1512.]
BATTLE OFF BREST.
451
Brandon,[1] with Sir Henry Guildford.[2] In each case both officers were called captain; so that in the arrangement we may distinguish a foreshadowing of the modern practice of appointing a commander as well as a captain to a large man-of-war. Other captains in the fleet were Sir Anthony Oughtred, Sir Edward Echyngham, and William Sydney.[3]
Howard, with his reinforced fleet, made the mouth of Camaret Bay on August 10th, just as the French fleet of thirty-nine sail was coming out. Grafton, his spelling modernised, shall continue the story.
"When the Englishmen," he says, "perceived the French navy to be out of Brest Haven, then the Lord Admiral was very joyous; then every man prepared according to his duty, the archers to shoot, the gunners to loose, the men of arms to fight. The pages went to the topcastle with darts. Thus, all things being provided and set in order, the Englishmen approached towards the Frenchmen, which came fiercely forward, some leaving his anchor, some with his foresail only, to take the most advantage; and when they were in sight, they shot ordnance so terribly together that all the sea coast sounded of it. The Lord Admiral made with the great ship of Dieppe, and chased her still. Sir Henry Guildford and Sir Charles Brandon, being in the Sovereign, made with the great carrack of Brest" (Marie la Cordelière) "and lay stem to stem with the carrack; but by negligence of the master, or else by smoke of the ordnance, or otherwise, the Sovereign was cast at the stern of the carrack, with which advantage the Frenchmen shouted for joy; but when Sir Thomas Knyvett, which was ready to have boarded the great ship of Dieppe, saw that the Sovereign had missed the carrack which Sir Henry Oughtred chased hard at the stern and bowged" (rammmed) "her in divers places, and set afire her powder as some say, suddenly the Regent grappled with her along board; and when they of the carrack perceived that they could not depart, they let slip an anchor, and so with the stream the ships turned, and the carrack was on the weather side, and the Regent on the lee side. The fight was very cruel, for the archers of the English part, and the crossbows of the French part, did their uttermost; but, for all that, the Englishmen entered the carrack, which seeing, a varlet gunner, being desperate, put fire in the gunpowder, as others say, and set the whole ship of fire, the flame whereof set fire in the Regent; and so these two noble ships, which were so grappled together that they could not part, were consumed by fire. The French navy, perceiving this, fled in all haste, some to Brest, and some to the isles adjoining. The English, in manner dismayed, sent out boats to help them in the Regent; but the fire was so great that no man dared approach; saving that, by the James, of Hull, were certain Frenchmen that could swim saved. This burning of the carrack was happy for the French navy, or else they had been better assailed of the Englishmen, which were so amazed with this chance that they followed them not. The captain of this carrack was Sir Piers Morgan, and with him nine hundred men
- ↑ Created Viscount Lisle in 1513, and Duke of Suffolk in 1511. He was also a K.G. He died in 1545.
- ↑ Son of Sir Richard Guildford, of Hemsted, who had been Master of the Ordnance under Henry VII. Sir Henry died a K.G., 23 Henry VIII.
- ↑ Sydney, who was knighted at about this time, became chamberlain and steward to Henry VIII., and died at the end of the reign of Edward VI.
