The British Navy Book Part 9

Again, off Calais, the French amba.s.sador was made to render the proper salute to our admiral of the Narrow Seas, who gave orders to Sir Jerome Turner, his second in command, to "shoot and strike him", should he refuse to do so. In 1605 Sir William Monson had a slight difficulty with a Dutch admiral at the same place. The Dutchmen dipped his flag three times, but Monson insisted that he should pay the ordained salute and take it in altogether, or fight the matter out on the spot. The salute was paid.

Even in the days of James I, when our fleet was in somewhat a poor way, its captains insisted as firmly as ever on the customary honour being paid to our flag. Captain Best of the _Guardland_ sends in a report about two Dutch men-of-war off Aberdeen, and says: "The Admiral of the Holland men-of-war hath his flag in her main-top, but giveth it out that he will not take it in for all the Commanders of His Majesty's ships.

Forty years is within the compa.s.s of my knowledge, and I never knew but that all nations forbear to spread their flags in the presence of the King's ships. That custom shall not be lost by me. When I come into the road and anchor by him, if the Admiral will not take in his flag when I shall require it, I will shoot it down, though it grow into a quarrel."

The last expression is delightful. There certainly would have been the makings of a "quarrel". This was in 1623.

Captain Richard Plumleigh took an even wider view of the obligations of foreigners to pay honour to the English flag. His idea was that they had to do so even in foreign harbours. He writes to the Admiralty on 23rd September, 1631: "It was my fortune to speak with one of these two merchants from whom the French demanded their flag". That is to say that the French had what he regarded as the impertinence to expect that they should have "struck" their topsails to them. He goes on: "They shot at the English some dozen shots and received from the English the like entertainment, with the loss of one man, by which they sat down and gave over their pretences.... It hath always been my princ.i.p.al aim to preserve His Majesty's Naval honnour both in his own seas and abroad, and for my part I think that it were better that both I and the ship under my charge were at the bottom of the sea, than that I should live to see a Frenchman or any other nation wear a flag aloft in His Majesty's seas and suffer them to pa.s.s unfought withal.... I dare engage my head that with five of H.M. ships I will always clear the way to all French flagmasters, yea, and make them strike to him upon those which they call their own seas.... This summer I was at the Texel in Holland, where come in divers French, and though the Hollanders bade me domineer at home in England, yet I forebore not to fetch down their flag with my ordnance." Evidently the gallant captain had strong views on the subject, and did not hide them under a bushel. But he was not alone in his determination to uphold the "honnour of the flag" at all costs.

Pennington, a notable naval officer of that period, has several incidents of a similar kind to relate in his _Journals_ on board H.M.S.

_Convertive_,[32] _Vauntguard_, and _Swiftsure_, between 1631 and 1636.

He tells us that sailing in the first-mentioned ship, together with the _a.s.surance_ and a couple of small vessels known as "whelps"--in search of "Rovers and Pyrates"--he met a fleet of eleven Dutch men-of-war in Dover Roads, "whereof two were soe stoute that they would not so much as settle their topp-sayles untill wee made a shott at each of them, soe--they doinge their dutyes--wee stood on our course". A few days later "There came up 4 Dunkerke men-of-warr unto us, who in all submissive wise, with their topp-sayles and top-gallant sayles lowrd upon the capp, saluted us accordinge to the custome of the sea"!

All this seems summary and drastic enough for anybody, so that it is curious to find the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh not long before lamenting British decadence in this respect. "But there's no state grown in haste but that of the United Provinces, and especially in their sea forces.... For I myself may remember when one ship of Her Majesty's would have made forty Hollanders strike sail and come to an anchor. They did not then dispute _De Mare Libero_, but readily acknowledged the English to be _Domini Maris Britannici_. That we are less powerful than we were I do hardly believe it; for, although we have not at this time 135 ships belonging to the subject of 500 tons each ship, as it is said we had in the twenty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth; at which time also, upon a general view and muster, there were found in England of able men fit to bear arms, 1,172,000, yet are our merchant ships now far more warlike and better appointed than they were, and the Royal Navy double as strong as it then was."

Possibly Raleigh's words had borne fruit in increased vigilance on the part of the captains of English men-of-war. But the Hollanders were determined to put the matter to the test. Possibly they thought that as there was no King of England after the martyrdom of Charles I there could be no king of the English seas. They began by forbidding their captains to pay the usual salute under pain of death. It was not long before Van Tromp sailed defiantly through Dover Straits with all his flags aloft. He got what he was asking for, a volley of round shot from Robert Blake, who was on the look-out for him, and at once both fleets went for each other "tooth and nail". The Dutch were beaten, but in a second encounter--for by now English and Dutch were openly at war--Blake got the worst of it, and was driven into the Thames to refit. "Tromp meanwhile sailed up and down the Channel as a conqueror, with a broom at his mast-head, thus braving the English navy in those very seas in which she claimed unrivalled sovereignty".[33]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BATTLE OF THE NORE, JUNE 1653, BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND DUTCH]

But his triumph was short-lived. The British eventually got the upper hand, and their claims to the sovereignty of their seas were formally admitted by the Dutch in 1654. Once again the question was fought out in the days of Charles II, and once again the Dutch were compelled to agree to strike their sails to even a single ship flying the King's flag. This was in 1674. Not long before the first Dutch War the Swedes also wished to question British rights. In 1647 Captain Owen of the _Henrietta Maria_, having with him only the _Roebuck_, a small craft, with a crew of forty-five men all told, was refused the salute by a fleet of three Swedish men-of-war and nine or ten merchant-vessels off the Isle of Wight. The usual "weighty arguments" were ignored, and the Swedes got away and anch.o.r.ed in Boulogne Roads. Captain Owen was unable to keep in touch with them, as they had shot away his tiller, but he got into Portsmouth and reported the matter, and the Parliament at once ordered the _St. Andrew_, _Guardland_, _Convertine_, and _Mary Rose_, which were lying in the Downs, to attend to the matter. Captain Batten, of the first-named ship, who was in command, at once put to sea, and found the Swedes still at anchor off Boulogne, but flying no colours at all.

Batten sent for the Swedish commanders to come on board--and they came, but declared that if their flags _had_ been up they would not have taken them in, as they had been expressly ordered not to do so. It was rather a difficult situation. Captain Batten, however, dealt with it by ordering the Swedish vice-admiral to "come with him", and took him back to the Downs. He told the remainder to "run away home". However, they followed the English and their prisoners to the Downs, as their commanders said that they dare not go home without the vice-admiral. The affair was then considered by "the Committee of Lords and Commons for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports", who eventually gave an order for the release of the culprit.

Other nations from time to time attempted to exact salutes from foreign ships in certain places, but apparently without much success. Thus the Spanish demanded that a French fleet under the Duke of Guise when pa.s.sing Gibraltar in 1622 should strike their flags. The Duke refused, though he said that they had told him that British ships were in the habit of doing so, and he asked Sir E. Herbert to write and ask the Duke of Buckingham whether this was true or not. But Herbert smelt a rat; and though he complied with Guise's request, he wrote: "Be well advised what answer you return, for I believe that he intends that the French king should exact the same acknowledgements on the coasts of this country, which you will never permit, as to the prejudice of the sovereignty that the Kings of England have always kept in the narrow seas." As regards the Mediterranean, it was laid down by James II, to prevent disputes with "the most Christian King",[34] "That whensoever His Majesty's ships of war shall meet any French men-of-war in the Mediterranean, there shall no salutes at all pa.s.s on either side". William III's orders were--after the usual directions to make foreigners pay the customary salute in the English seas--"And you are further to take notice, that in Their Majesties' Seas, Their Majesties' Ships are in no wise to strike to any; and that in other parts, no ship of Their Majesties' is to strike her flag or top-sail to any foreigner unless such foreigner shall have first struck."

A final incident must bring this chapter to a close. It indicates a slightly farther step towards the evacuation of the original position which we had taken up. This was in the year 1730. Lieutenant Thomas Smith, R.N., happened to be in temporary command of H.M.S. _Gosport_, which was lying in Plymouth Sound. In came a French frigate, which, either on account of ignorance or of design, omitted to strike her top-sails. Smith, having so many precedents to guide him, though possibly not very recent ones, sent the usual intimation by hulling her with a cannon-ball. It was at a time of profound peace, and on the demand of the French amba.s.sador he was tried and dismissed the Service.

Plumleigh and Pennington must have turned in their graves! But he was re-appointed to the Navy on the very next day, with the rank of captain, and for the rest of his life was known as "Tom of Ten Thousand".

The old regulations remained in force up to the end of the eighteenth century, but were omitted from those that were published about the Trafalgar period. The orders given by William III for guidance of officers when _outside_ English seas were made universal, so that for some unknown reason we finally abandoned our claims at the very time we were in a better position to enforce them than we had ever been before.

The old system rather partook of the way the proverbial Irishman in search of "divarsion" asks "if any gintleman will be good enough to thread on the tail of his coat", but it had its advantages. Had it been now in force it is practically certain that some German commander would have challenged it long before the German fleet had reached its present proportions, after which there would have been no German fleet. Again, there could have been no difficulties with neutral nations about contraband or conditional contraband. As the whole sea from Norway to Finisterre would have been recognized as British, no one could have disputed our right to close it to anybody or anything that suited our book. When it comes to fighting, other nations do not thank us for having played "Uriah Heep" beforehand. It has possibly induced them to fight instead of settling the dispute in some other way.

"Striking the sail" is now a thing of the past, but it is customary for merchant-vessels to "dip" their flags to kings' ships. As for men-of-war, they no longer exchange salutes of this kind when they meet at sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] "Bonnet", an extra piece of canvas laced to a sail to enlarge it.

"Vail", to lower.

[32] Or _Convertine_, originally the _Destiny_.

[33] Guizot, _Cromwell, and the English Commonwealth_.

[34] Louis XIV of France.

CHAPTER X

The Evolution of Naval Gunnery

"It was great pity, so it was, That villanous salt-petre should be digg'd Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd So cowardly; and, but for those vile guns, He would himself have been a soldier."

Hotspur describing his meeting with a "popinjay" after a battle.

SHAKESPEARE. _King Henry IV._ Act I, Scene iii.

"Earth and air were badly shaken By thy humane discovery, Friar Bacon."

BYRON. _Don Juan._ VIII, 33.

"The hand-spikes, sponges, rammers, crows, Were well arranged about; And to annoy Old England's foes, The Great Guns were run out."

--_Old Verses._

"WHO invented gunpowder?" There is only one definite and reliable answer to this question, and that is that n.o.body knows. It has been stated, but I think that it may be dismissed as a "galley yarn", that the first mention of artillery is to be found in an account of a naval engagement between the Phoenicians and Iberians in the year 1100 B.C.--just eighty-seven years after the siege of Troy.

The Phoenician war-vessels, it is said, came out of Cadiz--or Gades, as it was then called--with what their opponents took to be brazen lions at their bows. These turned out to be some kind of machine from which enormous flames of fire were projected by explosives, to consume and destroy the ships of the Iberians. But the most generally accepted theory now is that gunpowder was invented in China some centuries before the Christian era and gradually found its way to Europe by way of India, Arabia, and Africa. As for the stories that it was invented either by Roger Bacon (1214-92) or by the German monk, Barthold Schwartz, in 1320, they must be certainly rejected, since there is evidence that cannon of some kind were in use long previous to Roger Bacon's birth. Doubtless he wrote something about the composition of gunpowder, but so might anyone to-day. That would not make him its inventor.

Much less, then, can this invention be attributed to the German monk. It is probably correct that, in pounding certain ingredients in a mortar, he nearly blew himself "into the middle of next week"--as very many would-be chemical investigators have done at a much more recent date--and it may be that the sight of his pestle flying through the ceiling suggested to him that a mortar might be made of military use.[35] He may possibly, on this account, be credited with the invention of the muzzle-loading cannon, for it seems probable that the guns in use previous to 1320 were merely _cannae_, or tubes open at each end. The famous battery of three guns, which is said by some historians to have been used by the English at Crecy, was probably of this kind.

Whether the guns were used there or not, it would not have been the first time such weapons made their appearance in European warfare, as seems to be a.s.sumed by some writers.

More than 100 years previously cannon were employed by the Moors at the siege of Saragossa, in 1118. The Spaniards were not slow to adopt the invention, and in 1132 they built what is stated to have been a "culverin" throwing a 4-pound shot. "Culverin", which is a term, belonging to Tudor times, for a special type of gun, is evidently used as a general term for "cannon". Like the "Joe Chamberlain" and "b.l.o.o.d.y Mary",[36] manned by the Naval Brigade in the Boer War, and other prominent specimens of the gun-maker's art, this first European cannon received a special name. It was christened "Salamonica". I have said that the Spaniards "built" this weapon. I wrote this advisedly, for all the earlier cannon were "built up" of staves of iron, or even wood, strongly hooped together with wrought-iron rings.

It was a long time before cannon were "founded" or "cast", and now, strange to say, we have gone back to the original method of manufacture, which, thanks to modern science and workmanship, has absolutely ousted what was at its inception considered a wonderful advance in the art of cannon-making. The early guns, open at both ends, were probably loaded at the breech, which was then closed by a block of stone or big stake driven into the ground, close to which the gun itself was fixed in some kind of a framework. Such guns are to be seen in a picture in Froissart's _Chronicles_ representing the siege of Tunis by the Crusaders in 1390, and it is from this that the often-reproduced drawing of the guns said to have been used at Crecy in 1346 would appear to have been taken.

What is said to be the earliest representation of a cannon in England is to be found in a ma.n.u.script of 1326 in the Christ Church Library at Oxford. It is of quite a different appearance from those just described.

It is in the shape of a fat vase or bottle, and could not well have been a breech-loader. It is loaded with a big "garot" or dart fitted with a wooden haft which seems to fit tightly into the neck of the weird "cannon", which lies on a very rickety looking table. The gunner, clad in what looks like a suit of Crusader's chain-mail, is an unwary person who is holding a lighted match to the touch-hole while standing directly behind the gun. As there is not the slightest indication of anything whatever to stop the recoil, it seems about three to one that the discharge would be more disastrous to him than to the enemy. It is noteworthy that "metal cannons" and "iron b.a.l.l.s" were ordered to be made in this same year at Florence, and in 1331 _vase_ appears to have been the usual term for the cannon made in Italy, while in France they were termed _pots de fer_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A "Vase" or "Pot-de-fer"

The "garot", or heavy dart, to be fired from this early gun was provided with a wooden plug made to fit the bore. The type of "garot" shown on the right was intended to be fired from a large cross-bow on a stand.]

This brings us to the earliest indication that I can find of the use of guns afloat. It is a doc.u.ment dated 1338, in which Guillaume du Moulin, of Boulogne, acknowledges to have received from Thomas Fouques, the custodian of the enclosure for the King's galleys at Rouen, a _pot-de-fer_ to throw "fire garots", together with forty-eight garots in two cases, 1 pound of saltpetre, and 1/2 pound of sulphur "to make powder to fire the said garots". Now it seems more than probable that this _pot-de-fer_ or _vase_ was very similar to that in the Oxford ma.n.u.script and that it was intended for use afloat, or it would not have been among the stores belonging to the galleys. The recipient being at Boulogne, we may fairly a.s.sume that it was required by him for use on shipboard. "Garots", we know, were very commonly used in naval actions at this date, either thrown by hand from the tops or propelled from espringalds. Moreover, it is evident that the gun open at both ends would be a great source of danger on board ship. The system of breech-closing on sh.o.r.e was singularly rough and ineffective; there must have been nearly as much "back-fire" at the breech as flames from the muzzle. This would be a constant danger afloat, and, unless a few _vases_ like those described were sometimes used, it is probable that cannon were not adopted for sea service until some more regular and effective breech-closing apparatus had been evolved. But for this seamen had not very long to wait.

The progress of gun-making was now proceeding apace, especially in Germany and Flanders. At first, and for some time, there do not seem to have been any what we may call "moderate-sized" cannon, or, at any rate, they are not so much in evidence as the very large ones and the very small ones. The latter were not bigger than very heavy muskets, and it was with weapons of this kind that the many-gunned ships of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century were princ.i.p.ally equipped, though, as time went on, heavier pieces were added. To show how very small these little cannon were, it is only necessary to quote from Monstrelet's _Chronicles_, in which he tells us that, in 1418: "The Lord of Cornwall ... crossed the Seine ... having with him in a _skiff_ a _horse loaded with small cannons_". When one reads of the extraordinary numbers of guns which are said to have been used in some mediaeval battles and sieges, one should always bear this pa.s.sage in mind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo by the Author_

THE _DULLE GRIETE_ AT GHENT

This gun dates from 1384, and is very similar to the "marvellous great bombard" mentioned by Froissart as employed by the men of Ghent to attack Oudenarde.]

As for the big guns, they were giants when compared with their smaller brothers. Old Froissart, whom I have already quoted more than once, tells of a very notable specimen employed by the "men of Ghent" to attack Oudenarde: "A marvellous great bombarde, which was fifty feet long, and threw great heavy stones of a wonderful bigness; when this bombarde was discharged, it might be heard five leagues by day, and ten at night, making so great a noise in going off, that it seemed as if all the devils in h.e.l.l were abroad". All traces of this monster have disappeared, but an 18-feet gun of probably an exactly similar type is still to be seen at Ghent--unless the Germans have stolen it. This gun dates from about 1384, and has a bore something like 25 inches in diameter. As perhaps none of us are likely to be in Ghent for some time, we can see a rather smaller but almost duplicate weapon in Edinburgh--the celebrated "Mons Meg". Though she is supposed to have been built 100 years later, it is quite possible that both were turned out at the same manufactory. The Scots gun evidently came from Mons in Flanders, and the Flemish gun is also called "Meg", i.e. the _Dulle Griete_ or "Mad Margery" or "Meg". Another bigger and more handsomely finished gun of the same type, dating from 1464, is to be seen at the Royal Artillery Museum at Woolwich. This is a Turkish piece, and is said to have been "cast", while "Mons Meg" and her sisters are all built-up guns, as can be at once seen on inspection by the most amateur eyes.

There are several others on the Continent, notably the two "Michelets"

which were left at Mont St. Michael when the siege of that place was abandoned by the English in 1427. The siege began in 1423, so they may date from a good many years earlier. As the English batteries were erected on the Isle of Tombelaine, which is 3000 yards distant from the mount, some idea may be obtained of the distance to which these early cannon could hurl their granite projectiles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Gun with which we won the Great War with France

Observe the heavy breeching-rope attaching the gun to the ship's side; the tackle and block for running in and out; the wooden wheels, and the "quoins" or wedges for elevating the gun.]

Such cannon were all built up of long rectangular bars of iron upon which heavy rings of the same material were shrunk, the whole weapon, on completion, forming a heavy and extremely tough cylinder of wrought iron. The chambers, or breech-pieces, for the reception of the powder-charge, were built separately, with much thicker sides and smaller bores than the rest of the gun, into which they were screwed.

The guns must not, I think, be therefore considered breech-loaders; for though it may be possible that they were screwed in and out at each discharge, I think it more probable that, as they were such heavy ma.s.ses of metal, the breech-pieces were left screwed up and the charges inserted at the muzzle. But when cannon came to be made of more moderate dimensions--big enough to be effective against walls and the sides of ships, and small enough to be transported with reasonable facility--some system of breech-loading was almost universal. I say "almost", because guns began to be cast in bra.s.s in Germany at a comparatively early date, and such guns were probably often muzzle-loaders, since cast bra.s.s would not have been strong enough for the breech-closing methods in vogue.

These were comparatively simple. The breech of the gun, which was built up much in the same way as Mons Meg and others of the same kidney, terminated in a species of trough. Into this trough fitted an iron cylinder which contained the charge of powder and was called a "chamber". The muzzle of the chamber was bevelled off or turned down so as to fit into the breech end of the bore of the gun itself, and was held in position by iron wedges, generally at the rear end, but sometimes across the top. In some of the larger types the trough was made in the huge block of tough oak to which the gun was fastened. In the Tower of London you can see a gun of this kind that was fished up from the wreck of the _Mary Rose_. As most guns were provided with at least two "chambers", one would imagine that a fairly rapid fire could have been kept up, at any rate with the smaller guns. This, however, would not seem to have been the case, for the French account of the battle off St. Helens (when the _Mary Rose_ capsized), which lasted for two hours, and in which a considerable number of ships were engaged, mentions that 300 rounds were fired as a fact indicating the uncommon fierceness of the fighting. And yet the _Henri Grace a Dieu_ alone carried over 100 guns of various sizes!