The British Navy Book. Field Cyril

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СКАЧАТЬ them en route. But the Flemings contrived to elude them and get safely to their destination. There was nothing for it but to make another attempt, and cut them off on their return journey.

      "The English navy", says Sir John Froissart, "lay at anchor before Margate at the Thames mouth, toward Sandwich, abiding their adventure, and specially abiding for the ships that were gone to La Rochelle; for they thought they would shortly return. And so they did. . . ."

      When he saw he would have to fight, Sir John de Bucq, the commander of the Flemings, made ready his 700 cross-bowmen and his guns.

      "The English ships approached," continues Froissart, "and they had certain galleys furnished with archers, and these came foremost rowing with oars, and gave the first assault. The archers shot fiercely, and lost much of their shot; for the Flemings covered them under the decks and would not appear, but drave ever forward with the wind: and when they were out of the English archer's shot, then they did let fly their bolts from the cross-bows, wherewith they hurted many.

      "Then approached the great ships of England, the Earl of Arundel with his company, and the Bishop of Norwich with his; and so the other lords. They rushed in among the Flemings' ships, and them of La Rochelle: yet the Flemings and cross-bows defended themselves right valiantly, for their patron, Sir John de Bucq, did ever support them: he was in a great strong ship, where he had three guns shooting so great stones, that wheresoever they lighted they did great damage. And even as they fought they drew little and little towards Flanders; and some little ships, with their merchants, took the coasts of Flanders, and the low water, and thereby saved them, for the great ships could not follow them.

      "Thus on the sea they had a hard battle, and ships broken and sunken on both sides; for out of the tops they cast down great bars of iron, sharpened so that they went through to the bottom. This was a hard battle and well fought, for it endured three whole tides; and when the day failed they withdrew from each other, and cast anchor, and there rested all night, and there dressed their hurt men: and when the flood came, they disanchored and drew up sails and returned again to battle.

      "With the Englishmen was Peter du Bois of Ghent, with certain archers and mariners; he gave the Flemings much ado, for he had been a mariner, therefore he knew the art of the sea, and he was sore displeased that the Flemings and merchants endured so long. But always the Englishmen won advantage of the Flemings, and so came between Blankenburgh and Sluys, against Cadsand; there was the discomfiture, for the Flemings were not succoured by any creature; and also at that time there were no ships at Sluys, nor men of war. . . . By this discomfiture of Sir John de Bucq, as he came from La Rochelle, the Englishmen had great profit, specially of wine, for they had a nine thousand tuns of wine; whereby wine was the dearer all the year after in Flanders, Holland, and Brabant, and the better cheap in England, as it was reason. Such are the chances of this world; if one hath damage another hath profit."

      There are one or two very interesting points in this account. One, of course, is the fact that there were three guns mounted on John de Bucq's ship, which evidently was exceptional at the time, or attention would not have been so particularly drawn to them. Moreover, they were not little guns, like those which were mounted in such numbers a few years later, but of some size, since they fired "great stones". But the most noteworthy point that emerges from the story of the fight is that not only were the cross-bowmen able to fire from under cover on the English without exposing themselves, but their bows had actually outranged the long-bows. Now we know that a long-bow in expert hands would kill at 400 yards, so that the effective range of the cross-bow must have been considerable.

CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

      The Navy in Tudor Times

      "The various ships that were built of yore,

       And above them all, and strangest of all

       Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat." "The Building of the Ship." Longfellow.

      The Tudor period, to which this chapter is devoted, is noteworthy as witnessing the birth of the Royal Navy as a permanent national institution. Though we have accounts—probably to a great extent mythical—of the 3600 "very stout" ships of the Saxon King Edgar (A.D. 975), which are said to have been divided into three squadrons, cruising on the north, east, and west coasts of Great Britain; though Edward III, after the victory over the French at Sluys, was dubbed "King of the Sea"; and though Henry V got together the most formidable navy of his time, yet at none of these periods was there what we may term a navy of the realm. Indeed, for the two years, August, 1447, to August, 1449, there may be said to have been no navy at all, since during the whole of this time only £8, 9s. 7d. was expended upon what we now regard as our first line of defence.

      At the death of Henry V, in 1422, the "Little Navy" disease broke out again, and nearly the whole of his fine fleet was sold. Things went from bad to worse, till the disgust and uneasiness of the nation found expression in a little work entitled The Libel of English Policie. The author, who is supposed to have been Bishop Adam de Molyns, exhorted the nation to "Keepe the Sea and namely the Narrow Sea", and also to secure both Dover and Calais. "Where bene our shippes", says he, "where bene our swerdes become?" He went on to point out how much our naval force had deteriorated since the time when Edward III had caused the famous Golden Noble to be struck, in which he is represented standing in a ship, sword in hand and shield on arm, and thus referred to the signification of the device:

      "Four things our Noble sheweth unto me:

       King, Ship and Sword and Power of the Sea".

      That this appeal had some kind of effect is shown by the fact that in 1442 an order was issued "for to have upon the See continuelly, for the sesons of the yere fro Candlimes to Martymesse, viii Shippes with forstages; ye wiche Shippes, as it is thought, most have on with an other eche of hem cl men. Item, every grete Shippe most have attendyng opon hym a Barge and a Balynger." "Hym" strikes one, by the way, as a curious way to refer to a ship. These vessels with "iiii Spynes", which seem to have been what we might call dispatch vessels, were stationed, one at Bristol, two at Dartmouth, two in the Thames, one at Hull, and one at "the Newe Castell". The whole fleet combined was manned by 2160 men. It was a poor affair, but still it was better than nothing.

      Then came the Wars of the Roses, which, naturally, diverted men's thoughts from the navy. That Edward IV, when he had established himself on the throne, had some idea of emulating the naval deeds of the third Edward may be suspected from his having issued a gold noble, which was evidently closely copied from the one we have already referred to. But nothing much was done either by him or by his successor, Richard Crookback, and it was left to Henry VII to reap the honour of being, to some extent, the founder of the Royal Navy of which we are all so proud. Though by some his son, "Bluff King Hal", may be regarded in this light, on account of the very formidable fleet which he raised and organized and the improvements which he is said to have made in its ships, yet I think we must admit that Henry VII laid the foundation-stone upon which his successor built.

      He depended greatly on hired merchantmen—we do not despise this method of augmenting our navy even at the present day—but he resurrected the Royal Fleet. Though it was but a very small one, of only about a dozen ships, yet two of them, at any rate, were finer ships than any the British Navy had before possessed. These were the Regent and the Sovereign. While we had neglected our shipbuilding, to carry on war between ourselves, it had progressed abroad, especially in France, and there is little doubt that СКАЧАТЬ