a master, and threepence a day to a seaman; but some ships had more than one master. One, indeed, of the king's great ships is said incidentally to have had seven, namely, Stephen de Vel, German de la Ria, John Fitz-Sampson, Colin de Warham, Robert Galliard, and Simon Wistlegrei.[1] That particular ship appears to have carried sixty seamen or mariners, thirty of whom were furnished by Southampton and Portsmouth, and thirty by Rye;[2] but it need not be concluded from the figures that they represented the whole number of fighting men on board when the ship was on a war footing. They probably represented only the navigating detachment, and there may have been as many more soldiers, besides officers of the vessel and knights.
The usual rates of freight can be roughly estimated from the following facts:—The cost of sending the king's great ship from La Rochelle to Bordeaux with merchandise was £33 10s.[3] Three ships sent to Poitou in the king's service were paid for, one £6 12s. for thirty-eight days, another £1 11s. 9d. for nine days, and the third £1 5s. for five days; the rate thus varying from 3s. 6d. to 7s. a day, probably in proportion to the size of the ships. A person contracted to bring wine from Bordeaux to Southampton for 8s., and to Sandwich for 9s., a tun; but both charges appear to have included the cost of the wine. In May, 1227, Salekin of Dover, and John, his nephew, were paid sixty marks for the freight of their ship from Gascony to England, in the service of Richard, Count of Poitou, the king's brother; and two others were paid £60 for another ship making the same voyage.[4]
The existence of a dockyard at Portsmouth has already been touched upon. In the reign of Henry III., if not before, there were
- ↑ Close Rolls, 10 Hen. III., ii. 112.
- ↑ Ib., m. 16.
- ↑ Rotuli de Liberate, 10 Hen. III., m. 3.
- ↑ Ib., 11 Hen. III.
keel; and 40 feet in width at prow and poop. Her complement of mariners was 110, and her value was 1400 marks. The dimensions are those of a vessel between four and five hundred tons, as measured by the old system—the dimensions, that is, of a 20 or 24-gun ship of the eighteenth century, though the beam of the eighteenth-century ship was less in proportion to her length. The Roccafortis had two covered decks, the orlop being 11½ feet, and what we should call the main deck 6½ feet high. At each end was a "bellatorium" (fore or stern castle), and there were several cabins. The particulars, taken from the original contract, will be found in Jal's 'Archéologie Navale,' ii. 355. There is really no evidence that contemporary English ships were not of nearly equal size.
