LITMIR.BIZ

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than to suppose that the crews of the great warships at any time contained a majority of real seamen, but in Henry's reign the proportion of soldiers was larger than was commonly the case in later times. The indenture made in 1512 with Sir Edward Howard provides that of the 3000 men to be raised over and above the crew of the Regent, which is mustered by itself, 1750 were to be soldiers, and 1233 sailors. It is probable, however, that under the name of soldiers were included many men who afterwards would have been entered as "waisters" and "landsmen," parts of the ship's company who were only expected to work on deck or below, and were not in the proper sense "sailormen." The gunners also were a separate class, and we may safely conclude in their case also that they were not—at least not necessarily—sailors, but rather marine artillerymen.

      "Dead pays" is an odd expression, which, however, almost explains itself. They were imaginary men, whose pay was applied to the purpose of providing a sufficient salary for the warrant officers. In theory every member of the crew received the same allowance of 5s. pay and 5s. rations for a month of twenty-eight days. The captain, who drew eighteenpence a day, was the only exception. It was a manifestly insufficient salary, but a gentleman in his position was probably a man of means, who expected to serve at his own charges, and looked to prize and ransom money, or to the king's favour, for his reward, as also for the means of rewarding the volunteers of good family who followed his banner. The system was one which obviously lent itself to abuse. A poor or unscrupulous captain would be tempted to enrich himself by making false musters, that is, by misstating the number of men actually present in his ship, and pocketing the money paid for wages. He would always have the help of subordinates who were bribed, or were afraid to offend a great man when he wished to deceive the king. This absurdly roundabout way of remunerating the officers was finally given up, but it left a curious representative in the so-called "widows' men" of quite recent times. They also were imaginary sailors, and the pay allowed for them was handed over to Greenwich Hospital, to form a fund for the pensions of women whose husbands were killed in action. The twenty-five men of the town of Gloucester mentioned in the list of the Gabriel's crew may be supposed to have been contributed by the town to the king's navy as its quota of the levy. In the crews of other ships we find mention of the men of Exeter, or of the county of Devon, or the Earl of Arundel, or some other great noble, who were similarly mustered apart. These are traces of the mediæval organisation which survived into and overlapped the new time.

      The manner of fighting of the time is sufficiently well known. Of strategy, in the proper sense of the word, the sea-captains of Henry VIII. knew the essential. They could harry an enemy's coast and commerce for the purpose of provoking him to fight, or lie in front of any port where his ships might be at anchor, and wait till he came out. The actual management of ships when engaged with the enemy was decidedly rough and ready. It does not appear that there was as yet any formation of a fleet. One great number of ships advanced in a swarm against another, and each individual vessel got into action as speedily as the seamanship of her master and the spirit of her captain allowed. In one of the letters of Sir Edward Echyngham to Wolsey we have a spirited account of the preparations made to meet some hostile French ships. He reports that on a certain day in April 1515 he spied three French men-of-war "that made unto usward; and then I comforted my folk and made them to harness, and because I had no rails upon my deck I coiled a cable round about the deck breast high, and likewise in the waist, and so hanged upon the cable mattresses, and dagswayns (a species of coarse, shaggy blanket used by the poor), and such bedding as I had within board, and setting out my marris pikes, and my fighting sails all ready to encounter these three French barks, with such poor ordnance as I had, and then they saw that I made unto them with so good a will, and would not shrink from them, then they put themselves to flight, and then I chased them till they came to the Abbey of Fécamp, which lies hard by the seaside, and so they gat them under the walls of the haven, and we followed them until they shot their ordnance into us." From Sir Edward Echyngham's despatch, it is clear that his ship had no bulwarks between the fore and after castles, and the protection for the men fighting on deck was secured by making a temporary barrier of bedding, blankets, and sails. It was here that the enemy would naturally attempt to enter, and the men stationed in this part of the ship, commonly called the waist, would be most exposed to the fire of the enemy's tops and castles. The practice of concealing this, the most vulnerable part of the deck, by hanging up what were called waist-cloths, continued until the next century. They were, however, a very poor substitute for bulwarks, being exceedingly inflammable. Well-painted wood will resist fire for a long time, but canvas sails, bedding, and blankets are much more easily set blazing. An accidental explosion in the ship herself, the wads from the guns on the cobridge heads, or, worst of all, the flames of a fireship alongside, would cause all the canvas and rigging to burn up like a bonfire. A frightful instance of the facility with which a disaster of this kind could be produced was given in the very first naval battle of Henry VIII.'s reign. The mention of pikes proves that Sir Edward Echyngham calculated that a considerable part of his fighting would consist in repelling boarders or in attempting to board. Indeed, until it got to hand-to-hand fighting, there was little decisive result to be expected from the sea battles of that time. The guns were, as has been said above, often heavy, but the artillery practice of the crews was very rough. The allowance for windage was absurdly large, and it was consequently a matter of chance in what direction a bullet would go. Besides, the use of cartridges had not yet been introduced, and the powder was ladled out of a barrel—a very slow and very dangerous practice. It seems to have been thought that a great fleet had maintained a fire of wonderful intensity if it discharged three hundred shot in one day's work. This is far less than the total amount of the fire of either the Victory or the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar.

      By firmly establishing the royal authority, and by filling his treasury, Henry VII. had prepared the way for his son's work as an organiser of the navy. He certainly left his son a navy of no contemptible strength, according to the standard of that time. The Statute-book of his reign contains several acts meant to encourage shipping. The comparative obscurity of his navy is probably mainly to be accounted for by the fact that he looked upon war with dislike, and never pushed a quarrel with his formidable neighbour, the King of France, beyond the point at which Louis XI. was prepared to offer him a bribe to keep quiet. But, however much Henry VIII. may have received from his father, he certainly exerted himself strenuously to increase his inheritance. He not only built ships, but he improved the naval architecture of his subjects by inviting workmen from the great Italian ports. He not only built and improved ships, but he took a very keen and intelligent interest in the organisation of his fleet and in the performances of his vessels. He extended his establishments on the Thames, and to him belongs the credit of setting up the dockyard at Portsmouth. And we know that in March 1513, in the fourth year of his reign, he issued a "Licence to found a Guild in honour of the Holy Trinity and St. Clement in the Church of Deptford Strond, for reformation of the navy, lately much decayed by admission of young men without experience, and of Scots, Flemings, and Frenchmen as loadsmen." Loadsmen were those who were considered capable to throw the lead, and were the skilled seamen from whom the masters and pilots, or, as we now say, mates, were chosen. This was the Trinity House, which still exists, and still continues to perform the duty assigned to it by Henry VIII. of examining those who wished to be accepted as fit to navigate or pilot a ship, besides taking care of the lights and buoys all round the coast. Its connection with the navy was much closer in Tudor times than it came to be later on; for not only did it supply the masters and pilots of the king's ships, but it was entrusted with the supply and transport of many kinds of stores.

      A letter written by Sir Edward Howard on the 22nd of March 1513 gives a very pleasing instance of the minute personal interest which the king took in his ships. The document has been so damaged by time and accident that a large part of it is illegible, but from what can be deciphered we learn that Sir Edward gave the king a minute account of the performances of all the vessels in his squadron, during a cruise from the mouth of the river to the Channel. Fragments of sentences tell how the one sailed very well, and how "your good ship, the flower, I trow, of all ships that ever sailed," did something which the damaged state of the paper conceals, and then "came within three spear-lengths of the Kateryn and spake to John Fleming, Peter Seman, and to Freeman, master, to bear record that the Mary Rose did fetch her at the tail." "The flower of all ships that ever sailed" was apparently the Mary Rose herself, Howard's own flagship, the same which was destined to come to such a disastrous end in the Solent some thirty years

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