more or less unassailable except by boarding. The result was that when at length they appeared, the English charged their ships into them, sinking most of their own ships in the impact, sprang aboard and carried the enemy by boarding. The leading figure on the English side was a German body-servant of the name of Hannekin, who distinguished himself just at the crisis of the battle by leaping on board a Castillian ship and cutting the halyards. Otherwise the result of the battle might have been different, because the Castillians, when about half only of the English ships were grappled with them, hoisted their sails, with the object of sailing away and destroying the enemy in detail. Hannekin’s perception of this intention frustrated the attempt.

The advantages of the galleons (or carracks as they were then called), must have been rendered obvious in this battle of “Les Espagnols-sur-Mer,” as immediately afterwards ships on the models of those captured began to be hired for English purposes.

Concurrent, however, with this building of a larger type of ship, a decline of naval power began; and ten years later, English shipping was in such a parlous state that orders were issued to the effect that should any of the Cinque Ports be attacked from the sea, any ships there were to be hauled up on land, as far away from the water as possible, in order to preserve them.

In the French War of 1369, almost the first act of the French fleet was to sack and burn Portsmouth without encountering any naval opposition.

In 1372 some sort of English fleet was collected, and under the Earl of Pembroke sent to relieve La Rochelle, which was then besieged by the French and Spanish. The Spanish ships of that period had improved on those of twenty years before, to the extent that (according to Froissart), some carried guns. In any case they proved completely superior to the English, whose entire fleet was captured or sunk.

This remarkable and startling difference is only to be accounted for by the difference in the naval policy of the two periods. In the early years of Edward III’s reign, when a fleet was required it was in an efficient state, and when it encountered the enemy, it was used by those who had obviously thought out the best means of making the most of the material available. In the latter stage, there was neither efficiency nor purpose. The result was annihilation.

How far the introduction of cannon on shipboard contributed to this result it is difficult to say exactly. In so far as it may have, the blame rests with the English, who were perfectly familiar with cannon at that time. If, therefore, the very crude stone-throwing cannon of those days had any particular advantages over the stone-throwing catapults previously employed, failure to fit them is merely a further proof of the inefficiency of those responsible for naval matters in the closing years of Edward III’s reign. Probably, however, the cannon contributed little to the result of La Rochelle, for, like all battles of the era, it was a matter of boarding--of “land fighting on the water.”

The reign of Richard II saw England practically without any naval power at all. The French and Spaniards raided the Channel without interference worth mention. Once or twice retaliatory private expeditions were made upon the French coast; but speaking generally the French and Spaniards had matters entirely their own way, and the latter penetrated the Thames so far as Gravesend.

In the year 1380, an English army was sent over to France, but this, as Calais was British, was a simple operation, and although two years later ships were collected for naval purposes, English sea impotence remained as conspicuous as ever. In 1385, when a French armada was collected at Sluys for the avowed purpose of invading England on a large scale, no attempt whatever seems to have been made to meet this with another fleet. Fortunately for England, delays of one kind and another led to the French scheme of invasion being abandoned.

Under Henry IV, matters remained much the same, until in the summer of 1407, off the coast of Essex, the King, who was voyaging with five ships, was attacked by French privateers, which succeeded in capturing all except the Royal vessel.

This led to the organisation of a “fleet” and a successful campaign against the privateers. The necessity of Sea Power began to be realised again, and this so far bore fruit that in the reign of Henry V no less than 1,500 ships were (it is said) collected in the Solent, for an invasion of France. But since some of these were hired from the Dutch and as every English vessel of over twenty tons was requisitioned by the King, the large number got together does not necessarily indicate the existence of any very great amount of naval power. This fleet, however, indicated a revival of sea usage.

In 1417, large ships known as “Dromons” were built at Southampton, and bought for the Crown, but these were more of the nature of “Royal Yachts” than warships. The principal British naval base at and about this period was at Calais, of which, at the time of the War of the Roses, the Earl of Warwick was the governor.

The first act of the Regency of Henry VI was to sell by auction such ships as had been bought for the Crown under Henry V. The duty of keeping the Channel free from pirates was handed over to London merchants, who were paid a lump sum to do this, but did not do it at all effectively.

Edward IV made some use of a Fleet to secure his accession, or later restoration. Richard III would seem to have realised the utility of a Fleet, and during his short reign he did his best to begin a revival of “the Navy” by buying some ships, which, however, he hired out to merchants for trade purposes; and so, at the critical moment, he had apparently nothing available to meet the mild over-sea expedition of Henry of Richmond. So--right up to _comparatively_ recent times--there was never any Royal Navy in the proper meaning of the word, nor even any organised attempt to create an equivalent, except on the part of those two Kings who we are always told were the worst Kings England ever had--John and Richard III. Outside these two, there is not the remotest evidence that anyone ever dreamed of “naval power,” “sea power,” or anything of the sort, till Henry VII became King of England, and founded the British Navy on the entirely unromantic principle that it was a financial economy.

Such was the real and prosaic birth of the British Navy in relatively recent times. It was made equally prosaic in 1910 by Lord Charles Beresford, when he said, “Battleships are cheaper than war.”

There is actually no poetry about the British Navy. There never has been--it will be all the better for us if there never is. It is merely a business-like institution founded to secure these islands from foreign invasion. Dibden in his own day, Kipling in ours, have done their best to put in the poetry. It has been pretty and nice and splendid. But over and above it all I put the words of a stoker whose name I never knew, “It’s just this--do your blanky job!”

That is the real British Navy. Henry VII did not create this watchword, nor anyone else, except perhaps Nelson.

III.

THE TUDOR PERIOD AND BIRTH OF A REGULAR NAVY.

That Henry VII assimilated the lesson of the utility of naval power is abundantly clear. Henry VII it was who first established a regular navy as we now understand it. Previous to his reign, ships were requisitioned as required for war purposes, and, the war being over, reverted to the mercantile service. The liability of the Cinque Ports to provide ships when called upon constituted a species of navy, and certain ships were specially held as “Royal ships” for use as required, but under Henry ships primarily designed for fighting purposes appeared. The first of these ships was a vessel generally spoken of as the “_Great Harry_,” though her real name seems to have been _The Regent_, built in 1485. Incidentally this ship remained afloat till 1553, when she was burned by accident. She has been called “the first ship of the Royal Navy”; and though her right to the honour has been contested, she appears fully entitled to it. The real founder of the Navy as we understand a navy to-day was Henry VII.

Another important event of this reign is that during it the first dry dock was built at Portsmouth. Up till then there had been no facilities for the underwater repair of ships other than the primitive method of running them on to the mud and working on them at low tide. While ships were small this was not a matter of much moment, but directly larger vessels began to be built, it meant that efficient overhauls were extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Yet another step that had far reaching results was the granting of a bounty to all who built ships of over 120 tons. This bounty, which was “per ton” and on a sliding scale, made the building of large private ships more profitable and less risky than it had been before, and so assisted in the creation of an important auxiliary navy as complement to the Royal Navy.

The bounty system did more, however, than encourage the building of large private ships. The loose method of computing tonnage already referred to, became more elastic still when a bounty was at stake; and even looser when questions of the ship being hired per ton for State purposes was at issue. Henry VII, who was nothing if not economical, felt the pinch; the more so, as just about this time Continentals with ships for hire became alarmingly scarce. Something very like a “corner in ships” was created by English merchants.

Henry VII was thus, by circumstances beyond his own control, forced into creating a permanent navy in self defence. He died with a “navy” of eighteen ships, of which, however, only two were genuinely entitled to be called “H.M.S.” He had to hire the others!

This foundation of the “regular navy” is not at all romantic. But it is how a regular navy came to be founded--by force of circumstances. Henry VII, “founder of the Royal Navy,” undoubtedly realized clearer than any of his predecessors for many a hundred years the meaning of naval power. But--his passion for economy and the advantage taken by such of his subjects as had ships available when hired ships were scarce, had probably a deal more to do with the institution of a regular navy than any preconceived ideas. In two words--“Circumstances compelled.” And that is how things stood when Henry VIII came to the throne.

The nominal permanent naval power established by Henry VII consisted of fifty-seven ships, and the crew of each was twenty-one men and a boy, so that the _Great Harry_, which must have required a considerably larger crew, would seem to have been an experimental vessel. The actual force, however, was but two fighting ships proper.

Under Henry VIII, however, the policy of monster ships was vigorously upheld, and one large ship built in the early years of his reign--the _Sovereign_--was reputed to be “the largest ship in Europe.” In 1512 the King reviewed at Portsmouth “twenty-five ships of great burthen,” which had been collected in view of hostilities with France. These ships having been joined by others, and amounting to a fleet of forty-four sail, encountered a French fleet of thirty-nine somewhere off the coast of Brittany.

This particular battle is mainly noteworthy owing to the fact that the two flagships grappled, and while in this position one of them caught fire. The flames being communicated to the other, both blew up. This catastrophe so appalled the two sides that they abandoned the battle by mutual consent; from which it is to be presumed that the nautical mind of the day had, till then, little realised that risks were run by carrying explosives.

The English, however, were less impressed by the catastrophe than the enemy, since next day they rallied and captured or sank most of the still panic-stricken French ships.

Henry replaced the lost flagship by a still larger ship, the _Grace de Dieu_, a two-decker with the lofty poop and forecastle of the period. She was about 1,000 tons. Tonnage, however, was so loosely calculated in those days that measurements are excessively approximate.

When first cannon were introduced, they were (as previously remarked) merely a substitute for the old-fashioned catapults, and discharged stones for some time till more suitable projectiles were evolved. Like the catapults they were placed on the poop or forecastle, as portholes had not then been introduced. These were invented by a Frenchman, one Descharges, of Brest. By means of portholes it was possible to mount guns on the main deck and so increase their numbers.

Although the earliest portholes were merely small circular holes which did not allow of any training, and though the idea of them was probably directly derived from the loopholes in castle walls, the influence of the porthole on naval architecture was soon very great indeed. By means of this device a new relation between size and power was established, hence the “big displacements” which began to appear at this time. The hole for a gun muzzle to protrude through, quickly became an aperture allowing of training the gun on any ordinary bearing in English built ships. The English (for a very long time it was English only) realisation of the possibilities of the porthole in Henry VIII’s reign contributed very materially to the defeat of the Spanish Armada some decades later. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the porthole was to that era what the torpedo has been in the present one. Introduced about 1875 as a trivial alternative to the gun, in less than forty years the torpedo came to challenge the gun in range to an extent that as early as 1905 or thereabouts began profoundly to affect all previous ideas of naval tactics, and that by 1915 has changed them altogether!