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This drawing of Golden Hind reflects both the smallness of the vessel and its movement even in a modest sea. (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
By the time that the queen loaned Jesus of Lubeck to John Hawkins, the ship was an old and cranky vessel; nonetheless, its presence in his fleet indicated her open approval of both piracy and slave-trading. (Peter Kirsch)
Ark Ralegh was too magnificent a vessel for the commoner, Ralegh, to retain as his pirate flagship, and he was soon forced to donate her to the queen. (Author collection)
Pirate ships deployed far from home needed to find secluded harbours where their ships could have their bottoms, scraped clean of weed, inspected for worm, and be tarred and caulked. (Author collection)
Scourge of Malice, as magnificent a ship as Ralegh’s Ark, remained in the earl of Cumberland’s fleet until he sold it to the East India Company, in whose service, renamed Red Dragon, and commanded by Lancaster, an ex-pirate, she continued her career of attacking Portuguese carracks, as this contemporary print shows. (RN Museum, Portsmouth)
A replica of Elizabeth that sailed with Grenville to establish the pirate base at Roanoke that became England’s first, but short-lived, settlement in the Americas. (Author collection)
In 1607 the ex-pirate, Christopher Newport, in Susan Constant, led a small fleet of three ships into the Chesapeake and founded Jamestown, England’s first permanent settlement in America. (Author collection)
The culverin or demi-culverin was the professional pirate’s heavy weapon of choice, although it could only be carried in larger vessels whose exploits were, probably, state-approved. (Mary Rose Trust)
This saker, at St Mawes Fort, Cornwall, is presumed to have come from the ship carrying the goods of the incoming Venetian ambassador to London. Most embarrassingly, it was sunk by pirates. (Author collection)
Bows and arrows, spears and grenades, such as those shown here, could be modified to hurl incendiaries into a potential prize. Unfortunately for prey and predator alike the resulting conflagration could easily get out of control, destroying the former and threatening the latter. (Author collection)
The upper deck of the replica Golden Hind at Brixham, showing the small-calibre guns that could be safely carried higher up in a light vessel. (Author collection)
Were I to choose a ship for myself, I would have her sail well, yet strongly built, her decks flush and flat, and so roomy that men might pass with ease; her bow and chase so galley like contrived, should bear as many ordnance as with convenience she could, for that always cometh most to fight, and so stiff, she should bear a stiff sail, and bear out her lower tier of guns in any reasonable weather.
Captain John Smith, A Sea Grammar
Visit any seaside resort in England and there will be an opportunity for the young, and the not so young, to dress up and participate in piratical re-enactments or visit pirate ships and grottos. Supreme amongst these, and host to hundreds of school parties, are the replicas of Golden Hind in both London and Brixham. Across the Atlantic youthful imaginations can be similarly stimulated by walking the boards of Elizabeth at Roanoke in North Carolina, a replica of a ship that sailed with the pirate Richard Grenville when he tried to establish a pirate base on that island in 1584. Further up the coast, at Jamestown, Virginia, are tied up replicas of Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, the ships which brought the first permanent English settlers to Virginia and, although these were not pirate vessels, their commander Christopher Newport was an ex-pirate and a very successful one at that. The replica Pilgrim Fathers’ Mayflower, secured at Plymouth, Massachusetts, represents well the vessels of the English merchant fleet that were subject to piracy and, although she herself avoided such trouble, the Pilgrims suffered a major setback when their resupply vessel, Fortune, was taken by pirates on her voyage home, as was another of their ships, Little James, while heading for England richly laden with beaver-pelts.
Back in England the remarkable original timbers and artefacts of Mary Rose, preserved and displayed in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, give a wonderful feel for what a medium-sized royal vessel was like and, although she was built in 1509 and sank in 1545, her shape, structure and, most certainly, many of the weapons and objects recovered, would have been similar to those aboard pirate vessels of Elizabeth’s time. Nothing, no lesson, however well-delivered, no book, however well-written, no film, however vivid, captures as well what life was like onboard a small ship of the late sixteenth century as these original or reconstructed vessels. This century’s generations are indebted to those who built them, for without them we would have a very limited idea of what such ships looked like, because although many travelled by sea in the sixteenth century, few described the ship beneath their feet. This is not so surprising for such ships were commonplace; in centuries to come few will be able to visualise an airliner from reading the works of travel writers. However, as with airline flights, comments were recorded when things went wrong: in the case of Richard Hawkins’s voyage to the Pacific in Dainty, plenty did, which he duly noted, and for which honesty subsequent generations must be duly grateful.1
Elizabethan England possessed four growing seagoing fleets. Smallest in size but not in number were her fishing boats, which were undertaking longer and longer voyages, as far as the kingdom of cod that was the Newfoundland Banks. Her merchant vessels, once the despair of their sovereign because of their unwillingness to venture much beyond Flanders with wool, and Gascony, for wine, gradually felt their way into the Mediterranean, seeking out more exotic cargoes. Merchant enterprise was also responsible for establishing the famous but forlorn English voyages into the northern ice where they fumbled, failing to find an eastward or westward passage to Cathay, until by the very end of the sixteenth century such endeavours were superseded by the establishment of the East India Company, whose vessels plied the longer route to the east via the Cape of Good Hope. The third fleet was the Navy Royal, which had been revived by Henry VII and grown large during the reign of his son, only to shrink thereafter, before the threat from Spain forced Elizabeth to
