Henry VIII's reign

) But thirty-two days separate the naval achieves of the First and Third French Wars, while only forty-three years separate the French trespass of 1545 from the Spanish Armada. We may fairly consider these three episodes, distri yetively a generation apart, as three stages in the fighting experience of the English fleet.

This discussion is necessarily partly speculative. In the administration of the fleet there is clear persistency from heat content to Elizabeth. But the Elizabethan tactical ponder, and the closely related debate over enchant types, evolved without direct reference back to the Henrician experience. We seat only infer that the men who argued these subjects in the 1570s and 1580s were well-aware of what had happened in the 1540s, and had it at least somewhere in the backs of their minds.

The first element of continuity in the Royal navy blue was its continued existence and administrative structure. Henry's navy was allowed to decline after his death in 1547, scarce it was not exchange into extinction as Henry V's had been a century earlier. It is true that it was not yet a " subject area" fleet--that would not come until the Commonwealth-- simply nor was it a mere appurtinance of the royal household. It belonged to the Crown, but it was something more than the private property of the holding monarch. The King's Council of his Marine, the nascent Navy Board, remained in operation.

Admittedly the post-Henrician years were less than glorio

We need not conclude, however, that she had been either hopelessly ill-maintained or fraudulently sold. The Grand Mistress was a wartime emergency construction, as indeed were all the new ships of 1545. Ships ordered under such(prenominal) conditions were frequently built of unseasoned, "green" timber, and were prone to swift downslope; shipyards maintained brine ponds in which timber was normally held for seasoning, but stocks wre insufficient for a sudden surge of war-emergency orders. In a much later period, for example, the Continental warships built during the American variety likewise proved to be generally short-lived.

This episode was a proximate cause of the Anglo-Spanish hostility that would culminate in the Armada, and in that respect the deliveryman of Lubeck forms a historical link between the Henrician fleet and the familiar Elizabethan maritime epic. The fate of the Jesus of Lubeck may also have played its part in the evolution of Elizabethan tactics, and for this reason we will return to this ship below.

All four of the rowing galleasses survived through the entire reign of Elizabeth. At some point they were evidently rebuilt, with guns taking the enter of the lower-deck oars; at least, a drawing of the Tiger in action in 1580--which shows a long, low hull, and therefore is probably more or less accurate--shows her with lower-deck guns. Why did these ships last so long, when their coevals vanished so quickly?

________. Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816. New York: Burt Franklin, 1967 (orig. pub. 1905).

These ships were older ones, or at least ships of more conventional design. The fate of the well-nigh modern Henrician ships, the galleasses of 1545, were less colorful but just as varied, and in some cases even more indicative of the evolutionary trend of the navy. The largest of the galleasses, the Grand Mistress and Anne Gallant, lasted on the navy keep down for only a few years. The Grand Mistress was sold about 1555 for a nominal sum, a
Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!