Warship and Merchantman

Their relationship

This Naval History is a continuation on from: "Northern Invention"

Before we finally leave the "Line" period, it remains to describe briefly the relationship between the "War" and the "Merchant" Ship. We have seen how in the early stages, the former developed out of the latter. But thereafter it was always War which led the way in ship-developement.

It was the fighting requirements, for instance, which introduced the Great Gun, and broke down the old prejudice against a longer ship. Yet in all of the days of "Wood" the gulf between the two types never became a yawning abyss.

For at every stage the Merchantman tended to follow in the wake of the Man-of-War. This was perhaps natural. In seas which were mostly lawless still, the Merchant Ship felt the need of the gun's protection almost as acutely as the Warship herself, especially if she were bound for the more remote parts of the ocean where pirates and corsairs-and even War itself-when regularly found in certain areas.

Also as enterprise increased in a world growing more and more competitive, the merchant found that there was a use for speed and sailing quality in his ship. it was almost as important to him, in fact, as it was to a captain of a ship of war, though for a different reason.

And, lastly, there is no doubt that the wide practice of "privateering" the use, that is, of privately owned ships, which hovered in status between warships and merchantmen-tended to keep all ships from varying too widely from each other.

Northern Invention

Sir Walter Ralegh's own ship

Often, in a word, The Merchant Ship found herself fulfilling a warlike function; and so long as there is no hard-and-fast frontier-line between War and Trade, we must not expect to find radical differences between the ships concerned in them.

How interchangeable were their roles; the beginning of the "line" period, is well illustrated by the fact that Elizabeth's government could purchase a ship from one of her subjects in one year and use it as a Fleet flagship in the next. Yet this is what occured.

The "Ark Royal," carrying the Lord Admiral's flag against the Armada, had been, in 1587, Sir Walter's Ark Ralegh. From the first, it is true, she was probably intended for war-"private" wars-as well as for trade.

None the less, she had been built by or for a subject. This alone reveals the vast difference of usage between that day and this. What would we think today if we heard that the flagship selected for the Home Fleet had been privately built and sold to the Government?

Further steps in specialization gradually made so drastic a transformation impossible; and especially the developement of the state-owned Commonwealth fleet made it certain that a purely privately owned ship could never again occupy so exalted a post as flagship.

French battle-fleet in the South China Seas

Yet, all through the "line" age, the War and Trade relationship remained such that no great cleavage developed. The long-distance merchantmen-those that is accustomed to sail distant, and therefore dangerous, seas-were, throughout, very similar to warships.

They never developed the "gun-deck" principle to quite the same extent, of course, because the carraige of cargo always remained their principal objective.

But ships like those of the great East India Comany had so many guns, of those superficial qualities of His Majesty's Ships that, when the need arose, they were quite capable of taking on-or perhaps more truly, taking in hostile warships.

In 1804, for example, such a fleet of Indiamen encountered in the South China Seas a considerable French battle-fleet under the command of by no means inexperienced Admiral Linois, and put on so bold a face that he sheered off, taking them for a superior squadron of Royal Navy ships.

That final differentiation-so marked in our own day that we should, once again, suspect insanity in high places if we heard that the Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet was going into a fleet-action in S.S. Queen Mary.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Propellent"

Warship and Merchantman Propellent

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