would have been called the line abreast, stood at their utmost speed in pursuit of the enemy. The Monk was completely out-manœuvred. His heavily-laden vessels could not escape pursuit by flight, while they must infallibly be thrown into confusion by the act of turning to face the pursuers. It was no small advantage to the English that their arrows would fly with the wind. So soon as they were within shot, Hubert de Burgh's archers let fly, and the clothyard shafts, or the bolts from the crossbows, came whistling down on the crowded benches of the French ships. All battles then by land or sea were settled at close quarters with cold steel. The English pressed on to board. Where the enemy's ships were caught in the act of turning, they drove into them with the stem, ramming and sinking them. When this more expeditious method could not be practised, the English laid the enemy aboard, throwing quicklime, which the wind blew in the Frenchmen's faces, into the air in the moment of impact. The boarders followed close on the blinding cloud, and the axes of the Cinque Ports men fell briskly to work.
"Whenas he fights and has the upper hand
By sea he sends them home to every land,"
wrote Chaucer of the shipman. The Cinque Ports men, who had had a cruel experience of the tender mercies of John's foreign mercenaries, were certainly in no humour to give quarter to the adventurers who were on their way to England to renew the worst excesses of the wicked king's followers. There was a great massacre. Taken at a disadvantage, and scattered at the moment of attack, the Monk's ships were overpowered in detail. So great was the fury of the English crews that it overcame even the love of ransom which commonly introduced some measure of mercy into mediæval battles. Eustace himself, who, we are told, offered a great price for his life, was beheaded by one blow of the sword by Richard, King John's bastard son. The whole fleet on which Louis and the barons had relied to save them from destruction, was annihilated. The neck of the opposition to the young king's government was effectually broken. Before the end of the year Louis had returned to France, and the barons had made their submission.
The trial stroke of the English Navy was a master-stroke. No more admirably planned, no more timely, no more fruitful battle has been fought by Englishmen on water. It settled for ever the question how best this country is to be defended. In after times, during the Armada year and later, there have been found men to talk of trusting to land defences; but the sagacity of Englishmen has taught them to rely on the navy first, and that protection has never wholly failed us in six hundred and eighty years. The battle is curiously similar to the long list of conflicts with the French which were to follow it. The enemy is found carrying out a scheme of attack on our territory, and so intent on his ultimate object that he neglects to attack our ships first. Hubert de Burgh, acting exactly as Hawke, Rodney, Hood, or Nelson would have done, manœuvres for the "weather-gage," the position to windward, falls upon the Frenchman on his way, and wrecks his carefully laid scheme at a blow.
The navy was now established in all essentials as it was to remain till the accession of the Tudor dynasty, at the close of the fifteenth century. The ship was indeed in process of development throughout all these ages. The stages of this growth are obscure, and belong rather to the domain of the archæologist than to that of the historian. We still possess an example of the original type in the Viking ship which was dug up from the burial mound at Gókkstad in Norway. She is a vessel of some size, nearly a hundred feet long, sharp at both ends, high in the bow and stern. Her breadth is about a third of her length, and she is low in the waist. The bottom is flat, as was natural in a vessel designed to be hauled up on the beach, and to take the ground without damage on a receding tide. Her hull is clinker-built, that is to say, with the planks overlapping one another, and not put edge to edge, as in the carvel-built ships of later times. One mast, shipped exactly in the middle, and carrying one great square sail, constituted all her rigging. There was no deck, though there may have been small covered spaces at the bow and stern. She was steered by an oar fixed on the right or starboard (i.e. steering) side, a little before the sternpost. In battle the mast and sail were lowered, and the vessel propelled by oars, of which the Gokkstad ship rowed sixteen on each side. By the thirteenth century this type had been already developed. The maritime States of the Mediterranean and the Basque ports of Spain had begun to build more elaborately constructed galleys and much heavier vessels. But, to judge by the illuminations in the manuscript of Matthew Paris, the ships of Hubert de Burgh did not differ in any essential particular of construction from those of Saint Olaf or Canute. Indeed, as late as the reign of Edward III., and later, our ships were small in comparison with the Basque. Still there was a steady though slow advance in mechanical skill. Decks were introduced, and the vessels were built higher. Fore and after castles began to be erected. The rudder gradually displaced the steering oar. Two masts, and finally three, replaced the one of the early ships. The introduction of cannon, which dates from the fourteenth century, compelled changes in form. In order to support the weight of the guns, and the shock of firing them, it was necessary to build ships higher and stronger. The height could have been obtained by merely continuing the curve of the bottom farther; but if this had been done, the vessel would have been weak, and the leverage of the weight of the guns would have tended to tear her to pieces. To obviate this risk, the sides were curved in above the water-line in what was called "a tumble home." The guns were at first fired over the top of the bulwarks. A French builder, Descharges of Brest, has the credit of first constructing a ship with portholes through which the cannon could be pointed. In one respect the mediæval ship was curiously like the modern war vessel. She carried a crow's nest on her masts, a military top, in fact, from which archers and crossbowmen could fire, or stones be thrown, on to an enemy's deck. It must not be supposed that these improvements were all strictly successive. Old and new types would be found existing side by side. The rudder and the steering oar, for instance, are found in use together, but gradually the better drove the less good out of use. The long low galleys of the Mediterranean, or at least craft of that description, are heard of as employed in the Middle Ages, but our seas are not friendly to that class of vessel. It appears, from the account of the battle with Eustace the Monk, that the practice of lowering masts and sails on going into action had fallen into disuse by the thirteenth century. This implies at least a greater weight of spars and solidity of rigging than had obtained earlier. It will be easily understood that then, as at all times, there were wide differences in the sizes of ships. They ranged from mere row-boats to the vessel of 250 or 300 tons, known as "cog," or by other names of which we only dimly appreciate the significance.
The King of England drew his fleets from three sources. To begin with, he had his own ships, which were his personal property, like his horses or the suits of armour he supplied to his own immediate following. These he used in war, or hired to the merchants in peace, according to circumstances. The purely administrative and financial management of these vessels was entrusted to some member of his household. In earlier ages it fell to one of the "king's clerks," the permanent civil servants of the time, who, when all learning was the province of the Church, were naturally ecclesiastics, and for whom the king provided by securing their nomination to benefices. William of Wrotham, Archdeacon of Taunton, was "keeper of the king's ships, galleys, and seaports" to King John. There is a mention, though not continuous record, of other "clerks" who had charge of the king's ships till the reign of Henry VIII. The number of these ships would vary according to the interest the king took in them, the need he had for them, and his merits as a husband of his money. In the troubled times of the Lancastrian line the king's ships were few, but it does not seem that at any period he was wholly without some of his own.
The second source from which the fleets were recruited was the trading craft of London and the outports. The kings of England claimed, and exercised from the beginning, the right of impressing all ships for the defence of the realm. Every port was assessed according to its supposed resources in so many vessels properly found. They were, however, maintained by the king on service. There was a certain difference in the method of manning these two classes. In the king's own ships all alike were his servants. When a merchant ship was impressed, her crew would, when possible, be taken with her. The king then put an officer of his own, with a body of soldiers, into her. In both there was a distinction between the military officer whose business it was to fight, and the shipman whose business it was to sail.
Thus arose
