Sail Of The Line from Round Ship

This is a continuation of Naval History following after: "The New Navy"

When Henry VIII succeeded his father, the "Regent" was still quite the last word in ships, and he seems to have started his own ship-building program.

In his early attempts there was no sharp improvement. Yet his contribution was more revolutionary than that of any other single man. He built a Fighting Fleet-a collection of ships, whose first-duty was to fight battles.

A most regrettable cloak of mystery still hangs over the actual process of this ship-revolution, so it remains immpossible to tell how that great change began-that transformed the old Round Ship, the mediaevil-trader, the imposing castle-at-sea, to the sailing ship of the line.

Henry VIII's shipwrights knew their job, and they were no fools. They must have known what was the basic fault of the old Round Ship. She was too short in comparison with her length; and that made her hopelessly cumbrous to handle, and far too slow and heavy to manoeuvre. They also knew how to change all this.

The trouble was that they had never been allowed to try. The great mass of tradition, amounting to almost sheer prejudice, blocked any reconstruction of the Merchantman's well-established lines, and especially any reform which might appear to threaten the cargo-carrying capacity of the ships.

Something was necessary to break down this inertia, and that something was provided by Henry VIII. He was responsible for two major reforms in our naval history. He built a fighting fleet, and he gave it the new weapon which made sea-warfare as we know it possible.

These epoch-making changes affected the actual construction of ships. This was revolutionary too; it was bound to be, for now a sailing ship was being built, for the first time, with the major purpose of fighting, and into it is being put, also for the first time, a weapon which is capable at last of battering other ships to their doom, the first "ship-killer!"-the Great Gun.

The New Navy

Henry tested the Gun himself

Exactly when or how Henry conceived the idea of putting the new muzzle-loader from Mechlin into his ships, we do not know. But we know that he had a very great personal interest in his fleet, and that he had for a time a veritable craze for the new artillery. We know that, when certain not over-modest claims were made by their makers as to what these great battery-pieces could do.

Henry VIII had some sent over from the foundry of the great Hans Poppenruyter in order to test them himself. He had part of the village of houndsditch cleared of its inhabitants-and tried it out. The gun-makers, we are given to understand, were right!

So the King's shipwrights were instructed to put the great guns into the ships. That was not so easy as it might sound. They very soon discovered two difficulties, both of which appeared at first sight, no doubt, to be insuperable.

When they brought these guns on board, they argued, they would, of course, take them "upstairs" into the castles. All weapons of war always "went upstairs." No other situation for weapons had ever occurred to anybody. But-and here was the first objection-this would radically upset the trim of the ship.

It was all right so long as they were dealing only with small guns which were weighed in pounds and were quite safely carried upstairs by the score. But these monstrosities were weighed in hundredweights-nay, in tons; and to carry them upstairs, even in ones and twos, would certainly make the whole ship hopelessly top-heavy; and crank; would certainly risk catastrophe from capsizing.

Overcoming the fundamentals

Again-the second objection-even if they took the risk, no one would be able to fire the guns, in itself a distinct objection. The reason was this; in order to take the strain of the recoil-a very violent phenomenom-it would be necessary to anchor the weapon to the sides of the castle by means of some form of breech rope. But those sides were little more than matchwood.

The bolts holding the rope would pull away; the gun, out of control, would leap backwards, and, coming in contact with the opposite wall of the "matchbox," would probably smash clean through it and topple over into the sea.

The plain fact was that these castles had not been built for such stresses as the big guns would set up. They would be broken to bits; and they could not be sufficiently stoutened to stand this additional strain without adding dangerously to the alread great danger of too much top-weight. The shipwrights, having reached this stage, reported them to Henry.

But the King was not a man to give up his ideas, still less to take "no" from his servants as an answer to his orders. So they had to go away and think again. Traditionally it was James Baker-who hit upon the answer; the only possible answer, as we can see now, yet sufficiently brilliant in its day, because it was original.

"Since the King Orders it," he argued, "it has to be done. And since we cannot take the guns upstairs, we must take them downstairs. We must put them, on the main cargo deck." This solution, sounds almost childishly simple. It was; so are most of the other great discoveries-when discovered.

All's well that ends well

It borrowed that other great discovery, only recently made-the "port." This cutting of a hole in the ship's side, was in itself a new thing, having been done for the first time-here again the date is traditional, and the inventor's name sometimes disputed-by a certain shipwright of Brest named Descharges, in the year 1501.

Baker borrowed the general idea, but not the particular, for Deschatges's port was probably merely and entry-port-a means of bringing cargo to its destined place on board, thus obviating the necessity of hoisting it over the bulwark at the waist and subsequently lowering it again on to the cargo-deck.

Descharges probably only had one port-a fairly big one; what Baker did was to cut a whole series of ports-small ones-through the ship's solid sides on both starboard and larboard, thus creating the gun-port, and in so doing inventing the broadside.

Thereafter the shipwright's late difficulties vanished instantly. The extra weight was stowed safely below, and the breech-rope bolts held without difficulty in the massive timbers of the hull.

The first broadside ship, is said to have been the Mary Rose, and the date is traditionally given as 1513. But in the minds of most Englishmen the honour of being the first English battleship belongs of right to the towering "Henry Grace A Dieu," or, more simply, the Great Harry.

The arrival of the Great Gun on board is not well-documented history. A quarter of a century earlier, big square holes which may be gun-ports are sometimes to be seen in ship-pictures of an earlier date. And if the dates are wrong, probably the names of the men concerned are wrong too; the men here mentioned may be the second or third to make changes, not the first.

Galleass were oar and sail powered

The so-called "galleass-type" ships were the result, together with a number of other smaller ships which combined-sail and oar-power in varying degree, the oar-motive predominating more and more as they preceeded down the scale of sizes towards the "pinnaces" and "roo-barges." This experimental return to the oar did not last long.

It was soon discovered that sail was best after all, especially when used in these longer, lighter and handier models, fitted with a larger and much improved sail-plan. The new features of greater length, flush-decks and lower freeboard were retained, so was the motive power of sail.

These new ships may perhaps be regarded as the first "Sailing Ships of the Line," or at least as vital links between "Round Ships" and "Line Ships." But neither then nor for some time afterwards were all our fighting ships of this low-Built "galleass-type." As late as the 1580s and '90s, Elizabeth still possessed both.

The "Triumph," for instance, was of the older sort, and had expert adherents like Sir Richard Hawkins, who valued her mainly, he admits, "for the majesty and terror of the enemy," as well as for the advantage which her additional height conferred when there was boarding to be done.

The most renowned of all Elizabethan ships, the "Revenge," was of the newer sort. She may be considered as the name-ship of a new type, the latest and best that had been achieved up till then. Sir Richard's father, the great Sir John Hawkins, was responsible for her in his capacity of Treasurer of the Navy.

There are many things about this historic ship, in which Drake himself fought the Armarda. She was, first, quite a small ship when compared with either Henry VIII's giants or the Queens "Triumph," "Bear" and "Elizabeth Jonas."

Revenge Class were good ships

Again she was designed much less as a mere fighting casle to harbour men with small arms, and much more as a highly mobile gun-platform from which to fire round-shot offensively against the enemy. She was probably the first-or among the first -of the true "gun-deck" ships; vessels, with a deck consecrated to the use of heavy artillery and nothing else.

Had Nelson's seamen sailed in her, they would have discovered a hundred and one differences between her and the ship to which they were accustomed, they would have found no really radical differences.

If the proud claim to be the first Sailing Ships of the Line cannot be made for the "Grand Mistress" and the "Anne Gallant," because there is still a good deal of doubt as to their internal arrangements. Then the title may safely be awarded to the "Revenge."

Now the "Revenge Class" was an English invention. Other countries followed, but it was we who secured the lead. It is clear that, at much the same time as we were making that important advance, other sea-users were stirring in their sleep, not completely satisfied with what they possessed.

The case of Spain is the most interesting, and it touched us very nearly. With the marriage of Philip to Queen Mary, the Spaniards had more opportunity than usual to keep abreast of what we were doing, and they did make one distinct effort to produce a new type which, while retaining the mobility of their own fighting fleet of galleys, would also develope a much greater fire-power than the galley could ever possess.

The Spanish tried catching up

But when the great Anglo-Spanish war of Elizabeth's reign broke out, they were undoubtedly far behind us. For their attempt to achieve what the Revenges achieved, though its aim was the same as ours, was grafted upon just the opposite tradition. This was the inevitable result of their age-old reliance on the galley.

What happened, in brief, was this. When we took the Round Ship as our basic model and tinkered with it, applying some features of the Long Ship, they did the opposite. They began with a Galley, and tried to add abroadside to it. The result was a hybrid to which the name "galleass" has since clung.

It was still mainly a galley-long, thin, of light build, and rowed. Yet it carried sails-more sails, that is, than the galley-and it made a serious attempt to carry a broadside of heavy guns as well.

It made quite a good show against galley-fleets, but it proved ineffective against our ships. First it had not the strength and the stamina either to face the northern seas, or to stand up to the strains of firing its own guns; and, next, its designers were always faced with an awkward dilemma.

The main gun-deck had to be placed either above the rowing deck or below it. If they tried the former, the weight of the guns made the whole ship top-heavy; but if the latter, then the oars obscured the line of fire.

None the less, a few of these "Compromise" ships acquitted themselves respectably in Santa Cruz's operations against the Azores in 1583; and thus encouraged, Philip sent four of them against us with the "invincible" Armarda in 1588.

They were very heavily armed-the most heavily, probably, in the whole Spanish array-but they failed, even when conditions were most favourable; and we find the Spanish Commander-in-Chief complaining bitterly of their unsuitable use in the Channel.

They persisted for a long time in the mediterranean, but the experiment ultimately petered out, and Spain too joined us in relying, in all her big ships, upon sail only.

The continuation of this Naval History will be called: "Ship of the Line"

Sail of the Line Ship of the Line

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