strings, 200 morris pikes, 200 bills, ten dozen lime pots, and great quantities of arrows and darts. As late as 1578,[1] there were, among the stores of Queen Elizabeth's ships, 300 bows, 380 sheaves of arrows, 460 morris pikes, and 160 bills; nor had the gun fully asserted its supremacy until several years after the time of the Armada. It should be added that in the case of the largest guns of the Tudors, the powder was made up on board into cartridges in canvas cases, paper cases being used for the charges of the medium and lighter guns. Hence the comparatively early origin of the term cartridge-paper.
No picture, print, or model of the Henry Grace à Dieu suggests to the modern technical critic that the vessel was in the least suited for sea work; yet the ship was undoubtedly a good sailer, for, writing to the king on June 4th, 1522, from the Downs, Vice-Admiral Sir William Fitzwilliam reported that she sailed as well as, and rather better than, any ship in the fleet, weathering all save the Mary Rose.
An inventory of her gear, made in 1521, shows that she possessed a 22-inch cable, a 20-inch cable, and an 8-inch hawser. Her mainstay was sixteen inches in diameter. When she was still building, the authorities paid for a streamer or pennant, fifty-one yards long, for her mainmast, a sum of £3, and for two flags; with crosses of St. George, 10d. each. These last may have been boatflags; for, of course, she carried boats, though it is not clear how she hoisted then out and in, and where she stowed them. They must have lain, possibly on chocks, on deck in the waist. The boat davit was a much later invention. Some notes as to the prices of certain gear for other ships, from records of the year 1513, may be added here: For the Trinity of Bristol, otherwise the Nicholas of Hampton, a spirit-sail yard cost 9s. (she was a craft of 200 tons); 100 feet of oak plank, 6s.; a hundredweight of small ropes, 11s. 4d.; a boathook, 4d.; a compass, 2s.; a foreyard, 14s.; and two gallons of vinegar, "to make fine powder for hand-guns," 8d. A mizzenmast for the Katherine Pomegranate, otherwise the Sweepstake, of 65 (or 80) tons, cost 10s., and an anchor for the same craft, 20s.
Contemporary literary references to naval matters of the sixteenth century are so rare, and so very few of them are attributable to writers who seem to have been at all familiar with the technical
- ↑ As shown in a list printed in Campbell, viii., from a MS. of Dr. Samuel Knight.
