1513-1514.J

The Building of the 'Great Harry.'

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new ones upon the best models that could at that time be procured.

The building, between 1512 and 1514, of the Henry Grace à Dieu or Great Harry, namesake and successor of Henry VII.'s great ship, marks an epoch in the history of naval architecture. It was begun on the 3rd of October, 1512, and during the next twenty months, a hundred and forty-one of the cleverest shipwrights that could be procured were busy at its construction. Their wages amounted to 2,3787. 28. 10d., besides the cost of their clothing, bedding, and food,* and the expense of other occasional labour. They made use of 1,752 tons of timber, which cost 4377. 17s. 7ąd.; 4087. 19s. 73d.'s worth of iron wrought and unwrought; 2437. 6s. 3d.'s worth of brass, and 1337. 12s. 6d.'s worth of coal. The expense of cordage amounted to 9697. 2s. 11d.; in oxhair, lime, and rosin, were expended 1007. 13s. 10d.; in blocks and pulleys, 637. 10s. 9d. The entire cost of building, including three small galleys to attend on the great ship, amounted to 7,7081. 5s. 3d. The burthen of the great ship herself was 1,500 tons, so that she was half as large again as the largest vessel hitherto known in the English navy. She was arranged in seven tiers, one above another, and, as the Emperor Maximilian's ambassador reported, had "an incredible array of guns,

**

They consumed 7,498 dozen loaves of bread, worth 3701. 78. 8d.; 1,543 pipes of beer, 5267. 198. 11d.; 557 beeves, 7061. 178. 9d.; 205 score of sheep, 321. 58. 8d.; 4,522 codfish, 871. 28. 10d.; a goodly quantity of other flesh and fish, with a number of other articles, including only 7 barrels of butter, worth 41. 68., and 30 weys of cheese, worth 197. 48.; the cost of the whole being 1,9691. 188. 2d.

with a scuttle on the top of the mainmast, eighty serpentines and hackbuts." Four hundred men were at work four days in dragging her from the building yard at Erith to Barking Creek.*

On the 13th of June, 1514, the King, with a stately company, including the Queen, the Princess Mary, the foreign ambassadors, several bishops, and a large number of noblemen, went down to christen this famous ship.

On the 25th of October, 1515, King Henry was again at Greenwich, christening another great vessel. "Those who were in the galley, dining with the King of England," wrote the French envoy to his sovereign, "have told me for certain that there are in the said galley two hundred and seven pieces of artillery, large as well as small, of which seventy are of copper and cast, and the rest of iron, with four or five thousand bullets and four or five hundred barrels of powder. The galley is propelled by six score oars, and is so large that it will hold eight hundred or a thousand fighting men. The King of England acted as master of the galley, wearing a sailor's coat and trousers of frieze cloth of gold. He had on a thick chain, in which were five links, and amongst the same there were three plates of gold, on which was written as a device, 'Dieu et mon droit;' and at the bottom of the said chain was a large whistle, with which he whistled almost as loud as a trumpet or clarionet. Mass was sung on board by the Bishop of Durham, and the galley was named by Queen Mary The Virgin Mary."

* BREWER, Vol. i., pp. 828, 839; CHARNOCK, vol. ii., p. 28.

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1514-1515.] The Great Harry' and the Virgin Mary.' 73

The Frenchman was not well pleased with this show of warlike strength and grandeur. "I went immediately," he says, "to my lord the Duke of Suffolk. He told me that it was true that the King of England had made an appearance of preparing himself for war, and for this cause had got ready a small number of ships: but this he had done solely to content his subjects, who desired in my master's absence that England should go to war with him; but the King of England had no such inclination." Then the agent went to Wolsey, who was at Westminster. "I told him," he proceeds, "that if he and the King of England thought that the King my master, at his departure into Italy, had not left his kingdom strong and powerful, they had been greatly deceived; yet, at the same time, the King had never thought to invade his country, and make war upon him in his absence. On this he laid his hand on his breast, and swore to me that the King his master had never thought of such a thing, nor his Council; and as for the ships which he had prepared during this time, and chiefly his great galley, that was done solely to give pleasure and pastime to the Queen and the Queen Mary his sister."

Wolsey might swear and Suffolk protest that Henry's ship-building meant no harm to France; but it was clear to all the world that these preparations were meant for much more than the pleasure and pastime of queens and courtiers. The preparations continued, and year by year the English navy grew in strength. * BREWER, vol. ii., pp. xlvii—1.

Better vessels were built, and better furniture was put in them. Improvements were steadily made in naval tactics, and full advantage was taken of the lessons taught by experience as to the training and employment of seamen and sea-going soldiers. The result was great credit to England, and great advancement of English influence over the politics of Europe.

But in actual warfare very little was done that is worth recording. Down to the close of Henry's reign the attitude of the navy was chiefly passive: for the most part it was only a deterrent power, and a warning against invasion. Its principal occupation was in the punishment of pirates, and in damaging the enemy's trading operations, which in those days were held akin to piracy, and often were hardly distinguishable from it. During Lord Thomas Howard's long service as High Admiral there were numerous actions similar to the capture of Andrew Barton's ships, by which he and his brother Edward had made themselves famous. Often, too, the fleets were employed in scouring the seas and devastating the alien coast, after the fashion of Sir Edward's achievements on the shores and in the adjoining districts of Brittany. But till near the close of Henry's reign, there was no sea fight at all comparable to that in which the Regent and the Cordelier were destroyed in 1512. Even in 1522, when Thomas Howard, then Earl of Surrey, bearing an admiral's commission from the Emperor Charles V. as well as from Henry VIII., commanded a fleet of nearly two hundred vessels, his chief work was in landing troops

1515-1537.]

Its Sailors and Officers.

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in Normandy, and thus aiding the land warfare with France.

The navy was still in its infancy, consisting of a few royal ships, built especially for fighting, and of numerous smaller craft, designed for merchandize, and only turned into war ships as occasion required. The men employed in these vessels also had little save bravery in common with the servants in modern ships of war. The sailors and their masters were fishermen, merchants' apprentices, and often merchants themselves. The fighting men were land-soldiers, rarely at their ease in naval warfare, and always much more useful in the sort of fighting for which they had been trained, if indeed they also were not raw recruits, practised only in such use of weapons as was in those days common with every Englishman. Even the superior officers were generally landsmen. Lord Thomas Howard, as we saw, varied his employment as admiral with service at the battle of Flodden and civil government in Ireland; and in later years, succeeding his father as Duke of Norfolk, he succeeded him also as Lord Treasurer, to which he added other work as a military commander, an ambassador, and a domestic statesman.

Howard outlived his master and his master's son, Edward VI. He died in the first year of Queen Mary's reign, seventy-six years old. A crowd of men acquired under him their share of fame, about which posterity need not trouble itself, as sea-captains. The most notable of them was Sir William Fitzwilliams, who was wounded in the battle with the French off Brest in