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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Few naval incidents occurred under the reign of Henry VII., but it belongs, nevertheless, to the most important age of maritime discovery. Henry had really assented to the propositions of Columbus after Portugal had refused them; had not the latter’s brother, Bartholomew, been captured by pirates on his way to England, and detained as a slave at the oar, the Spaniards would not have had the honour of discovering the New World. This, and the grand discoveries of Cabot (directly encouraged by Henry), who reached Newfoundland and Florida; the various expeditions down the African coast instituted by Dom John; the discovery of the Cape and new route to India by Diaz and Vasco de Gama; the discovery of the Pacific by Balboa, and Cape Horn and the Straits by Magellan, will be detailed in another section of this work. They belong to this and immediately succeeding reigns, and mark the grandest epoch in the history of geographical discovery.

“The use of fire-arms,” says Southey, “without which the conquests of the Spaniards in the New World must have been impossible, changed the character of naval war sooner than it did the system of naval tactics, though they were employed earlier by land than by sea.” It is doubtful when cannon was first employed at sea; one authority132 says that it was by the Venetians against the Genoese, before 1330. Their use necessitated very material alterations in the structure of war-ships. The first port-holes are believed to have been contrived by a ship-builder at Brest, named Descharges, and their introduction took place in 1499. They were “circular holes, cut through the sides of the vessel, and so small as scarcely to admit of the guns being traversed in the smallest degree, or fired otherwise than straightforward.” Hitherto there had been no distinctions between the vessels used in commerce and in the king’s service; the former being constantly employed for the latter; but now we find the addition of another tier, and a general enlargement of the war-vessels. Still, when any emergency required, merchant vessels, not merely English, but Genoese, Venetian, and from the Hanse Towns, were constantly hired for warfare. So during peace the king’s ships were sometimes employed in trade, or freighted to merchants. Henry was very desirous of increasing and maintaining commercial relations with other countries. In the commission to one of his ambassadors, he says, “The earth being the common mother of all mankind, what can be more pleasant or more humane than to communicate a portion of all her productions to all her children by commerce?” Many special commercial treaties were made by him, and one concluded with the Archduke Philip after a dispute with him, which had put a stop to the trade with the Low Countries, was called the great commercial treaty (intercursus magnus). “It was framed with the greatest care to render the intercourse between the two countries permanent, and profitable to both.”