Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/293

Rh NAVY 281 vessels, seldom over 60 tons; &quot;doggers and lodeships,&quot; fishing and pilot boats, with 30 men, which were occa sionally impressed into the king s service; &quot;fluves,&quot; two- masted, vessels, used for conveyance of troops (Edward III. commanded the burgesses of Kingston-upon-Hull to build him a &quot; fluve &quot;) ; &quot; galleys &quot; and &quot; galiots &quot; ; &quot; hoc- boats,&quot; cargo or store ships. There were also &quot;lynes,&quot; &quot;persouers,&quot; and &quot;pikards,&quot; or large boats. &quot;Pinnaces,&quot; with 35 men, figured at Sluys, and at the battle of L Espagnols sur Mer in 1350; and in 1339 two &quot;espi- naces &quot; were given to Sir Richard Talbot for the defence of Southampton. It is very probable that, until English merchants engaged in the Mediterranean trade, and the attention of the Govern ment was turned, in the reign of Henry VII. (about 1496), to imitate Portugal in making foreign discovery, under the skilful seaman Sebastian Cabot, very little was added to the capacity or the power of British ships of war. In his reign was built a ship called the &quot; Great Harry,&quot; the first on record that deserved the name of a ship of war, if it was not the first exclusively appropriated to the service of the state. This is the ship which Camden called the &quot; Henry Grace de Dieu,&quot; but erroneously, the vessel so named not having been built till the reign of Henry VIII. The &quot;Great Harry&quot; is stated to have cost 14,000; there is reason to suppose that she was renamed the &quot; Regent &quot; on the accession of Henry VIII. We now come to that period in which England might be truly said to possess a military marine. Some curious details have been preserved in the Pepysian collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge, from which papers it appears that in the thirteenth year of Henry VIII. the following constituted the royal navy : Tons. Sovereign 800 Catherine Forteleza 550 John Baptist 400 Great Nicholas. ... . 400 Mary James 240 Great Bark 250 Less Bark... , 180 Tons. Henry Grace de Dieu 1,500 Gabriel Royal 650 Mary Rose 600 Barbara 400 Mary George 250 Henry Hampton 120 The Great Galley 800 There were besides two row-barges of 60 tons each, making in all 16 ships and vessels, measuring 7260 tons. The &quot; Henry Grace de Dieu &quot; is stated in all other accounts, and with more probability, to have been only 1000 tons. 1 This ship, the better-known &quot;Great Harry,&quot; appears to have been begun at Erith, in August or September 1512, to replace the &quot;Regent,&quot; which was burned in the former month in action with the French fleet, when carrying the flag of the lord high admiral. There is a drawing of the ship in the Pepysian papers. From these papers it appears that she carried fourteen guns on the lower deck, twelve on the main deck, eighteen on the quarter-deck and poop, eighteen on the lofty forecastle, and ten in her stern-ports, making alto gether seventy-two guns. Her regular establishment of men is said to have consisted of 349 soldiers, 301 mariners, and 50 gunners, making altogether 700 men. The war ships of this period were awkward to manoeuvre : on the appearance of the French fleet at St Helens, the &quot; Great Harry,&quot; the first ship built with two decks, had nearly been sunk ; and the &quot; Mary Rose,&quot; of 600 tons, with 500 or 600 men on board, was actually sunk at Spithead, as Raleigh informs us, in consequence of &quot; a little sway in casting the ship about, her ports being within 16 inches of the water.&quot; On this occasion the fleets cannonaded each other for two hours ; and it is remarked as something extraordinary that not less than three hundred cannon-shot were fired on both sides in the course of this 1 The rules for the measurement of tonnage were probably very imperfect. action. From the drawings still extant it is quite surpris ing how the vessels could be trusted on the sea at all, their enormous poops and forecastles making them appear loftier and more awkward than the large Chinese junks, to which, indeed, they bear a strong resemblance. Henry VIII. may justly be said to have laid the founda tion of the British navy as a permanent or standing force, He established the dockyards at Deptford, Woolwich, and Portsmouth ; he appointed certain commissioners to superintend the civil affairs of the navy, and settled the rank and pay of admirals, vice-admirals, and inferior officers, thus creating a national navy, and raising the officers to a separate and distinct profession. The prin cipal officers of the navy then were the vice-admiral of England, maater of the ordnance, surveyor of the marine causes, treasurer, comptroller, general surveyor of the victualling, clerk of the ships, and clerk of the stores. Each of these officers had his particular duties, but they met at their office on Tower Hill once a week, to consult, and make their reports to the lord high admiral. Henry also established the fraternities or guilds of the Trinity House at Deptford, Hull, and Newcastle for the improve ment of navigation and the encouragement of commerce, and built the castles of Deal, Walmer, Sandgate, Hurst Castle, &c., for the protection of his fleet and of the coast. At the death of Henry VIII. in 1547, the royal navy consisted of about 50 ships and vessels of different sizes, the former from 1000 to 150 tons, and the latter down to 20 tons, making in the whole about 12,000 tons, and manned by about 8000 mariners, soldiers, gunners, &c. Thus, as has been well said, &quot; everything was leading up to a time when the perils of the seas should claim all that was most heroic in England s most heroic age.&quot; In the short reign of his son Edward little alteration seems to have taken place in the state and condition of the royal navy. But the regulations which had been made in the reign of his father for the civil government of naval affairs were revised, arranged, and turned into ordinances, which form the basis of all the subsequent instructions given to the commissioners for the management of the civil affairs of the navy. In the reign of Mary the tonnage of the navy was reduced to about 7000 tons ; but her lord high admiral nobly maintained the title assumed by England of Sovereign of the Seas, by compelling Philip of Spain to strike his flag that was flying at the main-top-mast head, though on his way to England to marry Queen Mary, by firing a shot at the Spanish admiral. He also demanded that the whole fleet, consisting of 160 sail, should strike their colours and lower their top-sails, as a homage to the English flag, before he would permit his own squadron to salute the Spanish monarch. Elizabeth not only increased the numerical force of the regular navy, but established many wise regulations for its preservation, and for securing adequate supplies of timber and other naval stores. She placed her naval officers on a more respectable footing, and encouraged foreign trade and geographical discovery, so that she acquired justly the title of the Restorer of Naval Power, and Sovereign of the Northern Seas. The greatest naval force that had till then been called together was that which was assembled to oppose the Invincible Armada, and which, according to the notes of Pepys, consisted of 176 ships, with 14,992 men; but these were not all &quot; Shippes Royall,&quot; but consisted largely of the contributions of the Cinque Ports and private persons. The number actually belonging to the navy is stated by the commissioners of 1618 in their report (several manuscript copies of which exist) to have been 34 ships of 12,190 tons, carrying 6225 men. Sir Edward Coke (4 Inst. 50) &quot;thinks it matter of boast that the royal navy of England then consisted of 33 XVII. 36