A COMING TYPE OF BATTLESHIP.

An interpretation of the funnel-less ship with internal combustion engines as suggested
by Mr. J. McKechnie, M.I.N.A.

WARSHIPS AND THEIR STORY

Uniform with this Volume

STEAMSHIPS

AND

THEIR STORY

By E. Keble Chatterton

CASSELL & CO., LTD., LONDON, E.C.

WARSHIPS
AND THEIR STORY

By

R. A. FLETCHER
Author of “Steam-Ships and Their Story”

WITH COLOURED FRONTISPIECE BY CHARLES DIXON, R.I.
AND 80 FULL-PAGE PLATES

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD.

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1911

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE

To the people of a seafaring nation the story of the growth of the warship, from the primitive craft of our savage ancestors to the marvellous fighting machines of the present day, should prove of endless fascination. In this book I have sought to indicate somewhat of the lines upon which the development of the world’s warships has taken place. The amount of information available concerning warships is virtually inexhaustible, whether the ships are regarded structurally and comparisons are made of the forms of the hulls, the strains they may withstand, the speed of which they may permit, and their modes of propulsion; or whether, sociologically, as evidences of the stages of the progress of civilisation of the different peoples; or simply as aids to an appreciation of naval combat, of deeds afloat of individual and national heroism, of the rise and decline of maritime powers, and finally as implements in that tremendous struggle, which has made England what she is, for maritime supremacy. I have not written this book from any one of these aspects, but to describe in popular, not technical, language the more important types of warships favoured at different times in different parts of the world, to show, where possible, where type has succeeded type, and the main lines of divergence and development.

Reversing the usual practice of treating the warships as incidental to the naval battles, I have preferred to treat the naval battles as incidental to the warships. For that reason I have attempted no word pictures of the onset of contending fleets, no more or less imaginary accounts of famous engagements, no descriptions of weird manœuvres and impossible strategy. Even under the restrictions I have been compelled to observe, the abundance of material to be dealt with is so vast that I feel I have done no more than skim the surface, as it were, and have by no means collected all the cream. The task of deciding what to insert and what to omit has been no light one. Much that my readers and critics may think ought to have been included has, perforce, had to be left out, and the necessity of keeping the book within the limits of its present dimensions must be my excuse for the sins of omission of which I shall no doubt be found guilty.

So uneven, or erratic, has been the progress of warship construction, that in some of the world’s harbours, riding the waters almost side by side, one may see dug-outs and “Dreadnoughts,” sampans and submarines, canoes and cruisers, barges and battleships, the vessels of peace—though in times past they were not always vessels of peace—resting securely under the protection of the grim and terrible modern warships.

Every care has been taken to obtain accuracy, but I do not guarantee the absolute correctness of every detail given, for the simple reason that the authorities consulted are not themselves always in agreement, and this applies equally to the warships of the past as to those of the present time.

Every care, also, has been observed to give credit to other writers for the assistance derived from their books, and in this connection I would specially mention the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” Mr. Cecil Torr’s “Ancient Ships,” Sir W. Laird Clowes’ “History of the British Navy,” Mr. H. W. Wilson’s “Ironclads in Action,” “The Warships of Europe” by Chief Engineer J. W. King, U.S.A., “The New American Navy” by John D. Long, ex-Secretary of the Navy, U.S.A., “Maori Art” by A. Hamilton, “The New Zealanders” by George F. Angas, “History of Steam Navigation” by John Kennedy, “The Story of the Submarine” by Colonel C. Field, “Ancient and Modern Ships” by Sir George C. V. Holmes, “Submarines and Submersibles” by E. C. Given, M.Inst.C.E., “Canoes of the Solomon Islands” by C. M. Woodford, F.R.G.S., “Naval Architecture” by J. Fincham, “Rise and Progress of the Royal Navy” by Chas. Derrick, “Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects,” Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography, “History of the Marine Architecture of All Nations” by J. Charnock, “Our Ironclad Ships” by Sir E. J. Reed, “Cyclopedia of Antiquities” by Rev. F. D. Fosbroke, M.A., and the “Naval,” “Navy League,” and “Fleet” Annuals. A great deal of information has also been derived from the columns of Engineering, the Engineer, the Times, Illustrated London News, Marine Engineer, Scientific American, and other papers, to all of which I express my deep indebtedness. If it should be found that I have not acknowledged every item derived from these sources, I trust that this general admission will cover my shortcomings in this respect.

I have also to thank personally the Chief Librarian of the Colonial Office for assistance in dealing with some of the canoes; various officials of the British Museum for valuable suggestions they were kind enough to offer; Mr. A. J. Dudgeon, M.Inst.N.A. and M.I.M.E., for his kindness in again lending me his scrap-books; Mr. James A. Smith, M.Inst.N.A., for revising a portion of the proofs; the Secretaries of the Institution of Naval Architects and of the Institute of Marine Engineers for again placing the libraries of those organisations at my disposal; the Secretary of the Navy at Washington for illustrations of vessels which achieved fame at the time of the American Civil War; the Commissioners in this country of the Imperial Japanese Navy for pictures of the early Japanese warships; the Hon. J. G. Jenkins, formerly Agent-General in London for South Australia, for New Guinea illustrations; Mr. Harry J. Palmer, of Paterson, N.J., for information and assistance in regard to American ships; and many shipbuilders, both in this country and abroad, for supplying details and illustrations of the vessels they have constructed. I have also to thank Lord Dundonald for his courtesy in lending me a picture of the Rising Star, probably the first steam war vessel to be built in this country, which his ancestor, the famous Admiral Cochrane, commanded in the service of Chili.

On other pages will be found a list of the illustrations and the sources whence they have been derived or the names of the gentlemen who have been kind enough to supply them.

R. A. Fletcher.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

When or where the first warship was built is unknown, so also is the campaign in which it was employed. A war with naval usages of any sort cannot have been fought until the aggressor had some means of transporting the spoil across the water. From the raft to the fire-hollowed canoe was but a step, and having accomplished so much, the ingenuity of the naval architects of the period found scope in making improvements, gropingly, slowly, but none the less surely. The development of ships used for warlike purposes, as well as of ships designed as implements for fighting, forms a most attractive branch of study in its relation to the evolution of empires, no less than that of civilisation. Nor is the interest any the less if the attention be confined simply to the consideration of the development of the ships as ships of war.

In this book I am endeavouring to describe, clearly and briefly, the main features of the progress in warship building among the different peoples of the world, from the earliest recorded times onward. The greater attention is paid to modern warships, and the story of their development is narrated with an avoidance of abstruse technicalities, so that any reader of average intelligence and education may be able to obtain a clear understanding of the steps by which that wonderful creation, the modern navy, and especially the British Navy, has come into being.

Whether my readers belong to the bluest of the “blue water” school; whether they advocate two British keels to one possessed by any possible combination of foreign powers as the irreducible minimum below which the British fleet shall not go; whether they take a more moderate view, founded, as they believe, on the power of the nation to pay for its fleet, and the ability of other nations to pay for their fleets, in which case the ability of some other nations to borrow money to have their best vessels built in British yards must not be lost sight of; or whether my readers belong to the other extreme and believe that any and every British fleet is too powerful and that the time is coming when the Imperial cheek shall be turned to the envious smiter: whatever be their political and social faiths, the fact remains that the fleet in being is the sole guarantee of this nation’s safety, and that the payments for the several warships and the personnel of the Navy are but so many premiums for insuring the defence of the country and the maintenance of the inviolate integrity of these islands. Whether the money has always been spent to the best advantage is a point upon which experts differ, and is outside my intention to consider. But I hope to show something of the types of vessels provided, and, incidentally, to indicate how engineering skill and profound science have been devoted to the evolution of the modern ship of war.

******

The earliest known employment of a warship dates back, according to the present computations of Egyptologists, some six thousand years B.C.; but discoveries yet to be made may cause that estimate to be revised, for the more the scientific investigation of ancient Egypt is pursued, the greater is the tendency to date events more remotely still. All that is known of this ship is that it existed, and that it saw service as escort to a trading expedition on the Nile.

The first naval engagement of which we have any definite knowledge was fought near the mouth of the Nile about 1000 B.C. The ships held only a few men each and were propelled by rowers, and so little dependence was placed on their sails that the latter were furled to be out of the way during the actual fighting.

For hundreds of years oars were the chief means of propulsion, the sails only being availed of when the wind was very favourable. To increase the speed of the vessels, bank after bank of oars was added until ships carrying as many as eighteen banks are averred to have been constructed—though the evidence of the correctness of the statement is a long way from being conclusive—and one historian even goes to the length of asserting that a ship having forty banks of oars was built, but this may be disbelieved. For the most part, ships having two, three, or four banks were preferred for war purposes, because of their handiness.

Greater ships were afterwards built and improvements made in the shape and size of the sails and spars used, and the number of masts was increased.

******

Meanwhile in the Far North a seafaring nation was proving its worth. The wild men of the wilder North, the Danes, the Scandinavian Vikings—turbulent, adventurous and fierce, to whom fear was a word unknown—animated by the virile yet mystic mythology of the North, and inspired by the love of conquest and travel, now began to play their part in the world’s naval history. The Vikings produced the “long ship,” the “serpent,” daring in conception, marvellous in construction, possessing wonderful qualities as a sea-boat, fast under sail or oar, and of a beauty of outline and shape hardly to be excelled even now. Such were the vessels in which the Danes invaded England, and by building vessels as good as those of the Danes, and some rather better, King Alfred repulsed the invaders and implanted in the English that “habit of the sea” they have never lost. But the lesson of the Norsemen was destined to lie dormant for many a long year. Although the Romans had introduced the “long ship” for war purposes—so-called because it was longer in proportion to its beam than the merchant ships—the Mediterranean shipbuilders preferred as a whole to retain the heavy hull, and the form they believed best suited to their needs upon the tideless sea. Slave power was cheap, and was to be had for the trouble of capturing, and for many centuries oar-driven galleys were preferred over any vessel dependent upon sails only, and were to be found in the Mediterranean as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.

As ships of greater size were provided in the Middle Ages, huge erections in the shape of castles were added at the bow and stern: great, unwieldy craft which contemporary historians likened to floating islands. The Venetian and Genoese republics elevated the art of constructing oared galleasses to its highest, and ere long Spain took the lead in producing warships with dimensions and power of armament which made her the chief maritime power of the world.

******

In England, owing to alternate periods of stimulation and neglect by the authorities, the progress of shipbuilding was spasmodic. The roughness of the waters round our coasts, and along the Atlantic coasts of France, the Low Countries and North Western Europe, caused greater dependence to be placed in small vessels having good sea-going qualities and using sail whenever possible. The Great Harry was begun in the reign of Henry VII. and finished in the reign of his uxorious successor, and is interesting as indicating that shipbuilders in England were even then able to turn out a sea-going vessel superior to anything afloat. Henry VIII. established royal shipbuilding yards at Woolwich and Deptford, and thus founded the modern navy, but few warships for the King’s service were built there in his time, and during his reign and for many a long year after it was the custom to hire merchant vessels and arm them—if they were not already armed to protect themselves against pirates—to augment the national fleet. Religious, no less than national, rivalry contributed, albeit unconsciously, to the development of the efficacy of the warship as a fighting unit. The enmity between Britain and Spain culminated, in Elizabeth’s reign, after a series of daring attacks by reckless Englishmen upon the Spanish fleet in preparation for the great attack upon England, in the dispatch of the Armada. Hawkins and one or two others foresaw that the advantage would lie with the fleet which could be most effectively manœuvred. The disparity between the Armada and the British fleet was not so great as many writers have represented, either in the size or number of the vessels; but the British vessels on the average were smaller, faster, and better handled; in other words, efficiency told against sheer weight of numbers. This was the last great sea-fight on the ocean in which oared ships took part; they were no match for their smaller and more speedy sailing antagonists.

Structurally, most of the vessels of this time, the larger especially, were disfigured by high sterncastles, but early in the seventeenth century this encumbrance and many others had disappeared. Thence to the nineteenth century the development of warships was marked mainly by continual increases in their size, improving their form of hull and, consequently, their speed and buoyancy; augmenting their sail area and perfecting the square-rigged system; and adding to the number of gun decks and the number of guns carried; until the grand wooden three-deckers swept the seas in all their ponderous pride and majesty. Ships of the line of various ratings played their part, and were ably seconded by frigates, brigs, cutters, sloops and bomb-ketches. All these were in vogue less than a century ago, and though not forgotten, are looked upon as historical and romantic and interesting curiosities.

******

In the weapons, no less than in the ships, the changes have been marvellous. For many centuries after ships were adopted for war, the fighting was done by soldiers carried aboard them. The human machines, the rowers, had to attend exclusively to their oars, for on them the safety or success of the fighting men depended. The main idea was to get to close quarters and fight hand to hand with javelin or sword, spear or battleaxe; bows and arrows were used when possible, and missiles hurled by hand were not despised. The ram, in various forms, affixed to the bows in such a manner as to strike the enemy’s ship below or above the water-line, or both, was used with fearful effect in many a stubbornly fought engagement.

The introduction of artillery in the fourteenth century marked the beginning of the first great revolution in naval warfare, and the changes in the projectiles have been no less extraordinary than those in the guns.

******

The next great revolution was the introduction of the steam-engine. Its adoption in the British Navy in 1832 marked the beginning of the end of the sailing warship. Her last grim battle against inexorable fate was fought with the same doggedness which had distinguished her in many an encounter with her nation’s enemies; but the superiority of steam over sail was recognised. Temporising measures, a patched-up peace, as it were, lasted for a few years while the steam engine was employed as an auxiliary. Sail power, however, had reached its apotheosis so far as warships were concerned. Engineers, animated by practical common sense and ignoring romantic associations, improved their engines, so that the steam power was no longer the assistant of sail, but its associate, and was quick in attaining the position of chief partner and showing that sails could be dispensed with altogether. The Crimean War sounded the knell of the wooden battleship as well as of the paddle-wheel war steamer. The former gave place to the iron-clad vessel, and the latter was supplanted by the screw-propelled ship. The power of artillery had shared in the application of scientific knowledge and benefited accordingly. The great battle between the maker of armour plates and the maker of guns and projectiles had begun. Iron, the conqueror of wood, had but a short reign. Where iron was used a few years ago, steel is now invariably employed. The thoroughness of the victory is shown by the fact that in the whole of the British Isles not one iron vessel, large or small, was built in 1909 for war or commerce.

******

The years 1905 and 1906 saw two of the most important steps forward in the history of warships, for they included the adoption of the turbine principle of warship propulsion and the “Dreadnought” principle of armament. The progress of the last fifty years, culminating in the Dreadnoughts, has been wonderful; already designs of vessels intended to relegate them to second place are under consideration.

Type after type of battleship, cruiser, scout, gunboat, destroyer and torpedo-boat has followed in rapid succession of late years, and submarines have become an accomplished fact. He would be a foolish man who would prophesy that the end is in sight.

There is nothing more marvellous in the world’s history than the tremendous development in marine engineering, in warship construction, in explosives, in armament, and in projectiles that has taken place in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and especially in the last twenty-five years.

WARSHIPS AND THEIR STORY

CHAPTER I

FROM ANCIENT EGYPT TO THE INTRODUCTION OF ARTILLERY

When did man first entrust himself afloat for purposes of war? and what was the type of vessel he employed? are questions which take us back almost to the earliest stages of historical human progress, concerning which all the knowledge of the antiquaries is but conjectural, a stage so remote that scientists have not yet determined how many thousands of years ago it existed. The earliest vessels thus employed must have been transports, and nothing else; but if employed as aids to aggression when the kings of the earth took counsel together and, impelled by avarice or a desire to assist in one another’s turbulent love affairs, or, for their own safety, convinced of the necessity of finding an outlet for the energies of their restless subjects, invaded the territories of their neighbours, the ships, whatever their nature, will have been of a size sufficient to receive any spoil or any prisoners worth the trouble of carrying back again.

So far, however, as research has disclosed in those parts of the Near East where civilisation was cradled, there is no indication that man fought afloat—boat against boat, or fleet against fleet—until after a comparatively high stage of civilisation had been attained and shipbuilding had made enormous advances.

Evelyn remarks: “Concerning men of war, fleets, and armadas for battel, that Minos was reported to be the author, which shows that manner of desperate combat on the waters to be neer as antient as men themselves, since the deluge.” Minos, he adds, disputed the empire of the seas with Neptune, but “these particulars may be uncertain.”[1]

Among the legendary expeditions, those of Ulysses and Jason are the best known. Possibly they took place, but the adventurers never did or saw half the wonders narrated of them. Herodotus, describing the type of ship attributed to Ulysses by Homer, states that such ships were made of acacia, of “planks about two cubits in length,” joined together like bricks, and built in the following manner: “They fasten the planks round stout and long ties: when they have thus built the hulls they lay benches across them. They make no use of ribs, but caulk the seams inside with byblus. They make only one rudder, and that is driven through the keel. They use a mast of acacia and sails of byblus. These vessels are unable to sail up the stream, but are towed from the shore.”[2] Book II. of the Iliad mentions, in the famous catalogue, hollow ships, well-benched ships, swift ships, and dark ships, and that Ulysses had twelve red ships, but Homer, being a poet and a landsman, did not describe their differences.

Recent excavations and discoveries in Egypt have revealed the existence of boats of considerable size, so remote in history that their period is only guessed at, though they are estimated to date from about 5000 to 6000 years B.C. If the interpretation of the designs on the pottery recording these old ships be correct, they were propelled by over a hundred oars or paddles, were steered by three paddles at the stern, and had two cabins amidships. They were, moreover, very high out of the water at the ends, having very long, overhanging bows and counters, and were shallow and flat-bottomed.

Even at this period the art of shipbuilding was in a comparatively advanced stage; vessels such as those depicted would be quite as capable of use in war for carrying warriors or stores, or both, as in commerce for conveying merchandise. Egypt has many historical secrets yet to reveal, and, judging by the constant reassignment of dates in all matters connected with Ancient Egypt which exploration has entailed, it is not too much to expect that the dates quoted, assigned approximately by Egyptologists, may be revised and events placed more remotely still.

Another hieroglyph, discovered in a tomb, ascribed to the year 4800 B.C., shows enormous progress in shipbuilding and also in the art of representing a ship pictorially.

During the Sixth Dynasty, a certain Un’e, who was a person of note under three kings, sent, while the second, Pepi I., was on the throne, an expedition to the quarries of Syene or Assouan, to fetch stone for his master’s pyramid.

Another expedition, on behalf of Pepi’s successor, merits attention, as the fact is emphasised on the inscription on the tomb as most remarkable, and as never having occurred before “under any king whatever,” that Un’e had to employ twelve ships for freight and but one warship.[3] The flotilla consisted of “six broad vessels, three tow boats, three rafts, and one ship manned with warriors.”[4]

The Egyptians evidently had experience of some sort of fighting afloat, for there has been discovered at Gebel Abu Faida a tomb with a painting showing a boat with a triangular mast, and a stem extending forward below the surface of the water and presumably intended to be used to damage an enemy’s boat by ramming it.[5]

The first sea-fight of which a pictorial representation is known to exist was fought off Migdol, at the mouth of the Nile, in the time of Rameses III., first king of the Twentieth Dynasty, which began about 1180 B.C., and lasted to about 1050 B.C. Egypt was invaded from the East by “warships and foot soldiers,” and the Egyptian monarch mustered a fleet and attacked them.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WARSHIP.

“The ships on both sides,” says the historian[6]—“we can recognise the Egyptian by the lion heads in the bows—have reefed their sails in order not to interfere with the men who are fighting; the bracket at the mast head has been removed to make room for the slinger. The Egyptians understood how to pull round the ships of the enemy with their grappling irons, so as to bring them to close quarters; in fighting also they have the better of their opponents, for they all carry bows, whilst the barbarians with their short swords can only fight in a hand-to-hand medley. This battle is almost the only naval engagement in Egyptian history, for though in the wars with the Hyksos we certainly hear of fighting on the water, yet in the latter case the Nile was the scene of action.... The ships had their individual names, such as Battle Animal, or Glorious in Memphis. The Ship of Pharaoh was also called Beloved of Amon.”

A remarkable difference between the ships of the Egyptians and those of the Asiatics is that the latter had no rowers, if the bas-relief is accurate. Possibly the Asiatics, Phoenicians probably, had discovered how to manage the sails of their warships and dispense with rowers.

The example set by the Asiatic fleet does not seem to have been followed, for as the need of greater ships became manifest the problem of their propulsion was met by placing one bank or tier of oarsmen above another. Then, as now, the propelling power was vital to the efficiency of the ship, and means had to be devised for the preservation, or at least protection, of the oarsmen. The single-banked ships had planks placed round the gunwales, forming a parodus, or gangway, which served also to guard the rowers from missiles. Later, the upper tier was in an open superstructure, and still later, planks were carried which could be adjusted for the protection of the oarsmen when necessary.

The ram, employed by the Egyptians—who seem to have retained for their sea-going craft the long, overhanging stem and stern so suitable to their river vessels—was a metal head, which added a finishing touch to the projecting bows, and was high above the sea level. At the time of the battle of Migdol, and possibly also of the sea-fights in the reign of the preceding Rameses, who is known to have conducted a naval war, though of this campaign no illustrations have yet been discovered, the captain of the warship was placed in a sort of crow’s nest on top of the double or ⋀-shaped mast.

Then comes a long gap in the history of Egyptian shipping. The Phœnicians became the leading maritime people of the world, but the little that is known of them is derived, not from discoveries in their own cities of Tyre and Sidon, but from the records preserved at Nineveh. Sennacherib’s conquest of Phœnicia was commemorated by mural tablets, on which are the only known records of Phœnician war galleys. The Phœnicians are stated to have invented biremes, or vessels carrying two banks of oars on each side. Perhaps for lightness, and in order to reduce the top weight as much as possible, these galleys had the upper bank of oarsmen unprotected. The prow, differing from that of the earlier Egyptian ships, curved forward at a point slightly above the water line, and continued to do so under the water, thus forming a formidable snout or ram which could inflict considerable damage to the most vulnerable parts. The beaks were generally carved to represent the head of some animal. The vessels also had a parodus placed outside the vessel and extending the whole length of the sides above the oars. The contrivance was probably copied from the Egyptians, who introduced it to enable the warriors to fight at close quarters when drawing alongside an enemy, or to run to either end of the ship as occasion might require without impeding, or being impeded by, the rowers.

GREEK BIREME.

From a Vase in the British Museum, found at Vulci.

GREEK WAR GALLEYS.

From a Vase in the British Museum found at Vulci.

Cancelli, or shields of basket work, were placed along the sides of the ships at such a height that the heads of those on board are just visible. The cancelli bore a striking resemblance to the circular basket-work boats still to be found on the upper Euphrates; this supports the supposition that the cancelli may have been used for other purposes, particularly if they were made comparatively watertight, as the function of a shield was not only to protect a warrior in battle, but to help to keep him dry when on shipboard by being disposed along the sides to prevent the spray from entering the ships. A forecastle was constructed upon these ships, and upon each forecastle a look-out man was stationed; and when these structures came to be built of larger dimensions they served to accommodate a number of fighting men who, from their superior position, could throw their missiles with greater effect. The forecastle had the further advantage of serving as a stronghold in the event of an attempt being made to capture the ship by boarding it.

Following the Phœnicians, the Greeks are thought to have begun to build their own warships about 700 B.C., perhaps earlier, but it was about that time that the first three-banked warship was launched at Corinth. The three-banked ships were for many years the largest in existence. During the fourth century B.C. shipbuilding was practised extensively, four-banked ships being built at Chalcedon, five-banked at Salamis, and six-banked ships at Syracuse. Ships of ten banks, according to Pliny, were ordered by Alexander the Great, and about 300 B.C. ships having twelve banks are said to have been built for Ptolemy, and fifteen-banked ships for Demetrios, for a battle near Cyprus.

Ptolemy Philopater, who ruled in Egypt from 222 to 204 B.C., is alleged to have had a forty-banked ship of a length of 280 cubits or, reckoning the cubit at 18 inches, of 420 feet, and a beam of 57 feet.

While increasing the size and number of oars, it would, nevertheless, be impossible to augment to any appreciable extent the speed at which these ships could be rowed, and the more unwieldy would they become, and the more difficult would it be to keep steering way upon them. Again, the assertions of the historians are so contradictory that it is a thankless task to attempt to reconcile all their stories, especially as they depended much upon hearsay for their information. For that reason, therefore, a great deal that has been recorded as to the early ships and their numerous banks of oars is not to be accepted without careful inquiry and verification.

It has never been established beyond question what is meant by banks of oars, or whether the Greek text has been interpreted correctly when it is taken to express forty superimposed banks of oars. From constructional reasons it may be assumed that a ship having forty superimposed banks of oars never existed, and it is very doubtful whether ships having more than a fourth of that number of banks passed beyond the imaginations of their inventors. In any case they were soon dispensed with, and in course of time it was found that the best results were obtained with galleys having two or three banks of oars.

It is not definitely known how the rowers were disposed in the ships of anything over seven or eight banks. If any vessels had forty banks of oars, the upper rows must have been of an absolutely unwieldy length. Assuming the oars to have been weighted with lead so that the inborne and outborne portions were equally balanced, they must nevertheless have been exceedingly difficult to row even by a number of men, and it was impossible for any rowers to have moved these great oars at the same speed as the men at the lower banks moved their lighter and shorter ones. That some such difficulty was experienced, even in biremes and triremes, is shown by the arrangement of the oars, whereby all in a bank were not of equal length, but were graded so that those nearer the ends of the banks were longer in order that all the blades might enter the water in a straight line. Each row above must have had its own line in the water a little farther away from the side of the ship than the row beneath it, or the blades would have interfered with each other and the rowers thrown into hopeless confusion. The tremendous amount of lead that would have to be carried to counterbalance the outborne portions of several hundred oars would add materially to the dead weight to be propelled, and, much of it being placed high above the water, the stability of the vessel would be lessened.

The Athenians used leather or skin aprons or covers over the oar holes to prevent the water entering, the oar passing through a hole in the leather, and the apron was bound to the oar in such a way as to be watertight. This contrivance was widely adopted later. The oar ports were constructed between the ribs, but the oars instead of being rowed against the ribs were pulled against thongs fastened to the next rib, thus minimising the strain upon the ship’s structure and preventing the oars being lost overboard. One man one oar was apparently the general rule at that time.

In his most painstaking study of “Ancient Ships” Mr. Cecil Torr has gone very closely into the subject of the oar equipment of the galleys. An Athenian three-banked ship would carry two hundred oars, of which thirty were worked from the upper decking, sixty-two on the upper bank, and fifty-four to each of the lower. The earliest two-banked ships had eighteen rowers. An Athenian four-banked ship might carry two hundred and sixty-six oars. The Roman and Carthaginian five-banked ships in use about 256 B.C. had three hundred rowers besides the combatants. The statement is made by an early historian that in 280 B.C. the Heraclean fleet on the Black Sea included an eight-banked ship with a hundred rowers on each file, or one thousand six hundred rowers in all. As usually the fighting men carried exceeded the rowers in number, the ship must have had close upon three thousand five hundred men aboard.

Warships of all the early Eastern nations were strengthened by cables passed longitudinally round them in order to keep the timbers in place and prevent them from being started under the strain occasioned by the shock of ramming. Egyptian ships of about 1200 B.C. had cables stretched from stem to stern and passing over the top of the mast and other posts, but this contrivance was to prevent the vessel from drooping at the ends, a weakness known as “hogging.” The shock to the ramming vessel was scarcely less severe than that to the vessel receiving the blow. To take up the strain and add to the power of the blow the bows were strengthened by means of waling pieces which supported the ram proper. The Greek ships were built with the keel, the stempost, and the lower pair of waling pieces converging to hold the ram, while higher up the stem was a smaller ram which in its turn was buttressed by another pair of waling planks. The catheads, or beams projecting from the bows on either side by which the anchors were raised, were so placed on a level with the gangway and gunwale that they would sweep the upper works of an enemy’s ship and smash its gangway and hurl into the sea or the hold all the fighting men upon it. Ships of more than three banks are believed to have carried another ram level with the catheads, and to have had a ram for every pair of additional waling beams. The ram heads were generally of bronze and weighed 170 lb. or more.

“AN ANCIENT BIREME, FROM BASIUS, HAVING ONE TIER OF OARS ONLY.”

“ONE OF THE ANCIENT LIBURNI, OR GALLEYS, HAVING A SINGLE TIER
OF OARS, ACCORDING TO BASIUS.”

AN ANCIENT TRIREME, ACCORDING TO BASIUS.

From Charnock’s “History of the Marine Architecture of all Nations.”

The later rams varied considerably in shape. The triple ram was sometimes made with the teeth pointing slightly downward, while others had an upward tilt. The lowest ram often extended farther forward than those above, the idea being that it would inflict severe injury about or below the water line, and that the upper rams, besides causing damage, would push the stricken vessel off the lower ram and let her sink without the assailant being dragged down by the head with her.

The build of the ships rendered it necessary that an engagement should be fought on a calm sea, and daylight was preferred in order that the combatants could see what they were doing. As the fleets approached one another the commanders of the different vessels decided upon their individual opponents. Much skilful manœuvring ensued to ram the enemy or avoid a blow. The slaves strained at the oars while their taskmasters ran between the files of rowers and, with unmerciful blows from heavy sticks and whips, stimulated them to still greater exertions if possible.

Poor slaves, mostly prisoners of war, their prospects were gloomy in the extreme! If their ship were rammed some of them were sure to be injured, and if she sank they went down with her, fastened to their places and having no chance of escape. If the oars were disabled in the collision between the ships the rowers were bound to receive violent blows from the inboard end of the oars, or to be cruelly pierced by splinters of wreckage. Showers of missiles from the opposing ship fell upon the helpless wretches. In later years, when the terrible Greek fire was added to the means of attack and defence, it contributed the prospect of being burnt alive to the other horrors of their situation. Victory meant no rejoicings for them. The wounded were of little account and could be dispensed with when slaves were to be had for the capturing, and it was easy to put them overboard to die the more quickly. Those who survived the battle unhurt or not too severely injured to recover rapidly, were retained. If their ship were vanquished they might look forward to greater cruelties as a punishment for their share of the defeat. If they belonged to the victors, they had only more battles, the torturing whips of their drivers, and insufficient food as their portion in life. Death came as a welcome relief to the slaves of victor and vanquished; in it lay their only hope of peace.

When the Roman navy was at its best the ships were painted a colour which matched the waves, and the hulls were made as watertight as possible with tar. Occasionally in the later Roman ships layers of tarred cloth were placed outside the outer planking, and the hull was then lead-sheathed. Bronze nails and wooden pegs were used in fastening the timbers together, and some ships were so built that they could be taken to pieces and transported overland if necessary. Ships of three, four and five banks were even conveyed from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates.

The facility with which the Liburnians handled the two-banked ships in their Adriatic campaign induced the Romans to adopt these vessels as models for their own two-banked ships, and in course of time they adopted the name of liburna for all war-vessels of from one to five banks.

If some of the historians may be believed, anything that could be piled upon the ancient ship and did not capsize it was permissible. One is said to have had a tower at the stern and another at the prow. Another bore “a large tower of masonry with a great gate. Here appear some vases, probably filled with combustibles.” Another libernus has a mast or yard, suspended perpendicularly by the side of the forward tower, and having at each end a crossbeam. Yet another libernus, besides carrying a protector for the helm at the stern, is said to have had six round towers; the largest, of embattled masonry, was at the prow, two others, also of masonry, surmounted by domes, and connected by a bridge, were near the stern, and the other three were nearer the fore part of the ship, were roofed, and two of them had windows.

Shipping in the Mediterranean extended with extraordinary rapidity in the recovery after the stagnation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the relapse into semi-barbarism which followed the successful invasion of Italy by the wild tribesmen of the North. The advent and rise of the Moslem power caused a series of struggles in which every state was in a more or less constant condition of warfare against its neighbour, and the Crusades served but to add fuel to the fire of internecine and religious conflict. Some immense ships are stated to have been employed up to and at the fall of Constantinople. The early centuries of the Christian era saw the evolution of a flat, shallow vessel, fitted with one or two masts carrying sails, from which the lateen rig developed, equipped with a long ram above the water line, with two or at most three banks of oars. It appears from illustrations that some of these boats carried a superstructure extending beyond the beam on either side. War vessels of this type became common throughout the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, and remained in use long after the introduction of firearms.

Before the discovery of Greek fire, flaring missiles of some kind had been devised. Frontinus mentions fire-ships, or hulls carrying combustibles and allowed to drift with wind and tide upon the enemy’s ships: stinkpots, to nauseate the enemy, though how the others escaped the smells except by keeping to windward does not appear; and Evelyn adds, “Nay, snake pots, and false colours.” The Greek fire, however, was the most terrible of the weapons employed at that time. By some means by which a fair amount of power was exerted, the liquid was squirted—or vomited, to use one historian’s phrase—through copper pipes upon an enemy’s ship, and as the liquid had the peculiar property of igniting upon exposure to the air and was inextinguishable by water, it was a most formidable engine of destruction. Small vases filled with the liquid and sealed airtight were used as hand grenades and flung at opposing ships and, breaking, set them on fire. Heavy arrows carrying balls of flax soaked in the liquid were used both in land and sea warfare, as also were hand-flung javelins similarly equipped, and the flights of these masses of inextinguishable flames must have been equally demoralising to the combatants against whom they were directed and destructive to the ships and inflammable buildings upon which they fell. This composition is thought to have been invented in the seventh century; the first occasion on which it was employed on an extensive scale was in the great battle between the fleets of Constantine and the Saracens, when the latter, through its agency, lost practically their whole fleet and thirty thousand men killed. After that both sides used Greek fire whenever possible.

Up to the introduction of gunpowder and artillery the methods of fighting varied but little. The sea-fights of the Crusades were conducted on the lines which had been recognised as the best for a couple of thousand years or more, viz., ram the enemy and board him. Greek fire added this rule: Burn him also if you can.

The countries along the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean had attained a high degree of civilisation when the inhabitants of Western Europe and the British Islands were still more or less savage. What may be regarded as circumstantial evidence in support of the contention that the Phœnicians voyaged to Cornwall and Ireland is the similarity which exists in shape between the wicker shields, such as the Phœnicians are known to have used, and the wicker coracles which the Britons employed at the time of the invasion by Julius Cæsar. There must have been considerable intercourse between the Phœnicians and the dwellers in the valley of the Euphrates before the latter conquered the former; but whether the dwellers in Nineveh, or those by the sea, invented wicker boats, or whether both derived their knowledge of wicker boats from other sources, are points of no immediate importance. But what is of interest is that the British wicker coracles were covered with hides to make them watertight, that they had keels and gunwales, and that they were small enough to be used as shields if necessary, their dimensions being rather over 4 feet in length, with a breadth of about 3 feet, and a depth of a trifle over 12 inches. They were big enough to carry one man of average size. There are on the Euphrates to this day boats or rafts of proportionate dimensions, up to a maximum length of 40 or 50 feet over all, which are constructed with a light framework of wicker and timber, over which skins are stretched to keep them watertight. These boats, when laden, drift down the river with the current, and, on reaching their destination, their cargo and skins are sold and the framework is made up into a package and returned upon the back of an ass to the port of departure. These cargo boats have been humorously referred to at a meeting of the Institute of Marine Engineers as of “one ass-power.”

So far as Britain is concerned, the shipping of each coast seems to have developed under the influence of the foreign shipping with which it mostly came in contact. The east coast was largely concerned with the Danes, and the south coast with its neighbours across the Channel. The Danes and Vikings developed a type of vessel peculiarly their own. The best specimen yet brought to light is that known as the Gokstad ship.

AN ANGLO-SAXON SHIP OF ABOUT THE
NINTH CENTURY.

(From Strutt.)

The Viking ships must have walked the waters almost with the grace of motion of a modern yacht, and when the great square sail was hoisted, bearing the escutcheon of some dread sea-rover, they must have been fascinating emblems of human skill and power no less than of the noblest and the basest passions of mankind.

The large rowing and sailing galleys of the Mediterranean were fine-weather ships, it being the custom to suspend merchant voyages, naval expeditions, and piracy in that sea during the winter months. Obviously, such vessels were wholly unsuited to the Atlantic coasts of Western Europe. The western coasts of Spain, France and Portugal produced a ship, short and broad, and strong enough to be beached even when a moderate sea was running. This model was seemingly copied by the English of the south coast, and vessels of this type, built in the eighth century, were planked and carried high, erect stemposts and sternposts. The vessels were single-masted and fitted with a yard and square sail, and the steering was effected by a large oar at the stern. They were not unlike the Viking ships in some respects, but they were of less average length and broader in proportion, having bluffer bows, a less fine entry, and a long flat floor extending farther aft than did that of the northern ships. Some also had a ram.

VIKING SHIP FOUND AT GOKSTAD, SOUTH NORWAY.

Photograph: O. Vaering, Christiania.

What may be regarded as the first great national step in British shipbuilding was inaugurated in the latter part of the ninth century, when King Alfred saw that in order to beat the Danes he must meet them with ships superior in size and strength to their own. His war galleys were virtually double the size of those of the invaders, and in some instances almost double their length. The Gokstad ship, by no means one of the largest of its type, had sixteen oars a side. If Alfred’s boats had thirty oars or more a side, as is stated, and were double-banked—that is, two men to each oar—like those of his foes, the fighting strength of the individual ships of his navy must have been very great.

By the eleventh century the Norsemen had taken to painting their vessels externally, besides making them larger and giving them decks. The stempost and sternpost were more ornately decorated, gilded copper being the material used for this purpose. Svend Forkbeard’s own ship, the Great Dragon, is said to have been in the form of this legendary beast, but what the historian most likely meant is that the stern decoration or the design on the sail may have shown a fantastic representation of the fearsome animal; the Vikings were too good seamen to have built the ship in any form likely to be inferior to the shape they had learned to appreciate so highly. The Long Serpent, which appeared in that century, is said to have been 117 feet in length, and decked, and to have carried six hundred men. This is the first war vessel in the Western seas known to have been decked throughout,[7] and in which cabin accommodation was provided for the principal fighting men. Beneath the deck the hull was divided into five cabins or compartments; the foremost was the lokit, in which, in a royal vessel, the king’s standard bearers were quartered; next, the sax or storeroom; then the kraproom, where sails and tackle were kept; the foreroom, containing the arms chest, and forming the living room of the warriors; and astern of all was the lofting, or great cabin, devoted to the commander. For the comfort of the rank and file of the fighting men at night in port an awning was spread, supported by a ridge pole on pillars. At other times they would seem to have had to put up with sleeping on deck and making the best of it; they would certainly be no worse off than in the old days of the open ships, and being somewhat higher above the water would be less exposed to the spray. At the end of the twelfth century King Sverre Sigurdsson had some merchant ships cut across amidships and lengthened, and then used them as war ships.

FLEET ATTACKING A FORTIFIED TOWN.

MS. Harl. 326.

William the Conqueror’s fleet in the eleventh century is estimated at anything between six hundred and ninety-six vessels and three thousand; a manuscript in the Bodleian Library gives the number as one thousand. Most of the vessels were small, if the illustrations on the Bayeux tapestry are to be accepted. The type of ship is no doubt represented with a fair amount of accuracy, but in certain other respects the efforts of the weavers of the tapestry are only less grotesque than the so-called ships which appear on some of the medals of the ports, but which nevertheless have been accepted as correct representations of the ships of the times, whereas they should be regarded as indicating approximately the type of vessel then in vogue. With the exception that a few ships were built of rather greater dimensions—the largest in the invading fleet can hardly have been more than 80 tons burthen—shipbuilding shows but little development on the Atlantic coast until after the introduction of artillery.

WARSHIPS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

(After Harleian MS.—1319. fol. 18.)

A battle between a Cinque Ports fleet under Hubert de Burgh and a French fleet under Eustace is chiefly remarkable by reason of the English manœuvring to secure the windward position, this being the first occasion on which this manœuvre is recorded, and the attack on the French rear ended in a signal English victory. The fame of the English archers was great, and they added to their laurels by playing no small part in the battle. From their positions in the tops and on the forecastles they kept up a steady flight of arrows upon the French. The arrows carried flasks of unslaked lime which broke on striking the French ships, and the lime dust, borne on the wind, entered the eyes of the enemy and blinded them, the defeat of the French following. The ships of that period were provided with platforms, elevated on wooden pillars, at the bow and stern. The erections were the forerunners of the immense structures which were added in later years and did so much to render ships unstable.

A Venetian ship constructed for Louis IX. of France in 1298, and named the Roccafortis, was 70 feet long on the keel and 110 feet over all, with a width at prow and poop of 40 feet. She is stated to have had two decks and a fighting castle at each end. Possibly the weight of the bellatorium, as the castle was called, may have necessitated such an extraordinary beam near the bows and stern, but she could never have been built with such dimensions to be other than a floating fortress.

In the Mediterranean, however, great activity prevailed. The Crusades gave a tremendous impetus to the shipping of the Middle Sea. Christians and Saracens vied with each other in the production of ships of war. The larger “busses” sent to the Levant in the fleet of Richard Cœur de Lion carried, according to Richard of Devizes, a captain and fifteen seamen, and forty knights with their horses, forty footmen, fourteen servants, and twelve months’ provision for all. Some vessels are said to have carried double this complement and cargo. A Saracen ship, of which little is known, was encountered off the Syrian coast, of so great a size that it could not be subdued until the Christian galleys charged in line abreast and smashed in her side so that she went down with nearly all of her one thousand five hundred men.

A GALLEY OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA.

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

MEDITERRANEAN GALLEY.

From a Model in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution.

CHAPTER II

WAR CRAFT OF THE FAR WEST, CENTRAL AFRICA, THE FAR SOUTH,
THE PACIFIC, AND THE FAR EAST

Notwithstanding the enormous strides made in ship construction, it is still possible to find in active use vessels but little removed from the earliest types known. It is, of course, in the “Mysterious East,” where anything that served its purpose very well centuries ago seems to have been expected to retain its efficiency for ever, that one finds those survivals from bygone ages. The earliest vessels known were hollowed logs, or dug-outs; such are in use still. Planks were stitched or lashed on above the bulwarks to raise the freeboard and keep out the sea; the same contrivance is applied to this day. A few strips of bamboo or other light material tied together formed rafts; their exact counterparts are in existence in many parts of the world. It was found possible to sail them by means of a sail of matting attached to a yard which was supported by a stout mast destitute of stays or standing rigging; a centre-board or drop keel which could be lowered through the middle of the raft into the water prevented leeway, and steering was effected by means of a pole with a blade attached, usually tied on, this long paddle being sometimes used near the middle of the after end of the raft and sometimes at either of the after corners, the necessary leverage being obtained by the provision of a stump for the purpose. The origin of such rafts is lost in antiquity, yet they continue to be found in active service.

The bark canoes which the Indians of North America employed on the great rivers and lakes when white men first went there are unchanged in their method of construction, and though in places where civilisation and the mechanical arts have assumed sway the old canoes have given way to the products of the modern boat-builders’ skill, yet in the farther North-West the Indian canoe ripples the summer surface of the lakes and streams as it did centuries ago. The real Indian canoes were made by building the frame, and then placing upon it a carefully prepared strip of birch bark sufficiently large to cover the entire frame in one piece; it was lashed to the frame and then stitched at the ends to form the bow and stern. The larger canoes were sometimes stiffened by having two or three pieces of wood lashed thwartwise. The canoes were propelled by means of paddles, and the Indians sat or knelt on the bottom of the boat. Many of these canoes weighed as little as 60 lb. and some even less. Their chief use was in the migrations of the tribes between their summer and winter quarters, and very picturesque they must have appeared to the early settlers as a flotilla glided past; that is, if an Indian could ever be regarded by an early settler as anything but “pizen.” But these canoes served equally well to convey the painted and feathered braves to battle; and anyone who has seen the Indians in their canoes can well imagine how in days now happily past, it is hoped for ever, a fleet of these boats, filled with cruel and relentless men, passed swiftly and silently over the waters at night, their paddles so skilfully wielded that the blades entered and left the water with never a splash to break the solemn stillness. Then the Indian canoe was no longer an emblem of joyous happiness, made only for the sparkling waters and clear nights and days of that foretaste of Paradise, the Indian summer, fit craft for the romantic passing of Hiawatha to “the kingdom of Ponemah”; but an evil thing, as swift and silent and terrible as the bloodthirsty men it bore to victory or destruction.

WAR CANOES OF INDIANS OF THE NORTH-WEST.

From a Photograph of a Painting, supplied by the Curator of the Chicago Museum.

The skin canoe or kayak of the Eskimo holds only one person, though its length may be anything from 7 or 8 feet to 25 feet. It is simply a light frame, running to a fine point at either end, never more than a few inches in depth, and with a breadth determined by the breadth of the man who is to use it. It is entirely skin-covered, except for a small hole in the deck, just abaft of amidships, in which the solitary occupant sits. The Eskimo are very clever in the management of their light craft—it weighs but a few pounds, and for its size is probably the lightest sea-going vessel in the world—and employ it chiefly in hunting, even at some distance from land.

The bark canoes of the Australian blacks were very primitive affairs; they have almost disappeared, sharing the fate of the rapidly dwindling aborigines. It may be doubted if a trace of one of these canoes could now be found from one end of the Murray River to the other. Since the blacks saw how easily the white man knocked together a few planks and made a flat-bottomed, straight-sided boat, they ceased to labour at bark canoes, but instead obtained a few boards, usually by pilfering, “borrowed” or begged a few nails, and with a stone for a hammer have done likewise, patching the very leaky seams with anything that came handy, were it scrap of tin, leather, raw hide, or well-greased fragment of a dirty, torn, old blanket, and making up for deficiencies by incessant bailing. Never again on the southern Australian rivers will the bark canoe convey the braves to the scene of the tribal conflict, or ferry in the dying glow of the setting sun the skeleton-painted men to the edge of the grim, dark forest on the other shore to attend a great corroboree, whether of war, rejoicing, or grief.

Nor have the African negroes made much progress beyond the dug-out stage of war canoe construction. The Moors and Arabs long since proved themselves excellent seamen and shipbuilders, designing boats suitable to their needs, and are in quite another category. The negroes of the Cross River district in Southern Nigeria may be taken as typical of the African canoe makers. They usually chose a mahogany or awosa tree, and, having felled it, burnt it hollow where it fell. It was then dragged on rollers to the waterside and finished with whatever tools were available, matchets, knives and axes being used since the white man’s introduction of those implements. Occasionally a canoe is “smoked” or hardened by being exposed to the hot smoke of a fire built round it. Some of the war canoes are as much as 60 feet in length, and are wide enough to allow the men to sit two abreast. The larger ones have a steering platform on a level with the gunwale or raised a foot or two above it, and a smaller platform is placed at the bow, where a flagstaff may also be fixed. When there are no thwarts or seats the crew sit on the bottom of the canoe or on the gunwale, according to the size of the vessel. Both bow and stern overhang. The paddles are made of hardwood in one piece, 3 to 4 feet in length, and are pointed.

It is to the East Indies and the Pacific that we must turn to find the most wonderful examples of the war canoe. They may be divided into two classes: those with outriggers—this section including double canoes—and those without.

A “DUG-OUT” CANOE OF NEW GUINEA.

NEW GUINEA CANOES WITH OUTRIGGERS.

From Photographs supplied by the Hon. J. E. Jenkins.

Many of the canoes lacked stability, even in calm waters, and the risk of capsizing was greater in waters liable to sudden storms or exposed to the ocean swell. To meet this difficulty and at the same time permit of the continued use of the shallow harbours of their coasts, the Malays are supposed to have invented the outrigger, and this conjecture is based on the fact that wherever the Malay influence is traceable there some form of the outrigger or double canoe is to be found also.

The primitive hollowed log generally constitutes the hull of the canoes of the Pacific Islanders. The rest is mainly a matter of ornamentation. With but few exceptions, the islanders seem to have believed that the higher and more imposing and ornamental they could make the stems or sterns of their vessels, the more dreadful in war were they likely to be. Many of these elevations are beautifully carved; other canoes are merely grotesque, and not a few have no artistic feature whatever to redeem them from absolute hideousness. As a means of terrifying an enemy by presenting such things to his astonished gaze they would doubtless be effective, had it not been that the enemy would retaliate by presenting something equally ugly, with the result that the moral effect which each party sought to exercise upon the other would be neutralised. Some of the islanders are said to have decorated the prows of their vessels with the skulls of opponents killed in previous expeditions; while others contented themselves with locks of human hair, similarly derived, as naval adornments. With the exception of bows, arrows and spears, all their weapons were designed for fighting at close quarters. It must have been a labour of love, as well as a feeling of pride in the appearance of the fearfully shaped and murderous clubs, which led them to carve their weapons as carefully as they did, to render them so deadly, and to adorn them with mother-of-pearl and sharks’ teeth. Not a few of the paddles were given serrated edges in order that they could be the more effectively employed as war clubs if necessary.

There are not many native war canoes now left in the South Seas. None of the islanders, except the head-hunters, habitually kept canoes for war purposes, though at times one would be designed and built for some special expedition. The last of the great Samoan war canoes has almost rotted to pieces on the shore. It is doubtful if it has ever been used in a warlike expedition. It was between 60 and 70 feet in length, and 18 to 20 feet beam over all. It consisted of two large single canoes, placed parallel a few feet apart, and joined by a plank deck which ran across the greater part of the vessels. Amidships was a house-like erection, used as a shelter. It was propelled by oars, but also carried a mast and sails. It could easily carry a hundred men.

The great canoe to hold three hundred men is but a memory; all that is left of it is its steering paddle, 40 feet in length, which adorns the wall in the Ethnographical section of the British Museum.

STEM-PIECE, MAORI WAR CANOE.

STERN-POSTS OF MAORI WAR CANOES.

From Examples in the Dominion Museum, Wellington, New Zealand.

A MAORI WAR CANOE.

From Angas’s “New Zealand.”

The canoes of that mysterious people, the Maori of New Zealand, well repay attention in greater detail than is possible in this book. The origin of the people themselves is unknown, though, if their traditions are to be accepted, they migrated a few hundred years ago from certain of the islands in the Central Pacific, partly conquered and partly absorbed the people whom they found there already, and have remained ever since. There has been more than one such expedition. There are affinities between the Maori and the Hawaians. Did the Maori come originally from Hawaii, or is there some connection between them and the ancient Egyptians, as is held to be indicated by certain points of resemblance in their carvings and mural decorations? In what sort of canoes did they cross the ocean, and how did they find their way? Unfortunately, the old chiefs who held the traditions have all died, and it is only owing to the painstaking researches of a few scholars who recognised the need and value of preserving what could still be learnt, that anything at all is known of the history of this strange people. Their legends tell us that some of their canoes were of great size; some could carry fires or places for cooking the food, and others were double canoes. One of the latter is said to have had a platform connecting the two hulls, and bearing a house; it was a three-masted vessel. All the New Zealand canoes had names of symbolical or historical interest. One of them was called Marutuahi, which, translated literally, means a slaying or devouring fire.[8] The dimensions of the historical or legendary canoes are not known. The straight, tall kauri pines of the North Island enabled large canoes to be built; one is said to have been 110 feet in length, and many of the later canoes were 60 to 80 feet long, and held a hundred to a hundred and fifty men. These boats had long, overhanging bows ornamented with a figurehead and two carved boards extending some little distance along either bow. Between these boards and resting on the stem the carved figurehead was placed and was often adorned with tufts of feathers. A mast set rather far forward and raking aft supported a triangular mat sail, the foot of which extended along the boom one and a half times to twice the length of its height, and enabled the canoe to sail very near the wind. The stays of the mast and the sheets of the sail were of plaited flax. The drawbacks to these canoes were that having no keels they made great leeway, and that their length made them awkward to manage whenever they were caught in anything like a rough sea; they could not meet the seas end on, but lay in the trough of the waves, and were so well handled that disasters were few. In rough weather they were covered with flax mats over a portion of their length to prevent the seas breaking inboard.

The long pine hull was of great strength, but to render it more seaworthy topsides were lashed along the sides of the hull from end to end of the vessel with braids of flax fibres,[9] and the seams and holes were caulked with a species of down. As a precaution against leakage and to strengthen the joint, a long, thin batten was lashed over the outside of the joint.

The decorations of the Maori canoes are wonderful. The spiral pattern often seen in their carvings is taken from the unfolding of the frond of a fern, and has been supposed to symbolise the unfolding of life or the attainment of a planned enterprise. The greatest care and the most artistic efforts were lavished upon the carvings of the prow and stern boards. These boards were very large and always removable. The log from which the stern-board was fashioned was generally about 15 inches in diameter and 6 to 15 feet in length, and in its complete state was covered with conventional and elaborate patterns. The figurehead log was about 6 feet in length and 4 feet wide, and 2 to 4 feet in thickness. Both were of hardwood and coloured red with kokowai or ochre. If the figureheads represented the dead chiefs who had joined the immortals in the Maori heaven, they must have lost in the other world what little beauty was left to them in this world after being tattooed. Not a few of the figures are extraordinarily grotesque, and the weird effect of the red ochre is heightened by the introduction of bright shiny eyes made of the inner shell of the haliotis. Many also show the tattoo marks which were supposed to add to Maori beauty, and most bore bunches of feathers of the kaka and albatross, and on gala days were further adorned with an elaborate and gaudy feather wig. The thin batten, already alluded to, covering the join of the topside and hull, was always stained black. Gannet feathers were inserted to cover the lashings and contrasted vividly with the black batten and the reddened canoe. The sides of many canoes also were painted in wavy lines of red, white and black, as though in imitation of the wave motion. Streamers of pigeon tail feathers hung from the top of the stern-board to the water; even the sail point on the boom bore its tuft and streamers of feathers.

A LAKATOI NEARLY COMPLETED.

A LAKATOI UNDER SAIL.

From Photographs supplied by the Hon. J. E. Jenkins.

The dug-out, as the type common to all the Pacific islands, usually has the outrigger attached; it can only be used in still waters. Very frequently it is duplicated to form a double canoe, or even three may be used abreast and covered, together with the intervening spaces, with a deck upon which a deck house is erected. As the deck extends a considerable distance beyond the sides the amount of deck space thus obtained is very great, as can well be imagined if the hull be formed of three canoes each 50 or 60 feet long, and the deck extends 3 or 4 feet on either side and is nearly square. If canoes with outriggers were employed as double canoes they were placed with the outriggers lashed together.

The accompanying illustrations of a New Guinea boat or “lakatoi” show how these vessels are arranged. They each carry two short pole masts which support immense spars of bamboo or other light material to which sails of palm leaves are attached. These sails are so constructed that they can be hauled up or down their spars as required. They have been described as suggesting when under full sail gigantic lobsters holding up their claws in distress. The houses upon them are formed of rattan and palm leaves. An idea of their dimensions may be formed by comparing in the illustrations the vessels themselves and the men and women upon them.

Not the least amazing features of these boats are that long sea voyages were undertaken in them, and that in spite of their size not a nail was used in their construction, the whole thing being tied firmly together with coco-nut or other fibre.

The Fijian canoe was very similar to that just described. The Tahitian “pahi” is frequently 80 feet in length, of the raft-boat type, and bears a distinct likeness to the “balsa” of Ancient Peru, and has some of the features of the catamarans of the Chatham Islands, and “has a closer likeness still to a Chinese junk, with its high latticed stern work.”[10] These pahi were broad in the beam, neatly planked over inside, and were fitted with a bulkhead or inner casing, and had the usual elevated carved stern, sometimes consisting of one post and sometimes of two. These vessels were capable of covering 120 miles a day without much difficulty if the wind suited. The Pacific Islanders, says the same authority, “in the early days of Polynesian enterprise (about 1400 A.D. and earlier) would make voyages of over a thousand miles at a time, taking the sun as their compass by day and the moon and stars by night, adapting the time of their sailings to the shifting of the Trade wind ... veering from north-east to south-west in its appointed season.”

CANOE FROM SHORTLAND ISLAND.

DIAGRAM OF SHORTLAND ISLAND CANOE.

a, The keel. c, The timbers. d, The small, solid, wedge-shaped timber in bow, with ornament.

By permission of C. M. Woodford, Esq.. F.R.G.S., and the Royal Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland.

WAR CANOE, TESTE ISLAND, NEW GUINEA.

From Photograph supplied by the Hon. J. E. Jenkins.

Unquestionably the most remarkable canoes to be found in the Pacific were those made in the Solomon Islands. Though destitute of metal tools, the islanders yet managed to design them with mathematical accuracy, to construct them to scale and in accordance with the designs, and to put them together with skill and precision. Such canoes were made by the Solomon Islanders as long ago as the sixteenth century, for de Mendaña, who visited the islands in 1568, has left a description of them. The canoes, he says, were constructed of planks, well made and light, and were crescent-shaped and capable of holding about thirty persons. Later explorers have recorded that the hull was formed of a dug-out, and that topsides were added. This type of canoe appears to be peculiar to the Melanesian inhabitants of the British Solomons.[11] For neatness and accuracy the Shortland Island canoes come first, but “for beauty of line and exterior decorations the large tomako or head-hunting canoe of the New Georgia group unquestionably excels.” The built canoes were cut with the aid only of stone implements, but now the natives use the plane iron, fitting it into the handle formerly used for the stone implement. In many canoes a central ridge is left along each plank to strengthen it, and a projecting boss is left at the places where the planks and timbers join. The timbers, or ribs, etc., are either naturally grown or shaped from the solid. The planks are properly seasoned in the building sheds, and when the canoe is being put together the various parts are accurately fitted and tied with strips of fibre through the holes in the bosses. The seams are caulked with a vegetable putty made from scraped nut kernel, which hardens in a few days. The canoes consist of garboard strakes, second, third, fourth, fifth, and gunwale strakes, stem and stern pieces, and the timbers or ribs. The last fine specimen of the head-hunting canoe of the New Georgia group was 44 feet over all, 4 feet 8 inches beam, and 2 feet 4 inches deep. The height of the bow, in addition, was 9 feet 7 inches, and that of the stern 10 feet 9 inches. All the Solomon Islands canoes are ornamented with shells. A white-painted arm on the side of the vessel has a sinister interpretation. It indicates that heads have been taken; if the arm points to the bows the victims were males; and if to the stern the collection taken up was of female heads. Both stem and stern-boards had human faces carved upon them, the idea being that the faces kept a good look-out in every direction. This was, no doubt, a pleasing fiction or a superstition; the natives placed more reliance upon their keenness of hearing and vision than upon the vigilance of the wooden faces to detect the approach of an enemy.

The Malay influence has been shown not only in the building of outrigger canoes, but in the popularity of piracy among the natives of the East Indies. Probably the Malays have been pirates ever since there has been commerce in those waters upon which to prey. It is certain that the earliest European vessels to wander into the distant Orient found the industry established, active, and prosperous. Steam navigation, improved firearms, and the electric telegraph have done much to curb the propensities of these merciless marauders, and the influence of noble men like Rajah Brooke of Sarawak has been of equal value. But they found it a hard lesson to learn that commerce must be respected and commercial vessels let alone; it was gradually accepted as inevitable that piratical exploits would be followed by the visit of a European gunboat which would blow every Malay proa and pirate to pieces at the first opportunity. This idiosyncrasy of the Western world had to be observed, but the pirate does not take kindly to the uninterrupted ways of peace, and whenever he can he indulges in his hereditary calling, though his victims may be only small native trading boats and junks.

HEAD-HUNTING CANOE FROM YSABEL.

By permission of C. M. Woodford, Esq., F.R.G.S., and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

HEAD-HUNTING CANOE FROM YSABEL (DETAIL OF BOW).

By permission of C. M. Woodford, Esq., F.R.G.S., and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

The Malay dug-outs intended for piracy or war were broader than those intended for other purposes. A writer in 1848[12] described them as built of timber in the lower part, with the upper part of rattan, bamboo, and dried palm leaves, this lighter part being added to prevent the sea washing in over the low sides. “Outside the bends,” he continues, “about a foot from the water line, runs a strong gallery in which the rowers sit cross-legged.” Apparently the gallery was on or outside the gunwale, an arrangement which would help to steady the long, narrow hull. Then, as now, a cabin was placed in the after part for the accommodation of the chief in command of the boat, but an interesting feature of the proa he describes was an unrailed flat roof extending from the cabin roof almost the length of the ship and serving a double purpose of providing a fighting deck for the warriors and affording shelter for the crew. The weapons were the kris and spear, which “to be used with effect require elbow room.” As the Malays were energetic fighters, they were seldom long in obtaining all the elbow room necessary. A brass gun in the prow, under the flying deck, was the only firearm.

The modern Malay proa is a more ambitious affair. It is built to be light, fast under sail or oar, and very shallow in hull. The last was very necessary in vessels which usually sought safety by fleeing into waters too shallow to permit of serious pursuit. A convenient length was 64 feet, or 72 feet over all; the breadth would be 14 feet and the depth only 4 feet 6 inches. Some were longer and broader, but the Malays were usually careful to increase the draft as little as possible. The accompanying photograph is of a model of a proa having these dimensions, and recently added to the South Kensington Museum. The boat is a combination of Chinese and Malayan design. It will be noticed that the vessel has very fine lines forward, almost identical with those of the Arab dhows of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, a sharp run aft and shallow floors, and should be very fast. Instead of the fighting deck overhead, already described, she has a deck extending the whole length and breadth of the vessel and slightly below the level of the gunwale, an arrangement which would enable a large number of men to lie concealed behind the bulwarks and ready for instant attack. The deck has two covered hatchways. The roof of the cabin at the stern provides a platform for working the rudder and the guns, there being one brass muzzle-loader on each quarter. The projecting platforms or galleries at the bow and stern provide additional deck space and would facilitate the boarding of a prize. The boat has two pole masts, one set very far forward and the other rather forward of amidships, neither having stays. The sails of all vessels of this class were made of strips of palm leaves, except when the pirates appropriated the sails of captured ships, as they are said to have done at times, and altered them to suit their own vessels. The Chinese type of dropping rudder, which could be raised or lowered by means of a windlass, was a common feature in these Malay proas, the use of the steering paddle being chiefly confined to the smaller craft. The vessel represented is armed with one smoothbore gun carried on the bow platform, and two similar weapons carried aft; she also had six gingals or heavy muskets mounted on swivels, and there was a plentiful supply of arms for hand-to-hand fighting.

A very similar boat to the proa, but more heavily and substantially constructed, was that specially favoured by the Dyaks in their head-hunting expeditions. It was long and narrow, and could carry sixty to eighty men. The Borneo Dyaks adopted the flying deck as a fighting platform,[13] but carried the fantastically decorated stern-board to an extravagant height, which must have interfered seriously with the stability of the vessel. These stern-boards are said to have been intended as shields for the occupants of the boats, who turned them end-on to the enemy and were protected by the boards from the hostile arrows and spears.

THE FAMOUS OLD CHINESE JUNK, “WHANG HO.”

Photograph supplied by “Shipping Illustrated.”

MALAY PIRATE PROA.

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum. By permission of R. Walters, Esq., Ware Priory, Herts.

The Chinese seem to have attained to a certain degree of civilisation many centuries ago, and then to have gone to sleep. The dwellers along her coasts were traders and, when opportunity offered, pirates, but as China maintained a policy of splendid isolation both under her old dynasties and after her Manchu conquerors assumed control of her destinies, she had little need of a navy and no interest to serve in encouraging a fighting marine. China used guns in land warfare as early as the eighth century A.D., yet in the eighteenth century she had war junks carrying, not artillery, but soldiers armed with bows and arrows, while the sides of the vessels bore leather shields painted to look like tiger heads, to scare the enemy. Some of her junks were propelled by means of a couple of paddle wheels on each side worked by manual power. The Chinese war junks differed from the trading junks in the greater strength of their construction and in the number of guns carried. Some had guns approximating to 68-pounders, and it was not unusual to find a junk with twenty-one guns of varying dimensions. Each was the same cumbersome, slow-moving craft. These vessels were sometimes over 1,000 tons burthen. One of these junks, the Key-ing, which visited London in 1848, sailed across the Atlantic from Boston to St. Aubin’s Bay in the remarkably good time of twenty-one days, a performance comparing favourably with that of many of the western sailing ships; generally she sailed “like the wind,” that is to say, “where it listeth,” and was as likely to arrive at one port as another. Another famous junk in her time was the Whang-Ho, but whether the junk of that name which started on an exhibition tour of the world two or three years ago was the original or was a copy, as is alleged, is a point which is in dispute. She left San Francisco for New York and London, intending to make the voyage by way of Cape Horn, and soon showed that her intended port was about the last place where she might be expected. Instead of New York, she fetched up at Tahiti, where the crew went ashore and stayed. She sailed with a new crew for the stormy waters of Cape Horn, and was thought to have gone to the bottom until she turned up in Torres Straits, and nearly got into trouble through being suspected of smuggling, or carrying contraband. After being nearly wrecked off Java, she entered Batavia River, and sailed again some weeks later, but her condition became so bad that she had to be abandoned. Her captain wrote in his log-book, in October, 1909: “She will not hold together much longer.... The beams are not fastened to the hull of the vessel, but lie loose in her.... It is certain she has never been a man-of-war, but has been specially built for exhibition purposes in the most careless fashion.” A few days later she was left to her fate.

JAPANESE WAR GALLEYS AND A PROTECTED GALLEY ‘KIKKOSEN,’
15th CENTURY.

Photograph by special permission of the Japanese Imperial Naval Commissioners.

(click image to enlarge)

THE “ATAKA MARU.”

Photograph by special permission of the Japanese Imperial Naval Commissioners.

The Japanese, who pursued a policy of isolation until they were forced to admit Western influences, were as conservative in their shipping as in everything else. Their trading junks were all built to pattern, externally and internally, decreed by the authorities, and no deviation from it was permitted. In their warships, however, a greater variety of design was allowed. As early as the fifteenth century they had sea-going ships carrying cannon, a weapon derived at some time, perhaps, in the unrevealed past, from the Chinese after the latter conferred upon the Japanese the Chinese system of writing, a religious system, and other evidences of Celestial superiority. There were several types of these war galleys, some of which are here illustrated. The vessels shown were generally very strongly built with a displacement of about 200 tons. They were propelled by over one hundred and fifty oars, and their gun positions had bulwarks about 4 feet high, protected by thick wooden shields. A smaller type of vessel, also in use at that time, may be called a protected galley. They were very small vessels, displacing only about 25 tons each. They were nearly flat-bottomed, but had a top covering, or hood, made of metal sheets, which extended from side to side and almost from end to end, like a turtle back. Their guns were mounted inside the cover and fired through small ports cut through the sides of the vessel itself. These boats were two-ended; that is, of similar shape at either end, so that they could travel either end foremost, and they had a curious tunnel constructed along their bottoms in which a peculiarly shaped paddle-wheel was revolved by manual power for the propulsion of each vessel. The Japanese warships increased in size and ornamentation until the Ataka Maru was built. She is of more than ordinary interest, as she was the last and the largest of the old native warships built for the Japanese Government before the adoption of Western methods. She was 180 feet long by 63 feet beam and 22 feet depth, and was propelled by one hundred and thirty oars. Her armament consisted of five heavy guns and a number of smaller weapons, and her vital parts were protected by copper sheathing. The Japanese, as already stated, probably obtained their knowledge of explosives and firearms from the Chinese, and a few years ago repaid the obligation by giving the Chinese most instructive lessons in the superiority of modern methods and weapons.

One of the oldest vessels, and at the same time one possessing characteristics supposed to be essentially modern, is the Arab dhow. It is as old as the days of Alexander the Great in its chief features, and in the fineness of the lines of its hull, its seaworthiness, and its general handiness is not unlike the Viking ships, and is equal to anything of similar size that the average modern builder could produce with the same materials. They are employed in gun-running, smuggling, and the slave trade, when, more legitimate cargoes are lacking or not sufficiently remunerative.

The Siamese were among the Eastern nations who took kindly to the sea, and were able to use their warships to some effect. Thus, about two hundred and fifty years ago, when a European power, depending upon its superior strength, took forcible possession of the island of Junk Seylon, the King of Siam of that day ordered the “immediate building of six warships, each carrying ten guns with pattaroes, and well manned and fitted with small arms.” These vessels were built in one month, and this emergency mobilisation and the fighting orders were all to be obeyed under penalty of death and forfeiting of estates, the latter penalty being added no doubt to prevent the expectant heirs of a warrior depriving his majesty of the latter’s services.

CHAPTER III

THE INTRODUCTION OF ARTILLERY, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
WARSHIPS TO THE APPLICATION OF STEAM FOR NAVIGATION

Sails having proved their superiority over oars as a means of propulsion, and sailing ships with seaworthy qualities being fairly numerous, the world was ready for a great revolution in naval warfare. The warriors also were about equally divided in the matter of attack and defence in hand-to-hand encounter. When man first became dissatisfied with his own strength for hurling weapons at his foes he set to work to devise a means of overcoming this difficulty. His earliest weapon for this purpose was most likely the sling. Bows and arrows held their own in land and sea warfare for many centuries. Various forms of catapults were introduced by the Romans and others, and remained in use for some hundreds of years for hurling heavy stones into the partly decked ships of their opponents to sink them. The mysterious liquid known as Greek fire, the use of which has already been explained, was, in the method of its employment, a form of artillery. It was to the naval warfare of those days what the explosive shell is to modern warfare.

The Moors are credited with having introduced firearms into Western Europe at the siege of Saragossa in 1118 A.D., when they had artillery of some sort; and they are stated to have used the agency of fire to throw stones and darts in their defence of Niebla at a later date. The nature and origin of the firearms and fire machine have not been ascertained definitely. Did the Moors derive their knowledge from the East? They had Eastern connections. Mortars were used in China in the eighth century, which fired large stone balls, and by the twelfth century the Chinese had “wall pieces” or siege guns. They employed explosives in war before the Christian era. These events were certainly long before Western Europe discovered how to make gunpowder.

Cannon, as the term is now understood, was introduced about 1330. Edward III. is credited with having possessed cannon in 1338, but historians differ as to whether he employed cannon of any kind at the battle of Sluys, in 1340, or in any of his later naval engagements. Arrows and stones were the chief missiles; the English relied on their famous cross-bows, and the French upon machines for hurling stones. The latter sent several English ships to the bottom.

The battle of La Rochelle, in 1372, when a combined Spanish and French force defeated the English, is probably the first naval battle in which cannon were used, as some of the Spanish vessels are said to have carried a few. Artillery was certainly used at sea shortly after the middle of the fourteenth century by the Mediterranean countries. The Venetians found it effective against the Genoese in 1377, and its use became very rapidly general from the Levant to Spain.

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SHIPS.

From an Old Print.

The earliest guns were simply tubes, not cast, but built of strips of iron or wood held together by rings. They were breech-loaders, the charge being placed in a loosely-fitting chamber. How the chamber was secured and the gun fired are still undecided. The guns were usually innocent of trunnions and were fastened lengthwise upon wooden beams which could be propped up to give them the desired elevation. It has been recorded that in one of the earliest siege operations at which this primitive artillery was employed, both sides were so interested in the operation of firing that they ceased exchanging missiles and defiance, and even stopped their personal combats, until after the discharge, when, being much relieved that the stone bullet had inflicted no damage on the assailed castle wall and had wounded no one, they resumed hostilities in the old-fashioned way. In those days one discharge per gun per diem was regarded as sufficient. It was customary to load the piece overnight and fire it in the morning, from which it may be surmised that its moral effects were greater than the material destruction caused. Artillery would have to be in a more advanced stage to justify its use at sea, for no vessels could afford to carry guns which could only be used so infrequently. Nevertheless, the moral effects of gunfire were so evident, especially when weapons were made more powerful and able to inflict serious material damage, that the adoption of the new arm for naval war could not be long delayed, and the time soon arrived when both national and private vessels of any size carried one gun or more. By the middle of the fifteenth century guns on board ship had become common.

The illustration of the model[14] of a ship of the period 1486-1520 gives a very good idea of what the warships of that time were like. Although the vessel carried guns, the bow and arrow were still relied upon. The archer’s panier on the mast had given place to the deep circular top. Castles, however, were provided fore and aft for the archers, and were useful alike for affording them protection and accommodation and a place of vantage whence to discharge their arrows. The vessel is of the same type as the Spanish caravel of the early sixteenth century. From this it may be inferred that the Spaniards went to the north for the designs of their hulls, but preferred to retain the rig with which they were most familiar, the Spaniards depending largely on lateen yards and sails, whereas the model is square-rigged but without the top-sails she ought to carry.

A feature of the sea-going Atlantic vessels of this time was their great beam in proportion to their length. They also had an extraordinary amount of “tumble home,” or sloping of the sides above the water line towards each other. Ships of the type represented by the model were much in advance of those upon which artillery was first carried.

Galleys were the first to be equipped with guns, the weapons being upon the upper deck and fired above the bulwarks. Some galleys, particularly in the Mediterranean, carried only one gun forward, a bow chaser. The desire to carry more guns and to fire them over the sides led to the raising of the sides of the vessel; and in order to avoid the strain to the ship’s structure when the guns were fired, the weak point apparently being the connection between the sides and beams, the sides were given an inclination inboard, or tumble home, the connecting beams being thus shortened. The practice was carried to such an absurd extent that the beam of a Venetian galleon—as such vessels now began to be called—at the deck might be only half that of the vessel at the water line. The narrower deck space left less room on which to place the stern castle, which instead of being an addition became a structural part of the ship, provided with three and sometimes four decks, all carrying cannon.

A MEDITERRANEAN WAR GALLEY.

From an Old Print.

SHIP OF WAR, 1486-1520.

From a Model in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution.

On the Atlantic coasts the problem of cannon was solved in its own way. Guns were placed broadside and fired over the bulwark. But the disadvantages of this method were so obvious, especially when an enemy returned the fire, that portholes in the bulwarks were devised through which the guns could be discharged. A French shipbuilder at Brest, named Decharges, is said to have been the inventor of portholes, and also to have designed some other improvements. His portholes, however, were so small that the muzzles of the guns could only just protrude. It was impossible to give them any traverse, that is, to train or aim them.

The general adoption of artillery led to numerous modifications in the shape of the ships; they were built of greater dimensions, were more fully masted and rigged, and could show a considerable press of sail. It was also considered advisable that ships should be built especially for war purposes, the French taking the lead after the battle of La Rochelle.

If Henry V.’s warlike enterprises proved harmful to the development of English commerce, there is no denying that shipbuilding made some progress in his reign, though very little is known of the details of the construction of the vessels. From lists of the ships employed in his expeditions, it appears that his fleets included “Great Ships,” the largest of which was the Jesus of 1,000 tons, the others being the Holigost, 760 tons; Trinity Royal, 540 tons, and Christopher Spayne, 600 tons; there were also “cogs,” which were rather smaller; carracks, which were probably foreign built and were prizes of war, the construction of these vessels not having been then begun in England; ships, barges, and ballingers, the last being barges. The last three classes were no doubt impressed merchant vessels, ranging from 500 tons in the case of the ships to 80 tons in the ballingers. In regard to the “Great Ships,” it is reported[15] that Henry, observing the superiority of the Castilian and Genoese ships, caused some very large vessels, called “dromons,” to be built at Southampton, “such as were never seen in the world before,” says an old writer erroneously, “three of which had the names of the Trinity, Grace de Dieu, and Holy Ghost.” Although called dromons it does not follow that they were similar to the dromons in earlier or contemporary use in the eastern Mediterranean. The name was given to the latter because of their size and speed, and it is very likely that Henry V.’s vessels were so named for similar reasons. Long galleys, called ramberges, were also used about this time, and the English are said to have become very expert in their management.

Most of the large English armed ships of the middle of the fifteenth century were Spanish or Genoese built. A ship was then in existence carrying four guns on the broadside, fired apparently through ports in the bulwarks. She was fitted with four masts and a bowsprit, and had a high forecastle similar to that provided in Italian ships of that period, but seemingly more a part of the structure of the ship than was that of the latter. The mainsail bears the arms of the Earl of Warwick.[16]

A remarkable ship in the history of naval building was the Great Harry, sometimes confounded with the Henry Grace de Dieu. The Great Harry was commenced for Henry VII., and is regarded by many as the first ship of the British Royal Navy. No doubt the fact that Henry lived for many years in Brittany, which was then remarkable for its maritime activity, gave him a greater interest in shipping than most of his predecessors on the throne professed.

It was a proud day for England, had he but known it, when, in the year 1488, he ordered the Great Harry, for she marked the first serious attempt of an English sovereign to render the state not wholly dependent upon the merchants and the ports whenever he decided upon an expedition abroad, by providing a vessel which should be at the disposal of the state whenever required. For the first time in the history of England, for the building of a national ship, the axes swung as the trees were felled, and the blows resounded through the forests; the forges roared for the formation of the iron bolts and nails, and the hammers on the anvils rang as they beat them into shape; the tools of the carpenters hissed as they fashioned the knees and ribs and beams and planks; the looms whereon the sailcloth was woven hummed in the industrial chorus; for this was the first ship of England a nation, the first sign that Britannia was really awaking at last to the fulfilment of her maritime destiny. He did not live to see this vessel completed, and she was finished in Henry VIII.’s reign. Henry VII. also ordered the Regent and the Sovereign. The Great Harry is said to have been the first two-decked vessel built in England, and the only ship with three masts in the whole squadron. She was accidentally burnt at Woolwich in 1553.[17]

The Regent was about 1,000 tons, and carried two hundred and twenty-five small guns, called serpentines. She had four masts and a bowsprit, and was launched at Rotherhithe. She was not of English design, but, like a few before her and many since, was modelled after a French vessel. The Sovereign, a somewhat smaller ship, carried one hundred and forty-one serpentines. The year 1512 saw the end of the Regent. She was the flagship of the English in a notable battle, and was opposed by the great French ship, Marie de la Cordeliere, which was provided at the expense of Anne of Brittany, then Queen of France. This ship is stated to have carried one thousand two hundred fighting men, exclusive of mariners; at this time there were nine hundred on board, according to Derrick, who probably bases his statement on the report that she foundered with all hands numbering nine hundred.

An English description of the engagement states that, “All things being ... in order, the Englishmen approached towards the Frenchmen, which came fiercely forward ... and when they were in sight they shot ordnance so terribly that all the sea coast sounded of it.” One of the English ships “bowged,” or rammed, the Cordeliere, and when at last the Cordeliere was boarded, “a varlet gunner, being desperate, put fire in the gunpowder.”[18] The French writer, Guerin, also quoted by the same authority, in his version, says: “In the midst of this general French attack there was to be noted above all others a large and beautiful carrack, decorated superbly and as daintily as a queen. She of herself had already sunk almost as many hostile vessels as all the rest of the fleet, and now found herself surrounded by twelve of the principal English ships.... From the top of a hostile vessel there was flung into her a mass of fireworks. Then, sighting the Regent, she, like a floating volcano, bore down, a huge incendiary torch, upon her, pitilessly grappled her, and wound her in her own flaming robe. The powder magazine of the Regent blew up, and with it the hostile ship ... while the Cordeliere, satisfied, and still proud amid the disaster, and a whirl of fire and smoke, vanished beneath the waves.” The English version, if less vivid, is also less imaginative.

EMBARKATION OF HENRY VIII. ON THE “GREAT HARRY.”

From the Painting by Volpe at Hampton Court Palace. Photograph by W. M. Spooner & Co.

(click image to enlarge)

To replace the Regent, and to emulate Francis I. of France, who had built a ship called the Caracon (afterwards burnt at Havre), carrying one hundred guns, Henry ordered the Henry Grace de Dieu, of the same tonnage, 1,000 tons, but carrying one hundred and twenty-two guns. It is disputed whether she was built at Erith, as usually stated, or whether she was launched at Deptford and completed at Erith. Her launch took place in 1515. Historians differ as to what became of this vessel. One version is that she rolled incessantly and steered badly, and, having been built rather for magnificence than use, only made one voyage and was disarmed at Bristol and suffered to decay. If this be so, it affords an explanation of the discrepancies in the illustrations of the Henry Grace de Dieu, as it is permissible to suppose that another vessel bearing that name was constructed to take its place and that the newcomer afterwards became known as the Edward. The Henry Grace de Dieu was sometimes called the Great Harry, but must not be confused with Henry VII.’s ship bearing that name. The Henry Grace de Dieu was renamed the Edward after the accession of the next monarch. She had four pole masts; the foremast was placed almost over the stem, an arrangement which must have made her pitch deeply and recover slowly; the mainmast was at the break of the after deckhouse or sterncastle; the mizen or third mast was midway between the mainmast and the stern, and the fourth, or second mizen, was at the extreme stern, as far aft as it was possible to place it. Her forecastle overhung her bows by 12 feet or so, an arrangement which must have made her very uncomfortable in anything like a sea. She is asserted to have been the first four-masted vessel. There was also a fifth mast, if it may so be called, which slanted forward like an immense bowsprit. The first, second, and third masts had two round tops each, and the fourth mast one top, these being for the archers. Her sails and pennants were of damasked cloth of gold. Her armament comprised twenty-one heavy brass guns, and numerous smaller pieces of various types; but when she passed into the possession of Edward VI. she had nineteen brass guns and one hundred and one of iron.

GREAT SHIP OF HENRY VIII.

(From a drawing by Holbein.)

As already stated, the great majority of the ships built for mercantile purposes were intended to be able to give a good account of themselves if they should be assailed by a hostile vessel, a contingency which was not at all unlikely in the days when ships roved the seas under the protection of letters of marque and made “mistakes” as to the nationality of the prize when the prospective booty might be held to justify the error. Before the nations took to building vessels especially for war every merchant was liable to have his traders requisitioned for war purposes, and even up to the end of the nineteenth century the inclusion of armed merchantmen in national forces was not uncommon. Letters of marque were permits granted to ship owners whose vessels had been despoiled by the subjects of another nation to recoup themselves at the cost of any vessels belonging to that nation which they could capture, and to continue to do so until the losses were made good. Naturally they found this profitable, much more so indeed than ordinary trading, and did not hesitate to set a low value upon all captures when casting about to find an excuse for another expedition. Piracy, too, was rife, and as at sea every shipmaster was a law unto himself unless there was someone at hand to enforce a change of views, the shipmaster or merchant turned pirate usually nourished exceedingly until captured red-handed, when his shrift was like to be a short one.

As an instance of the license to which this liberty was extended, may be mentioned the Barton family who, in the fifteenth century, had granted to them letters of marque to prey upon the Portuguese in retaliation for the murder of John Barton, who was captured and beheaded by Portuguese. His sons conducted the enterprise with such thoroughness that they were able to pay their Scottish Royal master so well that they were never interfered with by him, and when he entrusted them with the task of reducing the Flemish pirates who levied toll on Scottish commerce, they sent him a few barrels filled with pickled human heads to show that they were not idle. The fame of this Scottish family became world wide, for they had now a powerful fleet and traded and fought and captured where they would, so that the reputation of the Scottish navy was great. One of the ships of the Barton family, the Lion, was second in size and armament only to the Great Harry itself. The death of Sir Andrew Barton is commemorated in a well-known ballad.

When vessels with two and more decks were constructed, the lower ports were cut so near the water that when the vessel heeled, or even a moderate sea was running, the guns could not be worked. The ports of the Mary Rose, which was the next largest ship to the Regent, at one time, and had a tonnage variously stated at 500 and 660 tons, though afterwards surpassed by the Sovereign, 800 tons, Gabriel Royal, 650 tons, and Katherine Forteless, or Fortileza, were but 16 inches above the water. She was lost, in 1545, through the water entering her lower ports when going about off Spithead, and her commander and six hundred men went down with her; the Great Harry had a narrow escape from a similar disaster at the same time.

A report on the Royal Navy in 1552 makes interesting reading. The fleet was overhauled, and twenty-four “ships and pinnaces are in good case to serve, so that they may be grounded and caulked once a year to keep them tight.” This is endorsed, “To be so ordered, By the King’s Command.” Other seven ships were ordered to be “docked and new dubbed, to search their treenails and iron work.” The Mrs. Grand, a name which no longer adorns the “Navy List,” a vessel carrying a crew of two hundred and fifty men, and having one brass gun and twenty-two iron guns, lying at Deptford, was recommended to be “dry-docked—not thought worthy of new making”; so she was ordered “To lie still, or to take that which is profitable of her for other Ships.” Six others were stated in the report—a document seemingly the work of a naval reform party—to be “not worth keeping,” but they were ordered “To be preserved, as they may with little charge.”

Queen Elizabeth, whose patriotism and naval enthusiasm were about equally in evidence, was careful of her men and ships, raised the pay of her officers and seamen, and took steps generally to have the navy and the naval resources strengthened and conserved. She seems to have had twenty-nine vessels in 1565. She also encouraged merchants to build large vessels, which could be converted into warships as occasion required. The exigencies of trading over sea, however, were such that many of the vessels required little to be done to them in the way of conversion. Vessels were also rated at from 50 to 100 tons more than they measured.

BREECH-LOADING GUN RECOVERED FROM THE
WRECK OF THE “MARY ROSE.”

In the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution. A spare chamber
is shown in the front.

“The Queen’s Highness,” a contemporary historian writes,[19] “hath at this present already made and furnished, to the number of One Hundred and Twenty Great Ships, which lie for the most part in Gillingham Road. Beside these, her Grace hath other in hand also; she hath likewise three notable Galleys, the Speedwell, the Tryeright, and the Black Galley, with the sight whereof, and the rest of the Navy-Royal, it is incredible to say how marvellously her Grace is delighted. I add, to the end that all men should understand somewhat of the great masses of treasure daily employed upon our Navy, how there are few merchant ships of the first and second sort, that being apparelled and made ready to sail, are not worth one thousand pounds, or three thousand ducats at the least, if they should presently be sold. What then shall we think of the Navy-Royal, of which some one vessel is worth two of the other, as the shipwright has often told me.”

Queen Elizabeth had, in 1578, twenty-four ships ranging from the Triumph, of 1,000 tons, built in 1561, to the George, of under 60 tons.

When the Spanish Armada arrived in the Channel in 1588, the British fleet, which numbered one hundred and ninety-seven vessels, included thirty-four belonging to the state. The remainder were ships of various kinds and sizes, mostly small, hired by the state or provided by private owners, and fitted out hastily for war purposes by their owners or the ports. The Cinque Ports, it should be remembered, which furnished a considerable number, were obliged by Henry VIII., in return for certain privileges, to supply him with fifty-seven ships, each containing twenty-one men and a boy, for fifteen days once a year at the ports’ expense, and it often happened that the ports had to find a greater number of vessels. After the fifteen days they received state pay. A similar arrangement held good at the time of the Armada. The largest ships in the English force are sometimes stated to have carried fifty-five or sixty guns, and one may have carried sixty-eight guns. The armament of the Triumph, which was the heaviest armed English vessel, comprised four cannon, three demi-cannon, seventeen culverins, eight demi-culverins, six sakers, and four small pieces. The Elizabeth Jones, of 900 tons, built in 1559, carried fifty-six guns, and the Ark Royal, Lord Howard’s flagship, launched in 1587, had fifty-eight guns and a crew of four hundred and thirty men, her tonnage being 800. The principal royal ships and the number of guns they carried were, as far as can be ascertained accurately: Ark Royal, fifty-five guns; Lion, thirty-eight; Triumph, forty-two; Victory, forty-two; Bonaventure, thirty-four; Dreadnought, thirty-two; Nonpareil, thirty-eight; Rainbow, forty; Vanguard, forty; Mary Rose, thirty-six; Antelope, thirty; and Swiftsure, forty-two. The Spanish ships were rather floating fortresses packed with soldiers, and desiring to come to close quarters so that the fight should be of the hand-to-hand description to which they were accustomed. The English ships were smaller, and though more numerous, of little more than half the total tonnage of the Armada, and were, on the whole, more lightly armed. Still, a large number of the English vessels carried what were long, heavy guns for those days, and they used them at short range when they assumed a windward position and attacked the Spanish rear, inflicting great damage and throwing the enemy into confusion. This defeat definitely established the cannon as the principal weapon for warfare afloat, and inaugurated a new era in the history of the world’s fighting navies.

THE “ARK ROYAL,” THE ENGLISH ADMIRAL’S FLAGSHIP.

From a Contemporary Print.

(click image to enlarge)

Of the merchant ships engaged, the largest were the Leicester, sometimes called the Galleon Leicester, and the Merchant Royal, each of 400 tons. The great galleys and galleasses of the Armada were not the largest ships afloat by a great deal, for they were far exceeded in size by many contemporary merchantmen in the Mediterranean.

The Queen’s ships were sometimes employed upon peaceful and ambassadorial errands. The voyage of the Ascension to Constantinople shows a definite attempt to spread English prestige in distant seas by means of English trade openings, instead of by the diplomacy of the day, a prominent feature of which was the discovery of means and opportunities of raiding a state having much portable riches and not sufficient power to protect them.

The Ascension, in which Queen Elizabeth sent her second present to the Sultan of Turkey, left London in March, 1593, and arrived in August, 1594. She was “a good shippe very well appointed, of two hundred and three score tunnes (whereof was master one William Broadbanke, a provident and skilfull man in his faculties).” Some days after the arrival when the wind suited, “our shippe set out in their best manner with flagges, streamers, and pendants of divers coloured silke, with all the mariners, together with most of the Ambassador’s men, having the winde faire, and came within two cables’ length of this his moskyta,[20] where (hee to his great content beholding the shippe in such bravery) they discharged first volies of small shot, and then all the great ordinance twise over, there being seven and twentie or eight and twentie pieces in the shippe.”[21]

The early part of the seventeenth century, when James I. was king, saw a remarkable advance in shipbuilding, thanks to Phineas Pett, who dropped the somewhat haphazard rule-of-thumb methods of ship construction and introduced a more or less scientific system of measurement and estimate of weights. In 1610, the Prince, or Prince Royal, of 1,400 tons, and mounting sixty-four guns, was launched. She is described as “Double-built,” which has been supposed to mean that she had an outer and inner skin and an additional number of beams, etc. This may afford a partial explanation of the fact that though seven hundred and seventy-five loads of timber were estimated to be necessary for her construction, one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven loads were used. Also, as the ship only lasted fifteen years, a possible further explanation of the discrepancy may be found in the suggestion that much of the timber supplied and included in the larger amount was unfit for use. The Prince Royal was “most sumptuously adorned, within and without, with all manner of curious carving, painting and rich gilding, being in all respects the greatest and goodliest ship that was ever built in England.” In 1624 this ship had two cannon-petro, six demi-cannon, twelve culverins, eighteen demi-culverins, thirteen sakers, and four port-pieces.

THE “SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS.”

From the Model in the Royal Naval College Museum, Greenwich.

THE “PRINCE ROYAL.”

Designed by Phineas Pett.

By permission of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House.

Good sea fighters as the English had proved themselves to be, they yet were behind the Dutch and French as naval architects. Sir Walter Raleigh, an outspoken critic of the King’s ships and of English merchant vessels, comparing the latter with those of the Dutch, nevertheless admitted that some progress had been made in English shipping. “In my own time,” he writes, “the shape of our English ships hath been greatly bettered. It is not long since the striking of the topmast hath been devised. Together with the chain pump, we have lately added the Bonnet and Drabler.... To the courses we have devised studding sails, top-gallant sails, spritsails and topsails. The weighing of anchors by the capstan is also new. We have fallen into consideration of the length of cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds that can blow. We have also raised our second decks.” The last improvement was one of the most important, for the space between the decks was cramped, and the lower deck was not much above the water level. The raising of the decks gave the ships more freeboard and increased their seaworthiness, rendered the lower tier of guns more effective by enabling them to be used with less danger from water entering the ports, and gave the men working the guns on the lower tier more head room.

A list of the ships of King Charles, dated 1633, is of more than usual interest, says Derrick, “this being the earliest list of the Navy I have met with, wherein any part of the ships’ principal dimensions are inserted.... This is the first list in which any nice regard seems to have been paid to the tonnage of the Ships. Previous to 1663, the tonnage of almost every Ship seems to have been rather estimated than calculated, being inserted in even numbers.”

A natural development of the Prince Royal was the Sovereign of the Seas. These two vessels may be regarded as marking the first and second stages in the final period of transition from the old style of warship to the wooden walls. She was a remarkable vessel in national as well as naval history, for she played not a small part in the agitation over the question of ship-money, which had such a tremendous influence on the nation’s development.

“This famous vessel,” Heywood states in his publication addressed to the King, “was built at Woolwich in 1637. She was in length by the keel 128 feet or thereabout, within some few inches; her main breadth 48 feet; in length, from the fore end of the beak-head to the after end of the stern, a prora ad puppim, 232 feet; and in height, from the bottom of her keel to the top of her lanthorn, 76 feet; bore five lanthorns, the biggest of which would hold ten persons upright; had three flush decks, a forecastle, half-deck, quarter deck, and round house. Her lower tier had thirty ports for cannon and demi-cannon, middle tier thirty for culverines and demi-culverines, third tier twenty-six for other ordnance, forecastle twelve, and two half-decks have thirteen or fourteen ports more within board, for murdering pieces, besides ten pieces of chace-ordnance forward and ten right aft, and many loop-holes in the cabin for musquet-shot. She had eleven anchors, one of 4,400 pounds weight. She was of the burthen of 1,637 tons.... She hath two galleries besides, and all of most curious carved work, and all the sides of the ship carved with trophies of artillery and types of honour, as well belonging to sea as land, with symbols appertaining to navigation; also their two sacred majesties’ badges of honour; arms with several angels holding their letters in compartments, all which works are gilded over and no other colour but gold or black. One tree, or oak, made four of the principal beams, which was 44 feet, of strong serviceable timber, in length, 3 feet diameter at the top and 10 feet at the stub or bottom.

“Upon the stem head a Cupid, or Child bridling a Lion; upon the bulkhead, right forward, stand six statues, in sundry postures; these figures represent Concilium, Cura, Conamen, Vis, Virtus, Victoria. Upon the hamers of the water are four figures, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Eolus; on the stern, Victory, in the midst of a frontispiece; upon the beak-head sitteth King Edgar on horseback, trampling on seven kings.”

The Sovereign of the Seas was the largest vessel yet built in England, and though she was intended as much for show as use, she became, when she was reduced a deck and a lot of this ornamental flummery was removed, one of the best fighting ships in the navy, and was in nearly all the chief engagements in the war with Holland, and proved herself a very serious opponent, as the navy records show.

It was about this time that ships were first rated or classified according to their size and efficiency as fighting units. About this time also, a new type of vessel, the frigate, was introduced into the navy. The frigate is not a British invention, but, so far as this country is concerned, was copied from the French by Peter Pett, son of Phineas Pett, who saw one in the Thames. He built, in 1649, the Constant Warwick to the order of the Earl of Warwick, who intended her for a privateer, but sold her.

According to Pepys, the Dutch and French, in 1663 and 1664, built two-decked ships with sixty to seventy guns, and lower decks four feet above the water. The English frigates were narrower and sharper, and their lower gun ports were little more than three feet above the sea. It was therefore decided that the English ships should have their gun ports about four and a half feet from the water. The French and Dutch three-deckers were usually about 44 feet in the beam, as compared with the 41 feet of some of the English third rates, and the Henry, built in 1656, and the Katherine, in 1674, to mention only two of many, were useless until they were girdled, and after 1673 the three-decked second raters were ordered to be 45 feet in the beam.

In the seventeenth century the Royal Louis was built at Toulon, carrying 48-pounders on its lower deck, 24-pounders on the middle deck, and 12-pounders on the upper deck. The French, indeed, were taking the lead in naval construction at this period, and their superiority was recognised by the English who captured and imitated them whenever possible. Thus the Leviathan, built at Chatham, was a copy of the Courageux of seventy-four guns, and the Invincible, captured by Lord Anson during the Seven Years War, served as model for many more.

During a French visit to Spithead in 1673, the Superbe, seventy-four guns, attracted special attention. She was 40 feet broad and had her lowest tier of guns higher from the water than the English frigates. Accordingly the Harwich was built by Sir Henry Deane as a copy, and gave such satisfaction that she was adopted as a pattern for second and third rates. Besides the six rates of fighting ships, other classes were included in the navy list, these being, in Charles II.’s reign, thirteen sloops, one dogger, three fireships, one galley, two ketches, five smacks, fourteen yachts, four hoys, and eight hulks.

The dimensions determined upon in 1677 for ships of one hundred, ninety and seventy guns were sometimes exceeded; and in 1691 another set of dimensions, for ships of sixty and eighty guns, was established. In the following year an appropriation for “bomb vessels” was sanctioned; and about 1694, a revival of the fireships was tried. These vessels were called internals, possibly on account of their contents, which included “loaded pistols, carcasses (filled with grenadoes), chain shot, etc., and all manner of combustibles.” Their revival, or invention in this form, is attributed to an engineer named Meesters, who directed the operations against Dunkirk, without achieving any success with them.

LINE OF BATTLESHIP, 1650.

From a Model in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution.

Prior to the battle of La Hogue, in 1692, five advice boats appear in the navy list for the first time; they carried from forty to fifty men each and were deputed to acquire information of the enemy’s movements at Brest.

Complaints were made in 1744-5 that the British vessels compared unfavourably with those of other nations in scantlings, seaworthiness, and armament. This induced the adoption of another set of rules, and the ships built according to them proved to be good sea boats, carrying their guns well, and standing up stiffly under sail, but they had the objection of being too full in the after part of their under body, which retarded their speed somewhat. After ten years’ trial this establishment was modified, the faults complained of were remedied, and the ships were increased in size, and from this time onward fifty-gun ships were seldom classed as ships of the line of battle. There has been some misconception in regard to the frigates of the period, as many small vessels carrying eighteen guns, or less, were so called, but were afterwards included among the sloops.

The real frigate was a vessel constructed to cruise in all weathers, and able to show a good turn of speed; she had an armament which was fairly heavy for her size, and it was carried on one deck, with the exception of a few guns which might be disposed about the poop or forecastle. For over two hundred years vessels of this type were held in the highest esteem, until, indeed, they were superseded, in common with all other sailing warships, when steam was adopted. The career of the steam frigate was brought to an early close by the adoption of the ironclad.

The frigate itself underwent considerable development during its two centuries’ career. The earlier frigates carried twenty-four or twenty-eight 9-pounders, and a crew of about one hundred and sixty men; these vessels were about 500 tons burthen, or a little more, with a gundeck length of 113 feet and a length of 93 feet on the keel. Their rig marked a curious transition stage from the Mediterranean influence to that of the modern square rig, as, although they carried square sails on the fore and main masts, lateens were still carried on the mizen. The frigate of thirty-two 12-pounders appeared shortly afterwards, the first of this size being the Adventure, launched in 1741; and six years later the Pallas and Brilliant, thirty-six-gun frigates, were added to the navy; but, while admittedly excellent fighting cruisers, they were inferior to the French thirty-six-gun frigates built about that time.[22] The frigates played a most important part in the world’s naval history of the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth century.

THE “DREADNOUGHT,” 1748.

From a Model in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution.

THE “JUNO,” 1757.

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Tougher antagonists than the French frigates, however, were the seven frigates the Americans built when matters became strained between the United States and this country; they were the United States, Constitution, President, Constellation, Congress, Chesapeake, and Essex. The first-named was the largest, with a tonnage of 1,576, and the smallest the Essex, 860 tons. The American navy consisted only of about a dozen vessels altogether on which reliance could be placed, but these were among the best of their kind afloat; there were a few others of little or no fighting value. The frigates carried batteries of carronades supplemented by long guns, 12-pounders. It was the custom to give the American ships more guns than they rated. Thus the forty-four-gun frigate had thirty long 24-pounders on the main deck, two long bow chasers on the forecastle, and twenty or twenty-two 32-pounder carronades, as in the Constitution, while the carronades of the President and United States were 42-pounders. The armament of the Constellation, Congress, and Chesapeake was twenty-eight long 18-pounders on the main deck, two similar guns on the forecastle, and eighteen 32-pounder carronades. The “ship-sloops,” of which the greater part of the rest of the American naval force consisted, carried 32-pounder carronades, and long 12-pounders for bow chasers. The “brig-sloops” were equipped with carronades. The Americans claim to have been the first to employ the heavy frigate effectively, notwithstanding that the cannon balls their guns fired were of less weight in some instances than the projectiles discharged from the corresponding weapons in the British or French navies, and the shot would also appear to have been really lighter than they were supposed to be by as much as two to ten per cent. These frigates were remarkable for the series of duels they fought with British warships, winning six in succession, by superior seamanship and better sailing qualities, to some extent, but mostly by superior gunnery, until the final duel was won by the Shannon in her memorable encounter with the Chesapeake. The series of American victories was inaugurated by the Constitution, otherwise “Old Ironsides,” the British victim being the Guerrière.