The Ship of the Line: A History in Ship Models

READING

1: The Origin of the Ship of the Line

By definition, a ship of the line was one that was big and powerful enough to stand in the line of battle against anything the enemy could put alongside it, and as a ship is long and narrow, and if it is to carry a heavy armament, most of that armament must be mounted mainly on the broadsides. Therefore gun armament is essential to the whole concept. The idea of disposing ships in a single line when going into battle seems so obvious with our hindsight that one wonders why it was not instigated until ships had carried heavy guns for a century and a half. But it must be remembered that in the early days the heavy gun was not necessarily the main weapon, and at first the broadside was not supreme.

Ships had been fitted with light guns of some kind since the 1460s, but the first generation of real gun-armed warships only came with the invention of the gunport around 1500. That allowed a heavy gun to be mounted low in the ship without raising the centre of gravity, but it could be protected from enemy gunfire and rough seas by closing the ports. This generation is represented most dramatically by the remains of the Mary Rose on display at Portsmouth, and the thirty-year service of the ship tells us much about the growing importance of guns and the tactics associated with them. Her first armament list dates from 1514 when she carried a total of 78 guns, but only 5 of these were heavy. The Mediterranean galley was the first type to deploy great guns effectively armed, mounting heavy ‘basilisks’ in the bows to fire forward. Though they rarely had ideal conditions to operate in more northern waters, they did make a great impression on the English fleet in 1513. According to Edward Echyngham, ‘6 galleys and 4 foists came through part of the King’s navy, and they sank the ship that was Master Compton’s, and strake through one of the King’s new barks, which Sir Stephen Bull is captain of, in seven places, that they was within the ship had much pain to hold her above the water.’

Sailing ships could not hope to match the manoeuvrability of the galley in light winds, but one answer was to fit more heavy guns to defend the ship from any direction, especially from ahead. In 1545 naval officials had resisted Henry’s attempt to fit yet more forward-firing guns to the ageing hull of the Mary Rose. Already she had ‘over the luff two whole slings lying quarter-wise’, that is, firing forward from the castle in the bows. In addition, there were two culverins at the ‘barbican head’ or the break of the quarterdeck firing forward past the forecastle, plus two sakers on the deck above. It would not be possible to fit any more forward-firing armament without ‘the taking away of two knees and the spoiling of the clamps that beareth the bitts, which will be a great weakening to the same part of the ship.’ The guns were apparently not fitted and the Mary Rose sank while engaging French galleys in the Solent, though from accident rather than enemy action.

When she was built in 1509 the guns of the Mary Rose were probably regarded as auxiliary weapons to support boarding, but she had extra ones added, especially in the latter years of her long career which covered three wars. This drawing, by Anthony Antony, the surveyor of the ordnance, is part of a series depicting the whole of Henry VIII’s fleet and is the only known contemporary picture of her. The rigging is not very accurate, with the yards apparently set on the wrong side of the mast and shrouds. The ship is heavily decorated with paint and flags but shows little sign of any carvings. It shows heavy guns pointing from the stern and even across the waist. As it is drawn from astern as was common at the time, it does not show the forward-firing armament installed in the 1540s to give all-round protection against galley attack. The excessive weight of guns was almost certainly a major factor in her loss in 1545.

Magdalene College, Cambridge

The English adopted galleys but were never entirely happy or successful with them. Meanwhile, the Venetians developed the galleass, with the oars of a galley and a castellated superstructure fitted with guns. They had great success against the Turks at Lepanto in 1571, and also led to the Spanish galleon, a ship with good gun armament and sailing qualities. Soon they fell into the temptation of building their ships too high, while the English, under the leadership of Sir John Hawkins, produced the ‘race-built’ galleon with lower superstructure and better sailing qualities.

This generation is represented by the drawings of Matthew Baker, the leading Elizabethan shipwright. The ‘quarter frame’ system as represented by the Mary Rose is still in use, as one plan shows the classic five stations: the midships frame, two quarter frames, the stern frame and the curved stempost forward. These could be constructed and then joined by battens on the building slip so that the shapes of the other frames could be found. However, Baker has added rising lines, narrowing lines of the floor and maximum breadth which were used to draw the frames in between, rather than having to rely on battens during the actual construction. Despite the emphasis on speed, Baker’s ships tend to have fuller bows than the Mary Rose, for they were intended to carry a heavier armament forward.

Matthew Baker’s plan of a galleon of about 1586 represents the ‘race-built’ ships which fought the Spanish Armada. It shows the system of ‘quarter frames’, with (in order from the left) the stern frame, the after quarter frame, the midships frame, the forward quarter frame and the stempost, which together can be used to form the shape of the hull. It also shows the next stage in the evolution of design, with the rising and narrowing lines of floor and breadth marked on the plan. These could be used to draught the intermediate frames on paper or in a mould loft, so that the shape of the hull was draw out more precisely before construction. This would also have made it easier to make a true scale model, although no examples survive from the period. Another drawing in the series suggests that a fish form was ideally used in design, though it is not likely that would have helped the builder very much.

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So far the model had played no part in warship development, and Britain had no tradition of ‘votive’ models as placed in churches in many European countries. It would have been difficult to find adequate information to make one to scale when much of the design work was carried out on the building slip rather than the drawing office. Nevertheless, in 1572 William Bourne, a maritime writer and bitter rival of Matthew Baker, recommended the use of one-twelfth scale models to measure the displacement of a ship under construction.

For every foot in length, make the mould [model] in timber an inch in length; and for the breadth in like manner, make every foot make the other an inch, and also for every foot in deepness, that the ship swims in the water. And so consequently every part and place both of the run and way, and floor, with the quarters of the ship, to cut the mould for every foot, or part of a foot, an inch, with those parts, even as the work or mould of the ship doth run, in all points.

After that the model should be hollowed out and weights placed inside to make it float at the right level. It should be placed in a tank filled to the brim with water, and the amount displaced could be scaled up to measure the displacement of the ship. There is no evidence that such methods were used in practice.

It was Hawkins’s and Baker’s race-built ships which did much of the fighting against the Spanish Armada as it sailed up the English Channel in 1588. The English were reluctant to indulge in the traditional tactic of boarding, if only because the Spaniards were high-sided and full of soldiers. Instead they relied on gun power at quite long range. Reports are very short of any tactical detail, though there is an oblique reference to an engagement in which Drake ‘gave them his prow and his broadside; and then kept his luff …’. This is not unlike a style of attack advocated by Captain Nathaniel Boteler in 1634. After getting alongside the enemy, ‘you are to fire your bow pieces upon her, then your full broadside; and letting your ship fall off with the wind, let fly your chase pieces, all of them, and so your weather broadside. The which being done, bring your ship about, that your stern pieces may be given also.’ Boteler believed firmly that ‘It is requireable also that the bows and chases of these ships be so contrived that out of them as many guns as possible may shoot right forward.’

But in 1588 this proved less devastating than some expected, and Drake’s apology was lacking in his usual bluster. ‘If I have not performed as much as was looked for, yet I persuade myself his good Lordship will confess I have been dutiful.’ The Armada was dispersed by fireships off Calais, then fled round the north of Britain, where many ships were lost in storms.

Models were an essential part of the work of Phineas Pett, the great shipwright of the early Stuart era. As early as 1596 he made a small one for the Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley. Three years later he made one for his friend John Trevor, ‘being perfected and very exquisitely set out and rigged.’ In 1607, while building the great ship Prince Royal for King James I, he made a model for the latter’s eldest son, Prince Henry, with his own hands. It was ‘most fairly garnished with carving and painting, and placed in a frame arched, covered, and curtained with crimson taffety’. It was presented to the Lord High Admiral, who approved and took it to the prince, who had it installed in a private room in Richmond Palace. The King himself came to see it there and was ‘exceedingly delighted with the sight of the model, and spent some time questioning me the divers material things concerning the same, and demanding whether I would build the great ship in all points like the same’. Unfortunately, nothing of the model has survived, and we are reliant on paintings for our knowledge of the Prince Royal, which was launched in 1610 as the pride of James’s fleet. The only surviving model from this period is one in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It has six guns per side and two each in the bow and stern, with a long beakhead. It is not truly to scale and is probably of a small merchant ship of 1605–30, beneath the dignity of Phineas Pett.

Pett continued to use models to keep up his relations with the Royal Family after Charles I came to the throne in 1625. In 1634 he made ‘a little ship, being completely rigged and gilded, and placed upon a carriage with wheels resembling the sea’. It was given to the four-year-old Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, who ‘entertained it with a great deal of joy, being purposely made for him to disport himself withal.’ Perhaps it was the origin of Charles II’s famous love of the sea and the navy. Four days after the presentation of the model, on 26 June, King Charles came to the dockyard at Woolwich to see the ship Leopard under construction. Inside the unfinished hull of the new vessel he pulled Pett aside and acquainted him with ‘his princely resolution for the