Chapter VI · THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SAILING SHIP FROM THE TIME OF HENRY VII. TO THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH (1485-1603). (continued 2)

Unhappily for the navigators, but luckily for us, their big ship stuck fast in the ice and remained there. Anxious, therefore, to return to Holland with the approach of summer, they determined to attempt the journey in open boats. Now much as we sympathise with the sufferings of these brave men, this unfortunate incident of an abandoned ship has given us a picture of the men engaged in adding raised gunwales to their small boats and afterwards sailing across the sea. Hitherto in this history of the sailing ship, except when we spoke of the lateen, we have always had in mind the squaresail rig. Its virtues never grow old when utilised for big ships and deep-sea sailing. But for small craft and for handiness there is nothing to beat what is known as the fore and aft rig. Just exactly when the fore and aft rig originated is not possible to determine, although its rise and influence have been since very powerful, especially in the modern yacht and fishing vessel. But it may be taken as practically certain that the sloop rig (by which I mean a vessel with a peaked mainsail and a triangular headsail), like many other good points of ship development, came from the Low Countries during the first half of the sixteenth century. In a map[92] sent in 1527 from Seville, in Spain, by M. Robert Thorne to Doctor Ley we see a Dutch-like sloop depicted. A map of Ireland of 1567 contains two vessels of this rig. H. C. Vroom, whom we referred to above as the designer of the House of Lords tapestries, painted a picture entitled The Arrival at Flushing of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1586. The date of Vroom’s birth was 1566. Now this picture shows about half a dozen small vessels rigged exactly like the small boat given in Hulsius. This rig consists of a triangular sail hoisted up the forestay, and with a mainsail having no boom or gaff, but a large sprit across; in fact, exactly resembling the rig of the Thames “stumpey” barge to-day. It was only at a later date that the jib was added to the foresail and a topsail to the sprit mainsail. The other small boat given in Hulsius is shown square-rigged, with one course on her main and the same on her fore, but the latter mast is stepped very far forward and right at the bows. The design of the latter boat’s hull shows the remnant of the Viking influence, which is not obliterated even in the modern Dutch schuyt. It should be mentioned also that the cutter-rigged boat in Hulsius just alluded to has a yard-tackle coming down from the top of the mast to about the middle of the sprit, while from the peak of the sail two vangs lead down aft, just as in the modern barge.

Before we close this eventful period we must not omit to mention the East India Company, which ranks after the Armada and the Battle of Lepanto as the most important item to be reckoned with in connection with the development of the sailing ship. Formed by a company of merchant-adventurers to trade to the East Indies, Elizabeth granted its charter in 1600: its first fleet consisted of the Red Dragon (600 tons and 200 men), the Hector (300 tons and 100 men), the Ascension (200 tons and 80 men), and the Susan (240 tons and 80 men), together with a deep-sea pinnesse of 100 tons with 40 men.

The Tudor period had seen the most wonderful innovations and developments in connection with the sailing ship. Under no period had it altered so much or in so short a space of time. Not, indeed, until we come to the middle of the nineteenth century did the sea witness such original craft voyaging across its surface. But let us see now what happened during the reigns of the Stuarts and their successors.