The British Navy Book. Field Cyril

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СКАЧАТЬ is not always easy to convey the impression of size by mere figures, but if we bear in mind that the famous old Victory, now lying in Portsmouth Harbour, and which many of us have seen at least once, is only about twice the length of those thirteenth-century ships, we shall be able to form some idea of their not unimportant dimensions.

      Many of the mediæval ships were most gorgeously painted and decorated. When the French king Charles VI fitted out a great naval armament at Sluys, in 1386, for the invasion of England—which did not come off, by the way—Froissart tells us that "gold and silver were no more spared than though it had rained out of the clouds or been scooped out of the sea". One young noble covered his mast with gold-leaf. "They made banners, pennons, and standards of silk, so goodly that it was marvel to behold them; also they painted the masts of their ships from the one end to the other, glittering with gold and devices and arms: and specially it was shewed me", says old Froissart, "that the Lord Guy de la Tremouille garnished his ship richly; the paintings that were made cost more than ten thousand francs. Whatsoever any lord could devise for their pleasure was made on the ships: and the poor people of the realm paid for all; for the taxes were so great, to furnish this voyage, that they which were most rich sorrowed for it, and the poor fled for it."

      Our own Henry V had rather "loud" tastes in his ship decoration. In the year 1400 he had a ship painted red, decorated with collars and garters of gold surrounding fleur-de-lis and leopards, as well as gilded leashes looped round white greyhounds with golden collars. All these were selections from the royal badges. Her mast was red also. The Good Pace of the Tower[6] was red too, but her upper works and stern were of a different colour, and she carried a gilded eagle with a crown in its mouth on her bowsprit.

      The Trinity of the Tower was another red ship, elaborately adorned with coats of arms, while the Nicholas of the Tower was black, "powdered" with "Prince of Wales's Feathers", with quills and scrolls in gold. The King's own particular ship, the "cog" John, carried the royal crest, "the Lion standing on the Crown", at her masthead, besides other decorations. The Genoese in 1242 painted their war-ships white, spotted all over with red crosses, so Henry perhaps only followed the fashion after all; but, generally speaking, red was the favourite colour, though black at times ran it pretty close in favour as groundwork for various patterns of ornamentation.

      But the continually growing decoration in the way of flags, standards, pennons, and streamers must by no means be overlooked. They were, perhaps, the most striking characteristic of the mediæval war-ship.

      The standard or pennon of the owner or commander of the ship—and it must be remembered that he was in those days not a seaman, but always a soldier—was planted at the foremost corner of the poop or after-castle, on the starboard side. A ship called after a saint would have, in addition, the banner of that saint, and in the case of the Cinque Ports we may be sure that their arms, "three lions with half a galley in place of tail and hind legs", were displayed on some portion of the vessel. In royal ships there were other banners with the various royal badges, and there were hosts of streamers, pendants, and guidons as well. When fully "dressed", with all her flags flying, the mediæval war-ship must have made a brave display. Galleys, in addition, had a small staff with a pendant attached to the loom of every oar on such occasions.

      Fifteenth-century Ship (From a painting by Carpaccio)

      Observe the capacious hull, the heavy mast, the way the sail is made fast in the middle as well as by the sheets at the corners, the crane for hoisting missiles to the top, and the darts ranged round it; also the way the main-yard is spliced in the middle.

      Nor must we overlook the ornamental nature of the sails in the times of which we are writing. It was no uncommon thing for the whole of the big square mainsail of a "cog" to be decorated with the arms of her owner. This is clearly shown in the well-known manuscript Life of the Earl of Warwick, by John Rous. Generally sails, often themselves of the richest colouring and material, were adorned with badges or devices, but sometimes merely with stripes of different colours. Colour ran riot in the war-vessels of our mediæval ancestors—how different from the sombre grey war-paint of our modern Leviathans!

      Ship of the latter half of the Fifteenth Century (From an illuminated MS. of 1480)

      Note the diminutive figure-head, the two shields amidships—probably placed there for decorative purposes, as the ship appears to be "dressed" with many pennons and streamers. The smallness of the tops is unusual, also the square port-hole and the double-gabled cabin.

      The end of the fifteenth century saw the development of the carrack into the caravel, such a ship as the Sancta Maria, in which Columbus sailed to the West Indies in 1492. As her original plans were found in the dockyard at Cadiz, and a replica of the famous original was built from them by Spanish workmen in the arsenal of Carracas in 1892 for the Chicago Exhibition, which took place in the following year, we know exactly what she was like. She was just over 60 feet long on her keel, and had a length over all of 93 feet, with a beam of nearly 6 feet. She had a displacement of 233 tons when fully laden and equipped. She had three masts, but only the mainmast had a top-sail. The mizzen carried a lateen sail. She was considerably smaller than many ships of her day, but in general appearance and rig she approximated to the smaller ships of the Elizabethan epoch, and she and her class may well be considered as forming a connecting-link between the old single-masted "round ships" and the square-rigged, many-gunned line-of-battleship, which from the time of Henry VIII to Queen Victoria formed the mainstay of our battle fleets. There were, of course, many developments and improvements during this long period, but the type persisted throughout, just as did that of the modified Viking ship in mediæval ages.

      So much for the ships of the Middle Ages. But before we go on to take stock of their crews it will be as well to attempt some description of the way they were fought. Nowadays the ship armed with the heaviest and longest-ranged guns—if her gunners know their work—seems to be able to "knock out" a slightly less powerfully gunned opponent before she can get in any effective reply. The present war has given us many illustrations of this fact. The Scharnhorst—a crack gunnery ship—with her heavier broadside, was able to sink the Good Hope with little or no damage to herself, and in her turn she was simply demolished by the heavy guns of the Inflexible and the Invincible off the Falkland Islands.

      But in the Middle Ages there was nothing like this. All decisive fighting was practically hand to hand and man to man, except for the use of the ram by galleys and the exchange of arrows and stones at comparatively close quarters. But victory was only achieved, as a general rule, when the enemy's ship was boarded and her crew defeated in a bloody tussle, at the end of which no one but the victors remained alive, unless, perhaps, some knight or noble who was worth preserving for the value of his ransom. The military portion of the crew, the archers, men-at-arms, and their knightly leaders, carried the usual arms of their day. The seamen, who were in the minority, probably used knives, short swords, and spears, and made themselves very useful in hurling big stones, heavy javelins called "viretons", unslaked lime, and other disagreeable missiles from the "top-castles" at the head of the mast or masts.

      We have already mentioned the fore and after fighting-stages, or, as they later on became, poops and forecastles, that were erected when a ship was going on the war-path. We may note, in passing, that in the earlier part of the period we are dealing with, these were so often and so generally required that "castle-building" afloat became a recognized trade, until, in the process of evolution, poops and forecastles became integral parts of the ship.

      We may add that, in addition to the fore and after fighting-platforms, special fighting-towers were not infrequently erected, certainly in the Mediterranean, and we may therefore assume that they were not altogether СКАЧАТЬ