On the Wings of the Wind: Changes in English Shipbuilding, Navigation and Shipboard Life, 1485-1650.

 

 

Anna Gibson Holloway - College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences.

 

Chapter One

Early Explorations and Knowledge of the Wind

Though it has been fashionable in the years following the quincentennial of Columbus's first voyage to malign that explorer for his deeds in the Caribbean, it cannot be denied that he provided invaluable information to mariners when he discovered the prevailing wind pattern of north-easterlies in the Atlantic. However, centuries of discovery and observations of wind patterns came before 1492 aided both Columbus and the English explorers who followed hard upon his heels in succeeding years. Aristotle's Meteorologica was the primary source for wind theory in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe.

Drawing on the writings of Hippocrates, Aristotle presented the view that both wind and rain were aspects of air, which was an exhalation of the earth. To define the origin of wind, Aristotle postulated that winds are formed by ''the gradual collection of small quantities of exhalation, in the same way that rivers form when the earth is wet."

Furthermore, "Winds blow horizontally; for though the exhalation rises vertically, the winds blow round the earth because the whole body of air surrounding the earth follows the motion of the heavens." There was no better explanation until Torricelli's experiments with air pressure in 1644, coupled with Newton's theory of motion, disproved Aristotle's logic.

But it was not the question of where winds came from that captivated mariner. How a wind behaved was of more immediate concern. Yet even here, Aristotle provided answers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Aristotle believed that the world was divided into several zones, only two of which were habitable. The northern habitable zone, which included the known world, stretched from the Tropic of Cancer north to the Arctic Circle.

Believing the earth to be symmetrical, Aristotle assumed that there would be a corresponding habitable zone to the south, stretching from the Tropic of Capricorn to the southern Antarctic zone. The zones between the tropics and the polar regions were too hot or too cold to be inhabitable. Therefore, "since . . . there must be a region which bears to the other pole the same relation as that which we inhabit bears to our pole," wrote Aristotle, "it is clear that this region will be analogous to ours in the disposition of winds. . . ." Such knowledge would serve mariners well as they sailed into the unknown.

The ancients provided other sources of information on the winds that influenced the natural philosophers of the sixteenth century. As early as the fourteenth century, the English had access to copies of the Roman work, De Ventis , written by Theophrastus around 300 B.C. In 1538, the Spaniard Pedro de Medina drew directly from De Ventis in his Libro de Cosmographia. Echoing Theophrastus, Medina wrote that wind is made up of "great movements [of air] continuously carried by the waters from one place to another. And so we see that over the sea and near it, there are stronger and more continuous winds than on other parts of the earth." Medina's work was available in English translation by 1581 and was generally accepted in scientific circles. However, even at that late date, the nature of the wind was still a matter of question to the landsman. Oxford don Richard Madox wondered in 1582 "whether the winds are attracted to some end and whether, fearing something hostile, they are driven out from some place and flee or hether by some kind of presentiment, they seek out some quiet place congruent to their nature.'*

One thing was certain. The winds blew consistently out of certain quarters at certain times of the year. The ancient Greeks named such prevailing winds for geographic features that lay in the direction of such winds - hence Thracian winds from the northwest and Hellespontian winds from the east-northeast. The Romans borrowed that system, substituting Latin place-names and geographical features for the Greek. People from the far north, the Norsemen, also developed a system of eight winds corresponding to their home geography.
The ancients and the Norse drew circular representations of the winds which in time became the well- known wind rose. Pliny noted that the "ancients noticed four winds in all, corresponding to the four quarters of the world." But he as well as the ancients found this a "dull- witted system," which was slightly improved upon by adding eight more winds. This, according to Pliny, was "too subtle and meticulous" for most, so "their successors adopted a compromise, adding to the short list four winds from the long one." Thus it was decided that there would be "two winds in each of the four quarters of the heavens."

In 1240 A.D., the English cartographer Matthew Paris first developed the subdivision of the preferred eight-fold system into sixteen for use in England.9 But the standard thirty-two-point system, which appeared on portolani from the thirteenth century, did not appear in England until about 1391; apparently the twelve-fold system and its subdivisions were still being used on land at this time. In his Treatise on the Astrolabe , the poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote: "Now is the horizon departed in 24 parts by the azimuth, in signification of the 24 parts of the world; albeit so that shipmen reckon the same parts in 32."

Sixty-four-point wind roses, although used by the Italians, failed to accommodate the needs of the common mariner, for as Martin Cortes wrote in 1561, "In the cardes that they have, the confusion of lynes is greater then the profite that maye bee taken thereby." The thirty-two-point wind rose became the object by which mariners were able to plot their courses. By incorporating the wind rose into his charts in an intricate interweaving of rhumb lines, a mariner could then use these "rhumbs of the winds" to determine his heading. Martin Cortes wrote that the wind roses would be added to the completed chart by first drawing a "hidden circle," which the cartographer then divided into thirty-two points. This would define the positions of either sixteen or thirty-two intersections (depending on the size of the chart), each drawn as a colorful wind rose. The eight principal winds were drawn in black, the half-winds in azure or blue and the quarter-winds in red. By using a pair of dividers, the pilot could read off his course. With the widespread use of the magnetic compass at sea from the twelfth century onward, the rhumb lines began to be less associated with the winds and more indicative of compass direction when the magnetized needle of the compass was attached to a colorful card depicting the wind rose. With the winds thus controlled on paper, explorers on both land and sea had a better notion of wind patterns within the known world. But by the early fifteenth century, Europeans had begun to venture into the unknown.

The Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden and De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomeus Anglicus, both English works written in Latin, had been translated into English by 1398. Caxton had published the latter in 1482 and Wynkyn de Worde printed both in 1495.14 These works, along with Jean d'Outremeuse*s The Travels of Sir John Mandeville , all contained descriptions of the known world and its peoples, and anyone who could read had access to them by the late- fifteenth century. All drew on ancient texts for their information, along with some contemporary sources. Higden and Bartholomeus, however, both gave proof that the area known as Vinland in North America, settled by Norsemen in 1000 A.D., was already familiar to English scholars, in name at least, if not in position. Higden wrote: Vinland, that island, is by west Denmark, and is a barren land and of men misbelieved; they worship mawmetry, and sell wind to shipmen, that sail to their havens, as it were enclosed under knots of thread; and as the knots are unknit, the wind waxes at her own will.

Bartholomeus related the same story about the selling of wind, and concurred that "Wynlandia [was] a countree besydes the mountayns of Norway towarde the east.”

Therefore, it is probable that the English already knew of the existence of Vinland, although they were ignorant of its importance, and it was apparent that there had already been contact between the English and the Norse colonists in Iceland, with whom the English built up a fishing trade.

Thus the English had early access to knowledge of the North Atlantic. But because the climate changed for the worse in the north during the twelfth century, the colonies in Greenland ceased to exist, and since Greenland was the link between Europe and Vinland, all knowledge of that place passed from the realm of fact into the realm of legend; the Icelanders even forgot it, and Higden and Bartholomeus accounts of wind-selling natives substantiated the myth. Only the experience of Bristol mariners who sailed to Iceland to trade for fish in the mid-fifteenth century proved that anything other than a supernatural wind blew in those waters. The English encounter with North America in 1497, then, appeared to them to be a new discovery.

The early-fifteenth century brought many new discoveries (and rediscoveries) of islands which lay several miles outward to the west of Europe and Africa. The Canaries had been rediscovered in the thirteenth century and had been colonized by 1402, so the existence of island groups in the Atlantic that were not merely cloud-banks and the stuff of dreams was an exciting discovery. The Portuguese found Porto Santo and Madeira in 1420 (although the Genoese had probably discovered them first in 1351 and failed to exploit them), and the Azores, known but lost, were rediscovered in the 1430s and colonized. The Portuguese discovered the Cape Verde islands off Africa in the 1450s and 1460s. These were not the islands of myth, such as Hy-Brasil and Antilia, but real places with infinite possibilities. These island groups provided convenient starting places for many early expeditions into the Atlantic, and the observations of the winds that blew westward from these islands later began to give mariners ideas about heading farther out to sea.

Because the prevailing winds off the coast of the Iberian peninsula blow to the south-southwest, a voyage to the Canaries or the Cape Verdes islands was easy and quick, taking about a week in good weather. The return trip was a different matter. Ships could not easily sail into the wind and against the prevailing currents. A homeward voyage by this route would take months, and could be prohibitive in terms of cost, both in supplies and in lives. Thus, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sailors turned their ships away from land and swung far out to the northwest in search of a favorable wind, until they picked up prevailing westerlies to take them home. Portuguese mariners called this the volta do mar or the "turn of the sea" (possibly named for the popular dance of the day, la volta, which was characterized by this type of ovement) and used it as "a template with which to plot their courses to Asia, to the Americas, and around the world."

Despite these inviting Atlantic islands, European focus was on the East from whence came spices, silks, and other luxuries, which to many were rapidly becoming necessities.

Land routes to the East had been effectively cut off with the reclamation of the Holy Land by the armies of Islam during the thirteenth century, the fall of the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth century, and a general monopoly on Mediterranean trade held by Italian merchants. The only viable route open to those of Western Europe was around Africa, and when Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, even that route was sealed to all but the Portuguese. This left only the unknown route to the West, championed by the Genoese Christopher Columbus.

Bartolome de Las Casas wrote of Christopher Columbus, "I believe that Christopher Columbus exceeds all others at this time in the art of navigation.1118 While Columbus won this praise from Las Casas solely because he was the first to cross the Ocean Sea, there is merit to Las Casas's observation, for Columbus himself had collected information over the course of many years, which made it possible for him to attempt his enterprise for Spain in 1492. In Book One of Quaestiones Naturales , Seneca wrote, "How far is it from the southern shores of Spain to the Indies? It can be completed in the space of a few days if the wind bears the ship.” Armed with this information, along with the ancient writings of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Marinus of Tyre, Strabo and Pliny, along with the writings of Marco Polo from the more proximate thirteenth century, and the blessing of the well-respected contemporary cartographer Toscanelli, Columbus was able to present his case for a western route to the East. Both Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus catalogued information about Columbus's knowledge of prevailing winds in the Atlantic and other information about his enterprise before his first voyage.

According to Ferdinand Columbus, colonists in the Azores on the islands of Graciosa and Fayal reported that pines of an unknown kind had been cast upon the shore from the west after the wind had blown from that direction for many days. Two human bodies of an unknown race, which Columbus assumed to be Chinese, washed up on the shore of Flores. Martin Vincente, a pilot of the Portuguese king Don Joao, told Columbus that he had fished an ingeniously carved piece of wood out of the sea 450 leagues west of Cape Saint Vincent. Since the wind had been blowing out of the west for many days, Vincente assumed that the carving had been blown eastward from islands in the west.

Pedro Correa, Columbus's brother-in-law, found similar carved sticks washed up on the shores of Porto Santo in the Madeiras along with canes that were unlike any found in the known world except in the East Indies. Small covered boats or canoes drifted by off Cape Verga in Africa, presumably having been blown off course m a storm m the Indies.
Columbus's own observations of prevailing northwesterly winds off the western coast of Africa added more evidence. Many sailors with whom Columbus spoke told him of islands that they had seen in their travels west of the Azores and Canaries. Columbus assumed that these "islands" were either reefs, cloud-banks, or the islands of Hy-Brasil or Antilia, though the mention of them gave fuel to his enterprise. Las Casas related the story of an old sailor who presumably gave Columbus directions to lands across the sea which he had accidentally found when blown off course in a gale. But this story was considered apocryphal even then, and the physics of the winds in the Atlantic as they are known today do not allow for this story to be true, even if that sailor possessed all the technology available in the twentieth century. However, it is easy to see how the story could be believed, whether by Columbus or by those who sought to discredit him at the time by claiming that he was merely following someone else*s directions. There was no chart of the winds of the Atlantic. No one had definitely sailed across, so anything would appear possible to a man with Columbus's turn of mind and spirit.

Columbus discovered a mere fraction of the winds and currents of the Atlantic during his first voyage in 1492, but the portion that he did discover would prove to be most important. With his return to Spain in 1493, he proved that the Ocean Sea had winds that would provide for a ship's outbound voyage as well as its safe return home. The Spanish now held dominion over the western route to the Indies (albeit the West Indies as they proved to be). Both the French and the English were left with the uninviting prospect of travel to the northwest or the northeast in search of a passage to the East.

The English were late to arrive upon the Atlantic maritime scene despite their location. Before the fifteenth century, they concentrated their interests on the neighboring continent and seldom left European waters.

Unless one considers the legendary voyage of Saint Brendan around 500 A.D. and the subsequent wanderings of the Irish Anchorites, the peoples of the British Isles confined themselves to European trade and the occasional quest for the mythical Hy-Brasil, which lay somewhere to the west.

The English explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had to rely upon the writings and experiences of those who had gone before them until they could gain their own empirical knowledge of the seas. This knowledge came from many quarters. The ancient Greeks and Romans provided them with an abstract understanding of the elements of air and water, contact with other countries' shipping introduced new technology to them, and the explorers and fishermen of Portugal and Spain (along with a few from Bristol) supplied a concrete view of the Atlantic.

In the early years of the sixteenth-century, Europeans developed a passion for discovery, fueled by the reports of gold and exotic peoples found in newly discovered lands.

The Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal in 1494, established a line of demarcation that fell 370 miles west of the Azores, replacing an earlier line of 1493 that was only 100 miles west of that island group. In this new treaty, Pope Alexander VI conferred all new lands "found or to be found" east of that line to Portugal and everything to the west of it to Spain. This effectively gave Portugal control of the spice routes around Africa, and Spain dominion over most of the New World; every other nation was simply ignored. For the English, however, possession truly was nine-tenths of the law, thus they lay claim to trading rights along the west coast of Africa and later claimed North America for their own by right of John Cabot's first voyage in 1497. While the Portuguese were ready to contest any African claims, there were fewer disputes over the northern reaches of North America since that region had proven to be cold, inhospitable, and devoid of gold, and the route there was at times very treacherous. In fact, only the fishing grounds of the Grand Banks proved attractive to other nations, and an uneasy truce existed between the fishermen who plied those waters.

According to Richard Hakluyt the younger and Walter Ralegh, England's Henry VII could have been the patron of Columbus's initial voyage. Columbus's brother Bartholomew was on his way to London to petition Henry VII for funding when he was captured by pirates. When he eventually arrived in England, according to Hakluyt, Henry accepted his proposal. But the year was then 1493 .25 On his way back to Spain with Henry's offer, Bartholomew discovered that his brother had already sailed across the Ocean Sea and returned, in the service of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

The English soon found their own navigator: the Genoese Giovanni Caboto, or John Cabot. On March 5, 1496 Henry VII granted to him and his three sons Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius letters patent authorizing an expedition to the west for the discovery of new and unknown lands. Henry authorized five ships of what burthen or quantity soever they bee, and as many mariners or men as they will have with them in the sayd ships, upon their owne proper costs and charges, to seek out, discover and finde whatsoever isles, countreys, regions or provinces of the heathen and infidels whatsoever they be, and in what part of the world soever they be, which before this time have bene unknowen to all Christians.

Henry had nothing to lose, for by this patent Cabot had agreed to pay for everything himself. But Cabot's funds were limited; when he finally left Bristol for the west on May 20, 1497, he had only one vessel, the fifty-tun Matthew, only slightly smaller than Columbus's beloved Nina .

Cabot's patent makes no mention of the route that he was to take to make these discoveries, and since his life has been so overshadowed (as well as appropriated) by his son Sebastian, his reasoning for taking a northern route is unknown. According to Samuel Eliot Morison, Cabot had likely "pumped sundry master mariners of Bristol in the Iceland trade for information, and learned that in the spring of the year he would have more easterly winds than at any other season." There also seemed to be no difficulty in returning since the expedition would enjoy "a good deal of due north and due south winds too, which Matthew could take on her beam."

Cabot sailed to the westernmost point of Ireland, Dursey Head, and took his departure at a latitude of 51° 33' N. Like Columbus, his objective was to sail on a particular line of latitude until he reached his estination. Columbus had made his departure from the Canaries at 28° N, hoping to bump into Cipangu (Japan) along the same latitude.

Likewise, Cabot departed from Dursey Head hoping to encounter the northern shores of Cathay (China) on a shorter northern route. Finally, Cabot chose this point for departure because mariners said that it lay on the same latitude as Hy-Brasil, which Cabot hoped to discover, thus accomplishing what nearly two decades of Bristol men had failed to do. That this was one of Cabot*s motives is confirmed by Pedro de Ayala, the temporary Spanish ambassador to England, in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella dated July 25, 1498. "For the last seven years the people of Bristol have equipped two, three, and four caravels to go in search of the island of Brasil and the seven cities according to the fancy of this Genoese [Cabot]."

A letter from the English merchant John Day to Columbus written after Cabot*s successful return in July of 1497, gave details of Cabot*s voyage, including information of the winds encountered:
. . . and the time that he departed from England was in the end of May and he was en route 35 days before he found land, and the winds were east and northeast and the seas were smooth on the outward as well as the homeward passage, save one day when there blew up a gale, and that was two or three days before he found land; . . . and he went exploring the coast one month more or less and the abovesaid cape of tierra firma which is closest to Ireland being [passed] on the return, they arrived off the coast of Europe in 15 days. Carrying a stern wind, he arrived in Brittany because the mariners confused him, saying that he was steering too far north; and from thence he came to Bristol and went to the king to tell him the abovesaid

The rebellion of the Cornishmen, joined by the pretender Perkin Warbeck in late 1497 delayed Cabot's second voyage, but on February 3, 1498, Henry VII issued new letters patent to Cabot allowing him six ships of under two- hundred tuns each and as many Englishmen as were willing to sign on. Henry himself outfitted one ship, leaving the rest to Cabot, who came up with four more, aided by the merchants of Bristol. Cabot departed in May, one of his ships returning to Ireland in distress almost immediately. The other four disappeared, never to be heard from again. Thus ended England's second western venture.

Cabot's first voyage not only gave England a claim to North America, it also proved that the North Atlantic could provide winds for an outward as well as ahomeward voyage, if one left at certain times of the year.

Cabot's initial crossing of thirty-three days, the same as Columbus's southern crossing (though it covered fewer miles) was a record that stood for almost a century.30 However, Cabot's second voyage showed that this northern route, fraught with fog, gales, icebergs and "growlers,” was a far more dangerous undertaking than Columbus's balmy southern route. Subsequent voyages to the north, undertaken by England, France, and Portugal would prove this to be unquestionably true.

The English made many voyages into and across the Atlantic in the early years of the sixteenth century, and with each one the sailors gained more knowledge and more practical experience. But it would not be until the middle part of that century, before English ships began to take on a character of their own, leaving behind the Mediterranean- inspired designs of the Spanish and Portuguese and becoming vessels that were custom-made to withstand the rigors of the Atlantic and eventually the Pacific as well.

 

Chapter Two

Hull Design and Maintenance

George Best, the chronicler of Martin Frobisher's three voyages to the northwest during the reign of Elizabeth I, identified a "speciall cause" for England's delinquency in maritime activities. Best identified a "lacke of liberalitie in the Nobilitie." Very few members of the upper classes were willing to risk their money in dangerous enterprises that very likely would not turn a profit. Only when merchants and lesser gentry began to pool their resources in joint-stock companies, such as the Muscovy Company, would maritime activities proceed on a greater scale. No amount of money, however, could protect the sailor from the dangers of the sea. Such protection required favorable weather, knowledgeable seamen, and well- built ships. Although Elizabeth had no command over the first, she certainly had the latter two at her disposal.

Before Elizabeth's reign, England's ships were "full of Ragusans, Venetians, Genoese, Normans and retons," according to the French ambassador to England in 1540.

Indeed, the first recorded English voyage to the west, in 1497, was under the command of the Italian John Cabot. The reliance on foreign experts and literature, such as navigational manuals and rutters, marked the limits of English maritime interest and expertise during the reigns of the first two Tudors. In her book The Haven-Finding Art, E.G.R. Taylor wrote that "after Henry VIII died there were said to be three-score French pilots in England, many of them standing high in their profession," but these men were called back to France upon the accession of Henri II. Only the French Huguenot pilot Jean Ribault remained in England, kept under close supervision in the Tower of London.

Ribault, Sebastian Cabot (son of John, and formerly the Chief Pilot of Spain), and "the noble Pinteado," an exiled gentleman-pilot of Portugal, were appointed by the Duke of Northumberland to work on charts, rutters, and other necessary equipment in order that England, under Edward VI, might surpass Spain at sea. This combination of men, working at the behest of the English, was "evidence enough of the lack of English maritime skill," according to Professor Taylor.

While homegrown skill may have been lacking in England, there was no want of maritime development during the sixteenth century. In his recent work The Tudor Navy, David Loades lays to rest the traditional notion that nothing of importance happened until the reign of Elizabeth, and recent archaeological and archival work has shown that definite changes were being made in English shipbuilding as early as the reign of Henry VII.3 But to explain these changes, it is necessary first to go back to the time of Henry V.

Among the fleet of Henry V were several Italian prizes captured in Channel battles with the French in 1416-1417.

Unlike the English-built ships in Henry's fleet, these ships of Mediterranean origin were carvel-built, with edge-to-edge planking laid atop a skeleton frame. Thus they had smooth sides, which differed from the overlapped planking of the clinker-built English ships. Although both styles of construction required the use of pitch, rosin and oakum (old rope, tow or flax) to seal the planking, their method of construction was significantly different.

Clinker technology, of northern European origin, is best illustrated by the remains of Henry V's ships the Grace Dieu, found in the River Hamble, in Southampton. Each strake of that ship's planking was made from two 12-inch wide planks and one 8-inch wide plank with a combined thickness of 4 1/2 inches. The wider planks overlapped the strake below, creating a thickness of five layers. The whole assembly was fastened together with clenchnail bolts, iron spikes "driven through from the inside and clenched over circular roves (washers) on the outside." Clinker- built ships were produced with a shell-first construction in which the hull was assembled first and the framework supplied later. Ships of this construction were necessarily slower in the water because of the friction resulting from added surface area.

The addition of the swifter, carvel-built ships from the south was a definite asset to Henry's navy, but the technology needed to repair these ships was so beyond English shipwrights at the time that the Keeper of the King's Ships, William Soper, had to petition the King's Council for permission to hire foreign carpenters because "in this country there are no men who know how to repair 1488 with a clinker hull, was rebuilt carvel-style around 1509. The remains of this vessel, found at Woolwich in 1912, show adze work on the frames, which suggests that the notches for the clinker-style planking had been smoothed away "to permit alignment of the new planking edges."

Also in 1509, shipwrights began work on a new four- masted, 600-ton carrack called the Mary Rose . Evidence from the remains of this vessel, which sank in 1545 during a battle in the Solent, shows that she, too, was begun as a clinker-style vessel. Frames on the starboard quarter of the vessel show marks which indicate that they had originally been cut for lapped strakes but, like the Sovereign, had been modified for flush planking. Records indicate that the Mary Rose was extensively rebuilt in 1536. Perhaps shipwrights made the conversion then. By the time the Mary Rose sank, however, large clinker-built vessels had become passe. A state paper of that same year relates that "clinchers [are] both feeble, olde and out of faschion." In terms of hull construction, England had finally made it out of the Middle Ages.

Frame-first construction allowed shipwrights to alter the shape of their vessels in ways that had been unavailable to them before. The rounded sterns necessary with clinker construction gave way to the more commodious and more defensible flat "square tuck" sterns. In such a construction, the stern was cut almost vertically down to just above the waterline "and the side planks of the hull were fastened to a U-shaped stern frame that was planked across diagonally." A ship thus built could have guns mounted closer to the water in the stern, which previously had been the most vulnerable part of the ship. The creation of the U-shaped stern frame, or "fashion pieces," also allowed shipwrights to integrate the after castle or "somercastle" into the framework of the ship.

The conversion to carvel-built vessels around the time of Henry VIII accession was concurrent with the development of lidded gunports sometime between 1500 and 1530. The advantages of armed ships had been recognized as early as the 1330s, but just as quickly the disadvantages became obvious. At first the guns were placed in "castles” which were temporary superstructures built fore and aft (complete with crenelations) and primarily designed for the defense of the ship, as well as for the protection of officers and important passengers from the elements.

Clinker-style construction dictated that these structures could not be fully integrated into the hull tructure, since supports were added after shell construction. Although the structures could be removed from the ship to be stored for later use, their very impermanence meant that they could also be torn off the ship easily in heavy weather. Frame- first construction and the introduction of the flat stern however, allowed the forecastle and summercastle (aft) to be incorporated fully into the hull structure. Period illustrations show guns mounted in these structures with lidded ports as early as the 1490s. Likewise, large, lidded cargo ports (for loading heavy items or even horses) appear on ship's quarters as early as the mid-fifteenth century. Thus, cutting another opening into the side of a ship for a gunport would hardly seem revolutionary. The innovation (perhaps erroneously attributed to the Frenchman Descharges) in the early sixteenth century was that a shipwright was able "to work out how to place the ports without cutting the wales that provided so much of the longitudinal strength of a carvel-built hull."

 

To be followed