Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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“With oars many about us did they wind,

With wildfire oft assayled us day and night,

To brenne our ships in that they could or might.”

Next year we read of Henry preparing to again attack France. The enemy had increased their naval force by hiring a number of Genoese and other Italian vessels. The king sent a preliminary force against them under his kinsman, the Earl of Huntingdon, who, near the mouth of the Seine, succeeded in sinking three and capturing three of the great Genoese carracks, taking the Admiral Jacques, the Bastard of Bourbon, “and as much money as would have been half a year’s pay for the whole fleet.” These prizes were brought to Southampton, “from whence the king shortly set forth with a fleet of 1,500 ships, the sails of his own vessel being of purple silk, richly embroidered with gold.” The remainder of Henry’s brief reign—for he died the same year—is but the history of a series of successes over his enemies.

It must never be forgotten that the navies of our early history were not permanently organised, but drawn from all sources. A noble, a city or port, voluntarily or otherwise, contributed according to the exigencies of the occasion. As we shall see, it is to Henry VIII. that we owe the establishment of a Royal Navy as a permanent institution. In 1546 King Henry’s vessels are classified according to their “quality,” thus: “ships,” “galleases,” “pynaces,” “roe-barges.” A list bearing date in 1612 exhibits the classes as follows:—“Shipps royal,” measuring downwards from 1,200 to 800 tons; “middling shipps,” from 800 to 600 tons; “small shipps,” 350 tons; and pinnaces, from 200 to 80 tons. According to the old definition, a ship was defined to be a “large hollow building, made to pass over the seas with sails,” without reference to size or quality. Before the days of the Great Harry, few, if any, English ships had more than one mast or one sail; that ship had three masts, and the Henri Grace de Dieu, which supplanted her, four. The galleas was probably a long, low, and sharp-built vessel, propelled by oars as well as by sails; the latter probably not fixed to the mast or any standing yard, but hoisted from the deck when required to be used, as in the lugger or felucca of modern days. The pinnace was a smaller description of galleas, while the row-barge is sufficiently explained by its title.