The Development of the Sailing Ship

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SAILING SHIP In England, Henry V. (1413) built large vessels for his fleet, "great ships, cogs, carracks, ships, barges and ballingers," some of which were of nearly i,000 tons, but the generality from 420 to 52o tons. In the list of his fleet no galleys seem to be included. Meanwhile in the south the type of vessel called "caravel" was being developed, in which Portuguese and Spaniards dared the Atlantic and made their great discoveries. "Santa Maria," the flagship of Columbus (1492) in his attempt to reach the Indies by the Western route, is generally quoted as typical of this class, but research has cast doubt on her generally accepted dimensions and design and modern discovery is revealing a ship very dif ferent from the "replica" built in Spain for exhibition in the United States in 1892. The vessels in which Vasco da Gama first doubled the Cape of Good Hope (1497) were probably of similar type but larger. The ship of John Cabot (1497) in which he discovered Newfoundland must have been much smaller, as he had a crew of only eighteen men.

In England during the Tudor times a great advance in ship building is to be observed; but the French then, as well as at a later period, were providing the best models for naval architecture. These big ships were armed at first with "serpen tines," and later with cannon and culverins. The representations of them show several tiers of guns, four or even five masts, and enormous structures by way of forecastles and deck-houses aft. In spite of the general improvement in hull design, however, these ships had many weak points, chief among which, from the fighting point of view, was a beak bow surmounted by a square bulkhead, a feature inherited from the galley. Notwithstanding many expensive lessons, this feature was not finally abandoned in big ships until the early 19th century. As regards merchant vessels, the Genoese and the Venetians during the 15th and i6th centuries carried out great improvements. The "carracks" of the i6th century often reached as much as i,000 tons burthen. There is a record of a Portuguese carrack captured by the Eng lish, of which the dimensions reached 165 ft. in length and 47 ft.

in beam. She carried 32 pieces of brass ordnance and between 600 and 700 passengers.

Armada Ships.

The Spanish Armada (1588) was composed of 132 vessels, of which the largest was about 1,30o tons and 3o under ioo tons. Four galleys and four galleasses accompanied the fleet. The opposing fleet consisted of 197 vessels of which only 34 belonged to the royal navy. Of these the largest was the "Triumph" of about i,000 tons. The "Ark Royal" the flagship of the English admiral, was of 800 tons, carrying 55 guns. Among the armed merchant vessels employed with the fleet was the "Buona venture," the first English vessel that made a successful voyage to the Cape and India. The result to England of the defeat of the Spaniards was a great increase of mercantile activity. Mer chants, instead of hiring Genoese or Venetian carracks, began to prefer building and owning home-built ships, and though the foreign merchant vessels appear to have been on a larger scale, yet, as seagoing craft, the English-built ships certainly held their own. At a rather later date many of their best qualities were marred by mounting a very much heavier armament without the necessary increase in dimensions. We hear also during this period of many improvements in details, such as striking topmasts, the use of chain pumps, the introduction of studding, topgallant, sprit and topsails, also of the weighing of anchors by means of the cap stan, and the use of long cables. In the men-of-war the lower tier of guns, which, as in the galleys, had been carried dangerously near the water-line, began to be raised. This improvement, how ever, does not seem to have been generally adopted in the English ships till after the Restoration. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean the galley was still in vogue, being only partially superseded by the great galleasses, six of which are recorded to have taken part in the battle of Lepanto (1571), in which the Venetians and their allies employed no less than 208 galleys with single banks and long sweeping oars.