de J. Devaux, Pilot du Havre,” Manuscript of the Sixteenth
Century, in the National Library of Paris.]
But in point of fact, and it was one of the consequences of feudalism,
large fleets were never constructed and kept up by the governments
under whose authority they put to sea. Kings and republics possessed,
it is true, a small number of vessels of their own that carried
their flag, but, generally speaking, too few to allow them to attack
a formidable enemy, or to enable them to defend themselves against
one. Here, again, a complete analogy existed between feudal rights at
sea and those on land. Feudalism possessed its ships as well as its
castles. The barons who possessed estates near the sea-coast were bound
to keep up at their own cost one or more vessels, fitted either for war
or commerce. The rich merchants of Venice, of Genoa, of Marseilles,
and, in later times, of Havre, of Dieppe, and of Antwerp (Fig. 81),
by means of their vast wealth, either individually or by combining
together, maintained flotillas of galleys and ships.
When war was imminent, and it became necessary to prepare a fleet
to carry the Crusaders, the sovereign, directed the nobles who held
fiefs and were ship-owners to prepare their vessels for sea, and to
equip and arm them--an order which did not require any long time or
especial pains to carry into effect, for at that period every sea being
infested with pirates, merchant vessels were always forced to keep
themselves armed in self-defence. Each sailor of the crew could, at a
pinch, be turned into a soldier; and, besides these, there were always
cross-bowmen and regular soldiers, whose duty it was to be the first to
board an enemy’s ship, or to beat back his boarders with handspikes and
cross-bow shafts. To embark, therefore, a few catapults and a few extra
soldiers was all that was ordinarily required to transform a peaceable
merchant vessel into a ship or galley of war.
[Illustration: Fig. 79.--Seal of the Town of Dover (1281).]
The admiral appointed to the command of the fleet published the order
to arm in every port under his master’s rule. In virtue of this order,
the first proceeding was to exhibit the _cartel_--a scroll
fastened to the top of a post or the end of a lance--announcing that so
many vessels of such and such a kind were to be ready equipped within
a given time, to take the seas against such and such an enemy, or to
proceed in such and such a direction. Besides the cartel, which was
displayed on the shore or in the gateway of the town, surrounded with
garlands and pennants, floated the standard of the prince, which had
previously been blessed at a solemn mass celebrated to pray for the
success of the undertaking. The sea trumpets rang out their fanfares,
and a herald at arms repeated in a loud voice the purport of the
cartel. A clerk stood by, pen in hand, for the purpose of registering
the names of the sailors and marines, who, as they gave them, settled
the conditions of their engagement. A formal contract binding both
sides was then signed and sealed before a notary, and as soon as
sufficient hands had volunteered, the cartel was taken down and the
trumpets ceased to sound.
[Illustration: Fig. 80.--Seal of the Town of Yarmouth (Thirteenth
Century).]
When the ships of the sovereign, and of the nobles and burgesses his
feudal vassals, were insufficient in number to form the fleet with
which it was desirable to put to sea, recourse was had to allies
and to foreign navies in general. Vessels were bought, hired, and
chartered, but in the latter case they were usually only employed as
transports. The merchants of Genoa and Venice were in this manner the
principal charterers for the Crusaders. In 1246, Saint Louis addressed
a demand to them for ships, at the same time making a similar request
to the merchants of Marseilles. Emissaries from the king were sent
into Provence and Italy to make contracts for the construction and
chartering of vessels for the transport of the armed pilgrims who
were to accompany him to the Holy Land. These envoys, amongst whom
was Brother Andrew, “the prior of the holy house of Jerusalem,” made
the necessary arrangements with the podestate of Genoa, with the Duke
of Venice, and with the syndicate of the commune of Marseilles, and
settled the size of the ships, the number of their crew, the space
reserved for each passenger and each horse, and the different tariffs
for the berths in the fore and aft towers, for those in the main
saloons (termed _paradis_), for those between decks, and for those
under the lower deck.
[Illustration: Fig. 81.--View of the Port of Antwerp in
1520.--Fac-simile of a Drawing by Albert Dürer, in the Gallery of
the Archduke Albert, at Vienna.]
In 1263 the arrangements for St. Louis’s second crusade were carried
out in a similar manner.
Genoese vessels reappear in the “army of the sea prepared in the year
of grace 1295” by Philippe le Bel against Edward I. of England; in the
fleet equipped in 1337 by Philippe de Valois against Edward III.; and
in the splendid flotilla lost by Nicholas Behuchet, a French admiral,
at l’Ecluse in 1340. Two centuries later the Genoese again contributed
ten caracks to the armada prepared by the order of Francis I. on the
coast of Normandy, though most of them unfortunately foundered at the
mouth of the Seine through the ignorance of their pilots. History also
informs us that Andrew Doria (Fig. 82), a Genoese, was one of Francis’
admirals, having commanded that sovereign’s Mediterranean fleet for
several months.
[Illustration: Fig. 82.--Andrew Doria (1468–1560).--From a
Portrait of the Period in the Collection of the Doges of
Genoa.--National Library of Paris.]
The adventurers who served on board vessels chartered by a sovereign or
a foreign State were usually the sons, brothers, relations, friends,
or dependents of the captains who commanded them. Moreover, the chosen
band which, under the name of _retenue de poupe_[5] (Fig. 83), was
entrusted with the duty of defending the captain’s flag, was solely
recruited from among these adventurers. Their principal duty being the
defence of this flag, which floated on the starboard side close to the
entrance to the poop, they were expected never to leave their post,
except at the captain’s express order. Even when a galley was boarded
at the stern, and its deck, up to the mainmast, was swarming with the
enemy, all was by no means lost, for the poop still remained in the
hands of its brave defenders, who died at their post rather than yield.
Among the splendid feats of arms which have adorned naval history,
many instances could be cited when a ship’s safety was secured by the
desperate resistance of its poop guard. The warriors of the sea (Figs.
84 and 85) were always distinguished for their extreme intrepidity
and boldness, and it is easy to believe that from them emanated the
system of submarine warfare (Figs. 86 and 87), which, in the fifteenth
century, gave birth to a series of extraordinary inventions in nautical
weapons.
[Illustration: Fig. 83.--Seal of the Town of Sandwich,
representing the Poop Guard (Thirteenth Century).]
It is to the credit of these benighted ages, too often accused of
barbarism and social anarchy, that in most of the Mediterranean ports
overseers were appointed, whose duty it was to inspect and survey
everything connected with _voyages beyond the sea_--that is to
say, voyages to the Holy Land. This friendly tribunal settled all
differences between the passengers or pilgrims and the ship-owners or
captains, according to the terms of their reciprocal contracts. One
part of their duties was to carefully measure the space assigned to
each passenger, to see that every individual had his proper allotment,
so as to secure that all were made as comfortable as possible for the
voyage, which usually lasted for twenty-five or thirty days.
[Illustration:
Fig. 84.--Galley Soldier (Sixteenth Century).
Fig. 85.--Galley Slave (Sixteenth Century).
From Cesare Vecellio, “Degli Habiti Antichi:” 8vo, 1590.]
In point of fact, a perfect maritime code was drawn up to regulate
during the passage the mutual relations of the different inmates of
the same vessel, and to establish a reciprocity between the ships
of friendly nations. The merchant, for instance, who spent a great
portion of his life at sea, was treated on board ship with greater
deference than the soldier who was there for a short time only. When
several merchants chartered a vessel in common for the transport of
their merchandise, and proceeded to sea in it themselves, the captain
was bound to consult them and to follow their advice in all perils,
whenever storms threatened, or when from a dread of pirates it seemed
advisable to put into the nearest port. Before setting sail, the
captain and the crew swore upon the Gospel to defend the ship and its
passengers against the elements and against man. In the latter case,
however, the merchants themselves became soldiers for the nonce, and
were prepared to assist in the defence of their floating home.
[Illustration:
Fig. 86.--The Diver.
Fig. 87.--Man-at-Arms.
From Woodcuts by Végèce, “L’Art Militaire:” Paris, Christian
Wechel, 1532, small 4to.]
It was usual, in order to give both vessels and merchants the best
possible chance, for ships, not strong enough separately to resist
pirates, to sail together in twos and threes, or, if possible, in still
larger numbers. When a large powerful ship fell in with a smaller
vessel which claimed its protection, it was bound to throw it a hawser
so as to fasten the two vessels together, and enable them to assist
one another in case of need. A ship’s captain who refused to render
this service to a smaller craft than his own, would have run the risk
of a very heavy punishment. The maritime code, whose regulations were
decided by the overseers, laid down that all merchandise entrusted
to a ship’s captain should be properly stored away in the hold, and
not left on the deck, on which the rigging, the carpenter’s and
caulker’s tools, the weapon cases, and the water casks were alone to
be placed. Similarly, any damage done to the cargo during the voyage,
owing to bad stowage or bad ballasting, was liable to be made good by
the ship-owner, who was bound to have his ship in the best possible
condition, and who was held responsible for the proper preservation of
the cargo.
[Illustration: Fig. 88.--Discovery of the Antilles by
Columbus.--From a Drawing attributed to him in the “Epistola
Christofori Columbi:” undated (1494?), 8vo.]
Longer voyages began to be undertaken in the fifteenth century,
navigation having been rendered less dangerous by the improvements
in the mariner’s compass, in the quadrant, and in other nautical
instruments. Ships went as far as to the Azores, and to the Canary
Islands, to the coast of Guinea, and to the East Indies; and one even
touched at the new continent discovered by Columbus (Fig. 88), and
named by Americus Vespazius. Certain seasons of the year, however,
were considered dangerous, during which all navigation was absolutely
forbidden by law. Already, in the fourth century, the magistrates
entrusted with naval matters _closed_ the sea from the third
day of the Ides of November to the sixteenth of the Ides of March;
in the thirteenth century, the season opened in April and closed in
October. In the sixteenth, no vessel could legally return to Venice
from Constantinople, Alexandria, or the coast of Syria, from the 15th
of November to the 20th of January. Although this regulation, which
had for its object the protection of seafaring men, was often broken,
there were others emanating from the same source, and issued in the
same spirit, that were more binding. For instance, galleys (galleys
were frequently used in commercial ventures), as soon as they were
launched, underwent a minute inspection by the overseers, who, after
satisfying themselves on the solidity of their construction, gauged
their capacity, and marked the water line on their side, beyond which
it was illegal to submerge them.
[Illustration: Fig. 89.--Seal of the Town of Poole (Thirteenth
Century).]
But we will leave a subject whose complicated details would lead us
too far, and return to the equipment proper of vessels. As far back as
the tenth century, the Emperor Leo originated the practice of building
towers for attack and defence on the deck of the dromons; these towers,
from the centre of which sprang the mainmast, reached half-way up the
mast. This custom was still observed in the thirteenth century, and
was no doubt handed down from very ancient times when it was usual to
build towers and citadels on the decks of triremes. The round class of
vessels were also provided with towers, one fore and another aft. In
the smaller vessels these towers were simply platforms surrounded with
a crenulated parapet and raised upon pillars (Fig. 89); in the larger
ones, the towers were constructed of several stories added to the
normal elevation of the poop and prow. Mangonels, catapults, and other
projectile machines were placed on these towers and platforms. The big
ships especially carried terrible engines of destruction, sometimes
a heavy beam which worked horizontally like an ancient battering-ram
against the sides of a hostile vessel, sometimes an immense bulk
of timber, which was worked vertically from the top of the mast in
order to shatter and sink a smaller craft. Around the masts, too, and
nearly at their tops, _châtelets_ or platforms were suspended,
in which were hidden, behind a low parapet, slingers, archers, and
stone-throwers. In the sixteenth century, these châtelets on board the
vessels of the Mediterranean were called _cages_ or _gabies_,
while in the North sailors designated them by the Icelandic term of
_hunes_ (Fig. 90).
[Illustration: Fig. 90.--Seal of the Town of Boston (1575), on
which the _hune_ is depicted at the extremity of the mast.]
The introduction of gunpowder on board ship was long subsequent to the
invention of fire-arms, and was very slowly adopted by most navies.
From the fact that, in the middle of the fifteenth century, a vessel
of seven hundred and fifty tons burden had only a single piece of
artillery, and one of fifteen hundred only eight guns, and as for a
commission of four months--the usual length of a ship’s commission
in the Middle Ages--each piece of artillery was only provided with
five-and-twenty to thirty rounds, we see with what difficulty and how
slowly the new style of weapons replaced the old one. In the ships’
inventories of 1441, side by side with _bombardes_, we find
invariably figuring large cross-bows, _viretons_, darts, long
lances, and complete sets of armour for the sailors. Things were not
much more advanced than they were in 1379 at the celebrated naval
battle of Chioggia, in which the Venetians made use, against the
Genoese, of cannon constructed of pieces of metal, welded together and
covered with a casing of wooden staves, bound round with stout iron
bands and ropes. Some of these primitive guns exploded at their first
discharge; one alone survives, and is now to be seen in the arsenal at
Venice, the solitary specimen of the first attempt at projecting iron
and stone shot from a tube by the ignition of saltpetre, sulphur, and
charcoal.
[Illustration: Fig. 91.--Prows of Galleys armed with the
Spur.--From Drawings by Breugel the Elder, engraved by Fr. Huys
(1550).]
More than a hundred years passed away before marine artillery attained
any importance; it was not till the close of the sixteenth century
that Brantôme was able to put on record that he had seen in the
Mediterranean a galliot armed with two hundred pieces of artillery,
belonging to Cosmo I. of Medici, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany.
The galleys of the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century, armed
at first with an iron spur and afterwards with four or five cannon
placed in the bows, always engaged the enemy prow first, and bore down
in order of battle, side by side, in a straight or curved line. The
half-moon formation practised by the ancients was reserved for the
largest fleets. At Lepanto (Fig. 92), for instance, the Christian fleet
was drawn up in the form of a half-moon, and was divided into four
squadrons: one in the centre, two at the wings, and one in reserve.
In front of each division six _galéasses_ were posted in couples
to open the engagement; they were all one hundred and sixty feet in
length, twenty-seven in breadth, and fifteen above the water-line,
and they did a great deal of damage to the Turkish fleet with their
powerful artillery. Previous to the construction of these gigantic
galleys, a line of round vessels used to be placed in the van to
receive the first brunt of the battle. Sometimes, besides this vanguard
of sailing vessels, ships were placed at the wings, the most powerful
in the quarter where it was imagined that the struggle would become the
hottest. The smaller craft formed a line in reserve, always prepared to
row to the assistance of a hard-pressed galley.
[Illustration: Fig. 92.--Plan of the Naval Battle of
Lepanto.--From a Drawing by Don Juan, preserved in the Archives
of Simancas, Spain.]
In the eleventh century, at the battle of Durazzo, the Venetian ships,
being hard pressed by the Italo-Norman fleet of Robert Guiscard,
Duke of Puglia and Calabria, and unable to make for the land owing
to the dropping of the wind, ranged themselves in a line, and bound
themselves together, leaving but a small interval between each ship,
just sufficient to allow their smaller vessels to row out, harass the
enemy, and hasten back again. This style of battle was not a new one,
being the reproduction of a manœuvre invented or employed for the first
time by Scipio in the days of ancient Rome. When time had developed
the progress of marine artillery, a fleet composed of large ships, in
giving battle to one consisting of galleys, always presented their
broadsides to their antagonists, since, in this position, the fire from
their double row of cannon could do the galleys the most harm. This
order of battle, however, was not always observed, particularly when
the guns, owing to their great weight, were placed in the prow (Fig.
93).
At first, merely to preserve the wood, the ship-builders covered every
part of the vessel exposed to the action of the air or water with a
coating of pitch, but this sombre and uniform tint soon wearied the
eye. A more brilliant colour, prepared with wax, was painted over the
pitch; the costlier class of ships glistened in all the splendour of
white, ultramarine, and vermilion, while pirates, and occasionally
men-of-war, were covered with a coat of green paint, which, blending
with the colour of the sea, prevented them from being distinguished at
any distance. Gilding glistened on the vessels of the rich, and the
sculptor’s chisel added busts and figures to the decoration of their
bows and sterns. Even in this respect the Middle Ages still followed
the traditions of antiquity.
The decorations of ships varied according to the caprice of owners
and the fashion of the times. The Saracen dromon boarded and taken by
Richard Cœur-de-Lion had one side coloured green and the other yellow.
The Genoese at first painted their ships green; but in 1242, when they
were at war with the Pisans, they coloured them white spotted with
vermilion crosses, that is, “red crosses on a silver ground,” which
resembled the arms of “Monsieur Saint-Georges.” Red was the colour
generally adopted for ships’ hulls in the sixteenth century, though
a pattern in black and white was sometimes added, and sometimes the
ground was painted black and the pattern only vermilion.
[Illustration: Fig. 93.--Pontifical Galley with Sails and Oars,
and provided with heavy Artillery.--Drawn by Breugel the Elder,
and engraved by Fr. Huys (1550).]
In 1525, when Francis I., made prisoner at the battle of Pavia,
was taken to Barcelona, the six galleys which carried the captive
sovereign and his suite were painted entirely black from the top of the
masts to the water-line. This was not, however, the first time that
ships had been known to put on mourning: for instance, the Knights of
St. Stephen, in the fifteenth century, hid the brilliant hues of their
_Capitane_,[6] and painted its sails, pennants, awnings, oars, and
hull with black, and swore never to alter the sombre hue till their
order had recaptured from the Turks a galley lost by the Pisans in an
engagement which, however, had not been altogether inglorious for the
vanquished.
[Illustration: Fig. 94.--Seal of Edward, Count of Rutland (1395).]
Vessels in the Middle Ages, as in ancient times, had frequently
gold-coloured and purple sails. The sails of seigniorial ships were
generally brilliantly emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of the seignior
(Fig. 94); the sails of merchant vessels and of fishing boats with
the image of a saint, the patron figure of the Virgin, a pious
legend, a sacramental word, or a sacred sign, intended to exorcise
evil spirits, who played no inconsiderable part in the superstitions
of the toilers of the deep. Different kinds of sails were originally
employed to make signals at sea, but flags soon began to be used for
this purpose. A single flag, having a different meaning according to
its position, ordinarily sufficed to transmit all necessary orders in
the daytime. At night its place was taken by lighted beacons. These
flags, banners, standards, and pennants, most of them embroidered with
the arms of a town, a sovereign, or an admiral, were made of some
light stuff, taffeta or satin. Sometimes square, sometimes triangular,
sometimes forked, each had its own use and signification, either for
the embellishment of the vessel’s appearance or to assist in its
manœuvring. The galleys were provided with a smaller kind of pennant,
which was put up at the prow or fastened to the handle of each oar:
these were purely for ornamental purposes, and were often trimmed with
golden or silken fringes.
Amongst the most celebrated flags and standards of the French navy we
must not omit to mention the _baucents_, a name that recalls the
_Bauséant_, the banner of the Knights Templars. These flags, made
of red taffeta, and sometimes “sprinkled with gold,” were only employed
in the most merciless wars, for, says a document of 1292, “they
signified certain death and mortal strife to all sailors everywhere.”
In 1570, Marco-Antonio Colonna hoisted on his flag galley a pennant of
crimson damask, which bore on both sides a Christ on the Cross between
St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Emperor Constantine’s motto, _In
hoc signo vinces_. The banner which Don Juan of Austria received at
Naples, on the 14th of April, 1571, with the staff of supreme command
over the Christian league, was made of crimson damask fringed with
gold, on which were embroidered, besides the arms of the prince, a
crucifix with the arms of the Pope, of the Catholic king, and of the
republic of Venice, united by a chain, symbolical of the union of the
three powers “against the Turk.”