complete as the battle-ship’s armaments. The process has indeed been
gradual; great sharpness of transition has only been visible within the
last twenty-five years; yet it is not necessary to talk of hundred-ton
guns to emphasize the growth of ordnance. There was a mighty difference
betwixt the batteries of the old Duke of Wellington, for example, and
those of the ships to which the cannon lately trawled up in the Channel
belonged. But it is instructive, and certainly amusing, to go much
further back still. In an ancient treatise, called “Speculum Regale,” a
description is given of the method of attack and defence as practised in
the navy in the twelfth century. Here the mariner is told to provide
himself with two spears, which he must be careful not to lose in
throwing. One of them is to be long enough to reach out of one vessel
into another. In addition to these spears, the sailor was to be
furnished with scythes fixed to long poles, axes, boat-hooks, slings
fitted to staffs,[14] barbed darts, stones for heaving, and bows for
shooting. How terrible these primitive weapons were in the hands of the
early mariners may be read in the old accounts of sea-fights. Describing
the great naval battle between the English and French in Edward III.’s
reign, Daniel in his “Collection,” p. 227, writes: “Most of the French,
rather than endure the arrows and sharp swords of the English or be
taken, desperately leap into the sea, whereupon the French king’s
jester, set on to give him notice of this overthrow (which being so ill
news, none else willingly would impart on the sudden) said, and
oftentimes reiterated the same: _Cowardly Englishmen_, _Dastardly
Englishmen_, _Faint-hearted Englishmen_. The king at length asked him
_Why?_ For that, said he, _They durst not leap out of their ships into
the sea, as our brave Frenchmen did_. By which speech the King
apprehended a notion of this overthrow.” There were also contrivances
called galtraps, beaks for the vessels like boars’ heads armed with iron
tusks, towers for the bowmen to let fly their arrows from, breastplates
of linen very thick, and helmets of steel. The old Jacks fought stoutly
with these barbarous weapons, but their real qualities had to lie in
wait for gunpowder.
Footnote 14:
It was asserted that the bullet of a sling “in the course, hath
continued a fiery heat in the air, yea, sometimes melted, that it
killeth at one blow, that it pierceth helmet and shield, that it
reacheth further, that it randoneth less” than gun shot! See Camden’s
“Remaines.”
When it came, it brought with it some extraordinary engines. There is
extant an account of a ship called the _Great Michael_, built by James
IV. of Scotland, and her artillery was composed of the following: “She
bare many cannons, six on every side, with three great bassils, two
behind in her deck and one before; with 300 shot of small artillery,
that is to say, myand and batterd falcon, and quarter falcon, slings,
pestilent serpetens, and double dogs, with hagtor and culvering,
corsbows and handbows.” Our ancestors, in their choosing of names for
their guns, appear to have been influenced by a hope of terrifying the
enemy by dreadful terms, as the Chinese try to affright their foes by
painting monstrous pictures upon their shields. Batterd falcons, double
dogs, hagtors, and pestilent serpetens! There is destruction in the mere
names, and a stouter than Falstaff should easily run from such sounds.
In Rymer’s “Fœdera” appear some queer appellations for sailor’s weapons.
They occur in an order to the Keeper of the Private Wardrobe in the
Tower to deliver to the Treasurer of Queen Philippa the following
stores: Eleven guns, forty _libras pulveris_ pro guns, forty _petras_
pro guns, forty tampons, four touches, one mallet, two firepans, forty
pavys, twenty-four bows, forty sheaves of arrows, and other matters.
They did well who in their generation used the word gun or cannon
generically, and confined their definitions to calibres as we do to
bores and tons. One needs a close acquaintance with old books to
understand the writers when they come to talk of ships and how they went
armed. Even to the learned the uses of certain old pieces are quite
unintelligible. James, the historian, for instance, could not understand
what was signified by “murdering pieces.” These were cannon mounted upon
the after-part of the forecastle, and the muzzles of them raised so as
to point to the main topmast head. It is certainly difficult to gather
the purpose to be served by such guns, unless, indeed, they were
designed as a remedy against the invasion of the foe by the yards and
rigging. But why were their muzzles pointed at one mast only? and was it
possible that those ancient mariners fully understood what must follow
if with their own powder and ball they succeeded in clearing their spars
of the enemy by dismasting themselves?
The calibre and character of other old guns are fully understood. There
was the “whole cannon,” which carried a 60 lb. ball; there was the
demi-cannon, with a 31 lb. ball; also the cannon petro, 31 lb.; whole
culverine, 11 lb.; and demi-culverine, 9 lb. The cannon royal rose
sometimes to a 63 lb. ball. Then there was a gun called the French
cannon, 43 lb.; the Saker, 5 lb.; the Minion, 4 lb.; and the Faulcon, or
Falcon, 2 lb.[15]
Footnote 15:
Some of these terms seem to have been supplied by the language of the
falconer. Among the names mentioned by Strutt as given to different
species of hawks, I find, the _faulcon_, the _bastard_, the _sacre_,
and the _musket_. To this may be added the following from Camden’s
“Remaines,” p. 208: “This being begun by him” (_i.e._ Berthold Swarte,
whom he considers the inventor of gunpowder and cannons) “by skill and
time is now come to that perfection, not onely in great yron and brass
pieces, but also in small, that all admire it; having names given
them, some from serpents or ravenous birds, as Culverines, or
Colubrines, Serpentines, Basiliques, Faulcons, Sacres; others in other
respects, as Canons, Demicanons, Chambers, Slinges, Arquebuze,
Caliver, Handgun, Muskets, Petronils, Pistoll, Dagge, etc., and
Petarras of the same brood lately invented.” From the edition of 1657.
These pieces were in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but
by degrees other names were given, so that the titles applied to cannon
from, let me say, the days of Henry VIII. down to the close of the last
century, should furnish out an inventory long enough to fill many pages.
To the above list, given by Ralph Willett in a paper on British naval
architecture, other examples may be added from the researches of James.
He speaks of the cannon-serpentine and bastard-cannon as corresponding
with the 42-pounder. The carronade dates as late as 1779, and takes its
name from the Scotch town where it was invented. Another comparatively
recent gun he speaks of as Gover’s, or Congreve’s, the Americans naming
a similar weapon a Columbiad. Other guns are not mentioned by the
historian, though of all our marine artillery they played, as small
weapons, the largest part in our wars last century. The swivel cannon
carried a shot of half a pound; it was fixed in a socket on the ship’s
side, or stern, or bow, and in her tops. The socket that supported it
was bored in a piece of oak, hooped with iron, to enable it to sustain
the recoil. It was, indeed, a modernized form of the old pettararoe, and
was turned about at will by an iron handle affixed to its cascabel; when
worked in the tops it was charged with musket-balls, and fired down at
the enemy’s decks. The coehorn was a small mortar, also fixed on a
swivel, and chiefly used for firing grenadoes, as they were called, or
bullets from merchantmen’s close quarters when they were boarded. For
yard-arm fighting there was the “powder-flask”—a flask charged with
gunpowder, and fitted with a fuse; it was hurled into the enemy’s deck
immediately before the assault. Another device was the “stink-pot,”
still in vogue with John Chinaman, an earthen shell suspended from the
yard-arm or end of the bowsprit. This machine was charged with powder
mixed with materials which threw up a disgusting, suffocating smoke and
smell. The notion of these apparatuses was to create confusion, in the
midst of which and under cover of the thick vapour the detachment rushed
aboard, cutlass, and sword, and pistol in hand. Another contrivance was
the “organ,” the grandfather of the Mitrailleuse—a machine formed of six
or seven musket-barrels fixed upon one stock so as to be fired at once.
There was also the fire-arrow, a small iron dart, furnished with springs
and bars, and a match saturated with powder and sulphur, wound round the
shaft. It was usually fired from a swivel, at the enemy’s sails. The
match was ignited by the explosion, and the dart, penetrating the sail,
set the cloths on fire. The springs and bars prevented the arrow from
passing through the canvas. The musquetoon was a sort of carbine, with a
barrel spirally rifled from the breech; the explosion lengthened the
ball to about the breadth of a finger. The old fire-pike possessed
something of the character of the fire-arrow. Another weapon of the
fusil pattern is indicated in Sir William Monson’s “Building of Ships:”
“As I have said, such a ship that has neither forecastle, copperidge
head, nor any other manner of defence, but with her men only; that hath
no fowlers, which are pieces of great importance, after a ship is
boarded and entred, or lieth board and board; for the ordnance stands
her in little stead, and is as apt to endanger themselves as their
enemy; for in giving fire, it may take hold of pitch, tar, oakum, or
powder, and burn them both for company; but a murderer or fowler, being
shot out of their own ship, laden with dice shot, will scour the deck of
the enemy, and not suffer the head of a man to appear.” It is evident
that the “murderer” or “fowler” was a sort of fusil.[16]
Footnote 16:
I find this word “murderer” frequently occurring in Hakluyt.
There are some curious features of sixteenth and seventeenth century
maritime warfare preserved in this fine old captain’s Naval Tracts. He
tells us that the French used to conceal half their soldiers in the hold
and to call them up as they were required, the others who had been
fighting going below. The Dunkirkers, like the Spanish whom Anson
fought,[17] flung themselves flat on the deck before the enemy, so that
the shot, great and small, should fly over them. The Hollanders he
charges with Dutch courage. “Instead of cables, planks, and other
devices to preserve their men, the Hollanders, wanting natural valour of
themselves, used to line their company in the head, by giving them
gunpowder to drink, and other kind of liquor to make them sooner drunk;
which, besides it is a barbarous and unchristianlike act, when they are
in danger of death to make them ready for the devil, it often proves
more perilous than prosperous to them by firing their own ships or
making a confusedness in the fight, their wits being taken from them.”
It will be supposed that the seamen of Blake had a higher notion of
Dutch courage than Monson.
Footnote 17:
See the description of the fight with the galleon in Anson’s “Voyage
Round the World.” This book, that bears the name of Walters, Chaplain
to the Centurion, was in reality written by Benjamin Robins. _Naval
Chronicle_, vol. viii. 267.
It is two centuries ago since the _Sovereign_ was launched, a vessel of
1657 tons. There is a curious account of her in Heywood.[18] She was a
big ship for those times, and is about as good an example as I know to
illustrate the mighty change that has been worked in two hundred years.
Her dimensions were—Length of keel, 128 ft.; beam, 48 ft.; length over
all (that is, from the fore-end of her “beak” to the stern), 232 ft.,
making a difference of 104 ft. as between the length of her keel and
that of her upper deck and head! She was 76 ft. high from the bottom of
her keel to the top of her lantern, of which kind of furniture she
carried five, in the biggest of which ten persons could comfortably
stand upright. Her decorations were extraordinarily gorgeous. “All
sides,” we read, “were carved with trophies of artillery and types of
honour, as well belonging to sea as land, with symbols appertaining to
navigation; also their two sacred Majesties’ badges of honour; arms with
several angels holding their letters in compartiments, all which works
are guilded over, and no other colour but gold and black.” Her
figure-head was a Cupid, or a child bridling a lion; her bows were also
apparently ornamented with six figures; on the stern was carved Victory
“in the midst of a frontispiece; upon the beak-head sitteth King Edgar
on horseback, trampling on seven kings.”[19] It would have seemed like a
violation of the choicest canons of old romance to furnish such a
pageant as this with the plain guns grimly generalized with which the
vessels of succeeding days fought for king, commonwealth, home and
beauty. We look in the description of her for culverin and cannon royal,
for the chace ordnance and small artillery of those gilt, plumed, and
glowing times, and find them sure enough. It must have been heartrending
to the curled and booted captain of those days to have offered so gay
and brilliant a fabric to the iron bullets and fiery arrows of the foe.
Think of the Cupid being knocked on the head, and King Edgar violently
hammered off his horse!
Footnote 18:
Quoted by Ralph Willett in his “Disquisition on Shipbuilding,” 1800.
Footnote 19:
“The prime workman,” says Heywood, “is Captain Phineas Pett, overseer
of the work, whose ancestors—father, grandfather, and great
grandfather—for the space of two hundred years, have continued in the
same name, officers and architects in the Royal Navy.” This, as
Willett points out, indicates a regular establishment as far back as
1437, the reign of Henry VI.
It is interesting to observe how such a ship entered into action. First,
the vessel’s company were divided into three parts—one to tack the ship,
the second to ply the small shot, the third to attend the great guns.
Sail was to be shortened to foresail, main and fore-top sail. A “valiant
and sufficient man” was sent to the helm. Of course every officer was
expected to do his duty; the boatswain to sling the yards, to “put
forth” the flag, ancient and streamers, to arm the top and waist cloths,
to spread the netting, provide tubs for water, and the like. Then the
gunner was to see that his mates had care of their “files, budge
barrels, and cartridges, to have his shot in a locker for every piece,
and the yeoman of the powder to keep his room and to be watchful of it.”
A hundred years later found some enlargement of these plain
prescriptions.[20] The boatswain and his mates see to the rigging and
sails; the carpenter and his crew prepare shot-plugs and mauls and
provide against injury to the pumps; the master and his mates attend the
braces; the lieutenants visit the different decks; crows, “handspecs,”
rammers, sponges, powder-horns, matches, and train tackles are placed by
the side of every cannon; the hatches are closed to prevent the men from
deserting their posts by skulking below. The marines are drawn up in
rank and file; the gun-lashings are cast adrift and the tompions
withdrawn; after which the enemy is to be beaten! This is the routine of
a hundred years ago. What is it now? Not less widely different from the
discipline of the times of forty-two pounders, of round, grape, and
canister, of chain, bar, star, and other dismantling missiles, than was
the routine of the epoch of double dogs and pestilent serpetens from the
days of the spears of the Picts and the coracle of the nude Briton. Yet
what did those little minions and sakers do for us? We shall have reason
to be well satisfied if the hundred-ton gun of to-day obtain for us
one-half the triumphs which were achieved for our country by those
little cannon-royal and brass swivels of the times of Raleigh, Blake,
and Shovel.
Footnote 20:
See Falconer’s “Dictionary.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG._
Whatever may have been the other causes of our wars with the Hollanders,
one was unquestionably the herring. No doubt the insinuations of
Richelieu greatly perturbed the phlegmatic Batavian, and helped him into
a fighting posture; but the bloater was at the bottom of it. We took
that fish for a text whereon to discourse concerning our title to
dominion over the sea; and though in these days it is as much the
mackerel as the herring, as much the cod as the mackerel, as much the
turbot as the cod over which the dispute continues, the old battles in
the heart of which Blake curled his whiskers and Tromp flourished his
broomstick are still fought, though, to be sure, without Ruyter’s
fire-ships or the eloquent thunder of Monk’s cannon-royal.
The conflict now is shorn of its old glory. It is waged, indeed, close
into the Thames, though not so high as the Hope; nor, in the direction
of the Medway, does it approach Sheerness; and upon the eastern coast
the struggle is often within view of Scarborough and the Norfolk cliffs.
But there is no more smoke of battle. It is the Dutchman sneaking across
the Englishman’s trawling gear with “the devil”; it is the Frenchman
shearing under cover of the blackness through the league long drift-nets
of the Shoreham or Penzance smack. Years have brought to this nation the
philosophic mind. Instead of declaring war we station a gunboat, put on
a concerned face when we hear of the Dover and Brixham men assaulting
the crews of the Boulogne and Calais craft, and read without emotion of
the capture of a bellicose Hans Butter-box by a small steamer with a
whip at her masthead. Yet the honour of our flag is so inextricably
woven with the literature and traditions of these fishing squabbles
that, spite of the insignificance to which the easy indifference of “my
lords” would reduce them in our day, the reflection of a great and
piercing light in our history is upon them, from the lustre of which
they gather a complexion that is not wholly sentimental.
In 1609 Hugo Grotius wrote a book, which he called “Mare Liberum.” It is
heavy reading in these times of Wilkie Collins and Miss Braddon, and the
heavier, perhaps, for being in Latin. But it was deemed a treatise of
very great eloquence, especially by the Dutch, to whose ocean-rights it
specially referred. In short, the object of Grotius was to prove the
weakness of our title to the sovereignty of the seas, the deep, in his
opinion, being a gift from God and common to all nations. This was
answered by John Selden, the most amazing scholar that any age or
country ever produced, of so candid and great-hearted a nature, as is
particularly exhibited in his Table-Talk, that it is difficult to read
his astonishing answer to Grotius without wishing that his patriotism
had dealt with a subject more answerable to his convictions than this
question of sea rights. But his “Mare Clausum” is a volume that one
would think must be of abounding and enduring interest to Englishmen. It
was translated into English by special command by Marchmont Nedham (as
he spells his name), and published in that form in 1652. It probably has
few readers now. Yet such was the opinion of its potency as a sustained
argument that it was believed, to use the language of Nedham, “had he
(_i.e._ Selden) persisted with the same firm resolution in this
honourable business of the sea, as he did in other things that were
destructive to the nation’s interest, the Netherlanders had been
prevented from spinning out their long opportunitie to an imaginarie
claim of prescription; so that they would have had less pretence to act
those insolencies now which in former times never durst enter the
thoughts of their predecessors.”
The book pre-eminently concerns the honour of our flag, of our dominion
over the seas, more particularly in regard to the right of our kings and
queens to grant licences to foreigners to fish in the sea, and of the
obligation on all ships of what denomination soever to strike their
topsails to our flag, or in other words to salute the symbol of
Britannia’s sovereignty wherever they shall encounter it. For how many
centuries this act of courtesy has been exacted as a right by the
monarchs of England you must read Selden’s book to discover. Writing in
James I.’s reign, he shows how he traces it back for above four hundred
years by this: That at Hastings it was decreed by King John, in the
second year of his reign, with the assent of the peers, “if the governor
or commander of the King’s navie, in his naval expeditions (which were
all in that age upon the Southern Sea) shall meet any ship whatsoever by
sea, either laden or empty, that shall refuse to strike their sails at
the command of the King’s Governor or admiral or his lieutenant, but
make resistance against them which belong to his fleet; That then they
are to bee reputed enemies if they may bee taken, yea, and their ships
and goods be confiscated as the goods of enemies.” He points out that it
was accounted treason in any man who omitted to acknowledge the King of
England in his own sea by striking sail; nor would the circumstance of
his country being friendly with that of the transgressor protect him.
Another illustration of the antiquity of this custom, or exaction
rather, Selden finds in a gold rose-noble,[21] that was coined in the
reign of Edward III. The stamp on one side of it represented a ship
floating on the sea, and a king, armed with sword and shield, sitting on
the ship as on a throne, the device being obviously intended to
represent the maritime dominion of the ocean. All that Selden has to say
about fishing in the sea is full of interest. He points out that Henry
VI. gave leave to the French, and other foreigners, to fish, sometimes
for six months, sometimes for a year; but this leave “was granted under
the name even of a passport or safe conduct; yea, and a size or
proportion was prescribed to their fishing boats or busses that they
should not be above thirty tons.” The French had to obtain leave from
the English admiral to fish for soles for the table of their own king
(Henri Quatre), and such boats as were caught fishing without a licence
were seized as trespassers. In the Eastern waters the Hollanders and
Zealanders were forced to seek permission to fish from the Governor of
Scarborough Castle, and Selden quotes Camden’s expression of wonder at
the vast sum of money the Hollanders made by this fishing upon our coast
and at the apathy of the English, “who have ever granted them leave to
fish, reserving alwaies the honour and privilege to themselves, but
through a kindle of negligence resigning the profit to strangers.” It is
on the mass of evidence as to the antiquity of the British claim to the
sovereignty of the seas that Dr. Campbell, the historian, bases his
opinion respecting the naval power of the Early Britons, who are
generally considered as a race of painted wild men, who speared fish or
crossed their rivers and creeks in wicker boats covered with hides.
Footnote 21:
The value of this coin was 6_s._ 8_d._ as money then was. The
Alchymists pretended that it was made by their arts; interpreting the
inscription on the reverse, _Jesus autem transiens per medium corum
ibat_, to signify that gold was made by secret art amid the ignorant.
Four rose-nobles weighed an ounce.