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.
[Illustration: PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR--1912.]
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.
[Illustration: THE “GRACE DE DIEU” 1515.]
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!
Another great change of these Henry VIII days was in the form of the
ships.[6] At this era they began to be built with “tumble-home” sides,
instead of sides slanting outwards upwards, and inwards downwards as
heretofore. With the coming of the porthole came the decline of the
cross-bow as a naval arm. In the pre-porthole days every record speaks
of “showers of arrows,” and the gun appears to have been a species of
accessory. In the early years of the Sixteenth Century it became the
main armament, and so remained unchallenged till the present century
and the coming of the long-range torpedo.
Henry VIII’s reign is also remarkable for the first institution of
those “cutting out” expeditions which were afterwards to become such a
particular feature of British methods of warfare. This first attempt
happened in the year 1513, when Sir Edward Howard, finding the French
fleet lying in Brest Harbour refusing to come out, “collected boats
and barges” and attacked them with those craft. The attempt was not
successful, but it profoundly affected subsequent naval history.
Therefrom the French were impressed with the idea that if a fleet lay
in a harbour awaiting attack it acquired an advantage thereby. The idea
became rooted in the French mind that to make the enemy attack under
the most disadvantageous circumstances was the most wise of policies.
That “the defensive is compelled to await attack, compelled to allow
the enemy choice of the moment” was overlooked!
From this time onward England was gradually trained by France into
the role of the attacker, and the French more and more sank into the
defensive attitude. Many an English life was sacrificed between the
“discovery of the attack” in the days of Henry VIII, and its triumphant
apotheosis when centuries later Nelson won the Battle of the Nile; but
the instincts born in Henry’s reign, on the one hand to fight with any
advantage that the defensive might offer, on the other hand to attack
regardless of these advantages, are probably the real key to the secret
of later victories.
The Royal ships at this period were manned by voluntary enlistment,
supplemented by the press-gang as vacancies might dictate. The pay of
the mariner was five shillings a month; but petty officers, gunners and
the like received additional pickings out of what was known as “dead
pay.” By this system the names of dead men, or occasionally purely
fancy names, were on the ship’s books, and the money drawn for these
was distributed in a fixed ratio. The most interesting feature of Henry
VII and Henry VIII’s navies is the presence in them of a number of
Spaniards, who presumably acted as instructors. These received normal
pay of seven shillings a month plus “dead pay.”
The messing of the crews was by no means indifferent. It was as follows
per man:--
Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday: ¾ lb. beef and ½ lb. bacon.
Monday, Wednesday, Saturday: Four herrings and two pounds of cheese.
Friday: To every mess of four men, half a cod, ten herrings, one
pound of butter and one pound of cheese.
There was also a daily allowance of one pound of bread or biscuit.
The liquid allowance was either beer, or a species of grog consisting
of one part of sack to two of water. Taking into account the value of
money in those days and the scale of living on shore at the time, the
conditions of naval life were by no means bad, though complaints of the
low pay were plentiful enough. Probably, few received the full measure
of what on paper they were entitled to.
Henry VIII died early in 1547. In the subsequent reigns of Edward VI
and Mary, the Navy declined, and little use was made of it except for
some raiding expeditions.
When Elizabeth came to the throne the regular fleet had dwindled to
very small proportions, and, war being in progress, general permission
was given for privateering as the only means of injuring the enemy. It
presently degenerated into piracy and finally had to be put down by the
Royal ships.
No sooner, however, was the war over than the Queen ordered a special
survey to be made of the Navy. New ships were laid down and arsenals
established for the supply of guns and gunpowder, which up to that
time had been imported from Germany. Full advantage was taken of
the privateering spirit, the erstwhile pirates being encouraged to
undertake distant voyages. In many of these enterprises the Queen
herself had a personal financial interest. She thus freed the country
from various turbulent spirits who were inconvenient at home, and at
one and the same time increased her own resources by doing so.
There is every reason to believe that this action of Elizabeth’s was
part of a well-designed and carefully thought out policy. The type of
ship suitable for distant voyages and enterprises was naturally bound
to become superior to that which was merely evolved from home service.
The type of seamen thus bred was also necessarily bound to be better
than the home-made article. Elizabeth can hardly have failed to realise
these points also.
To the _personnel_ of the regular Navy considerable attention was
also given. Pay was raised to 6/8 per month for the seamen, and 5/- a
month with 4/- a month for clothing for soldiers afloat. Messing was
also increased to a daily ration of one pound of biscuit, a gallon of
beer, with two pounds of beef per man four days out of the seven, and a
proportionate amount of fish on the other three days. Subsequently, and
just previous to the Armada, the pay of seamen rose to 10/- a month,
with a view to inducing the better men not to desert.
The regular navy was thus by no means badly provided for as things
went in those days; while service with “gentlemen adventurers” offered
attractions to a very considerable potential reserve, and so England
contained a large population which, from one cause and another, was
available for sea service. To these circumstances was it due that the
Spanish Armada, when it came, never had the remotest possibility of
success. It was doomed to destruction the day that Elizabeth first gave
favour to the “gentlemen adventurers.”
Of these adventurers the greatest of all was Francis Drake, who in 1577
made his first long voyage with five ships to the Pacific Ocean. Drake,
alone, in the _Pelican_, succeeded in reaching the Pacific and carrying
out his scheme of operations, which--not to put too fine a point on
it--consisted of acts of piracy pure and simple against the Spaniards.
He returned to England after an absence of nearly three years, during
which he circumnavigated the globe.
There is little doubt that Drake in this voyage, and others like him in
similar expeditions, learned a great deal about the disadvantages of
small size in ships. Drake, however, learned another thing also. Up to
this day the crew of a ship had consisted of the captain and a certain
military element; also the master, who was responsible for a certain
number of “mariners.” The former were concerned entirely with fighting
the ship--the latter entirely with manœuvring it.
This system of specialisation, awkward as it appears thus baldly
stated, may have worked well enough in ordinary practice. It did not
differ materially from the differentiation between deck hands and the
engineering departments, which to a greater or less extent is very
marked in every navy of the present day.
Drake, however, started out with none too many men, and it was not long
before he lost some of those he had and found himself short-handed.
His solution of the difficulty is in his famous phrase, “I would have
the gentlemen haul with the mariners.” How far this was a matter of
expediency, how far the revelation of a new policy, is a matter of
opinion. It must certainly have been outside the purview of Elizabeth.
But out of it gradually came that every English sailor knew how to
fight his ship and how to sail her too, and this amounted to doubling
the efficiency of the crew of any ship at one stroke.
Of Drake himself, the following contemporary pen-picture, from a letter
written by one of his Spanish victims, Don Franciso de Zarate,[7]
explains almost everything:--
“He received me favourably, and took me to his room, where he made
me seated and said to me: ‘I am a friend to those who speak the
truth, that is what will have the most weight with me. What silver
or gold does this ship bring?’
“... We spoke together a great while, until the dinner-hour. He
told me to sit beside him and treated me from his dishes, bidding
me have no fear, for my life and goods were safe; for which I
kissed his hands.
“This English General is a cousin of John Hawkins; he is the same
who, about five years ago, took the port of Nombre de Dios; he is
called Francis Drake; a man of some five and thirty years, small of
stature and red-bearded, one of the greatest sailors on the sea,
both from skill and power of commanding. His ship carried about 400
tons, is swift of sail, and of a hundred men, all skilled and in
their prime, and all as much experienced in warfare as if they were
old soldiers of Italy. Each one, in particular, _takes great pains
to keep his arms clean_;[8] he treats them with affection, and
they treat him with respect. I endeavoured to find out whether the
General was liked, and everyone told me he was adored.”
Less favourable pictures of Drake have been penned, and there is no
doubt that some of his virtues have been greatly exaggerated. At the
present day there is perhaps too great a tendency to reverse the
process. Stripped of romance, many of his actions were petty, while
those of some of his fellow adventurers merit a harsher name. Hawkins,
for instance, was hand-in-glove with Spanish smugglers and a slave
trader. Many of the victories of the Elizabethan “Sea-Kings” were
really trifling little affairs, magnified into an importance which they
never possessed.
But, when all is said and done, it is in these men that we find the
birth of a sea spirit which still lingers on, despite that other
insular spirit previously referred to--the natural tendency of
islanders to regard the water itself as a bulwark, instead of the
medium on which to meet and defeat the enemy.
The Spanish, already considerably incensed by the piratical acts of the
English “gentlemen adventurers,” presently found a further cause of
grievance in the assistance rendered by Elizabeth to their revolting
provinces in the Netherlands. Drake had not returned many years from
his famous voyage when it became abundantly clear that the Spaniards no
longer intended quietly to suffer from English interference.
Spain at that time was regarded as the premier naval power of Europe.
Her superiority was more mythical than actual, for reasons which will
later on be referred to: however, her commercial oversea activities
were very great. The wealth which she wrung from the Indies--though
probably infinitely less than its supposed value--was sufficient to
enable her to equip considerable naval forces, certainly larger ones
numerically than any which England alone was able to bring against
them.
Knowledge of the fact that Spain was preparing the Armada for an attack
on England, led to the sailing of Drake in April, 1587, with a fleet
consisting of four large and twenty-six smaller ships, for the hire of
which the citizens of London were nominally or actually responsible.
His real instructions are not known, but there is little question that,
as in all similar expeditions, he started out knowing that his success
would be approved of, although in the event of any ill-success or
awkward questions, he would be publicly disavowed.
Reaching Cadiz, he destroyed 100 store ships which he found there;
and then proceeding to the Tagus, offered battle to the Spanish war
fleet. The Spanish admiral, however, declined to come out--a fact
which of itself altogether discredits the popular idea about the vast
all-powerful ships of Spain, and the little English ships, which,
in the Armada days, could have done nothing against them but for a
convenient tempest. On account of this expedition of Drake’s, the
sailing of the Armada was put off for a year. So far as stopping the
enterprise was concerned, Drake’s expedition was a failure. Armada
preparations still went on.
It is by no means to be supposed that the Armada in its conception was
the foolhardy enterprise that on the face of things it looks to have
been. The idea of it was first mooted by the Duke of Alva so long ago
as 1569. In 1583 it became a settled project in the able hands of the
Marquis of Santa Cruz, who alone among the Spaniards was not more or
less afraid of the English. In the battle of Tercera in 1583, certain
ships, which if not English were at any rate supposed to be, had shown
the white feather. Santa Cruz assumed therefrom that the English were
easily to be overwhelmed by a sufficiently superior force, and he
designed a scheme whereby he would use 556 ships and an army of 94,222
men.