Henry VIII, Part Seven

Henry VIII has been called 'the father of the English navy,' and for good reason. The Tudor Dynasty as a whole advanced England’s nautical state-of-affairs, implementing changes that led to the establishment of a permanent navy and laying the foundations for the future Royal Navy. The full-rigged ship that appeared during the Tudor Era was one of the greatest technological advances of the 16th century, and it permanently transformed the nature of naval warfare. By 1573 English shipwrights were introducing innovative designs that enabled ships to carry heavy guns, maneuver better, and sail faster. During the Middle Ages, ‘warships’ – which were, for the most part, merchant ships seized by the crown for military operations – operated by coming alongside one another and pouring soldiers onto the opposing decks. The medieval goal of naval warfare was to simulate a land battle on the decks of ships; the early modern goal was to stand off at a distance and fire broadsides in the hope of crippling or sinking enemy vessels. By the end of Tudor Era in the early 17th century, Spain and France had stronger fleets, but England was catching up. 

The emergence of the Tudor Navy began during the reign of Henry VIII’s father. While Henry VIII’s naval reforms focused on warfare, his father’s priority was trade. Henry VII fostered sea power by building larger merchant vessels and investing in bigger dockyards. He supported an act from 1831 that stated goods could only be exported and imported in ships belonging to the king’s subjects, a rule that would prevail throughout early modern England (though rigorously enforced only at times). When Henry VIII became king, he inherited only seven small warships from his father; by 1513 he’d added two dozen more, building a naval fleet that had never been seen in the British Isles. That year he orchestrated a naval ‘parade’ down the Thames: twenty-four ships led by the 1600 ton Henry Imperial, the ensemble carrying five thousand combat marines and three thousand sailors. When Henry’s first war with France broke out, his newly-built fleet dominated the outnumbered French; the French were forced back to their home ports, and the English took control of the Channel while blockading Brest. This new fleet – Henry’s pride and joy – signaled a new era in English warfare, and the king kept up the pace: by the end of his reign, the English navy boasted nearly sixty ships (forty-six warships and thirteen galleys) equipped and ready to defend the English coast and exert control over the Channel.

The Dockyard at Deptford

Henry VIII took a more ambitious approach to the navy than his father. His father had increased the size and power of merchant vessels, but these ships weren’t primarily designed for fighting on the seas. As the French and Spanish increased their military navies, Henry knew it was time for England to follow suit. England, after all, was an island nation; it only made sense for them to have a powerful fleet to defend against attacks seaborne attacks. He preached the need for an ‘Army of the Sea’ to defend the English coast, and he initiated a daunting building of a proper navy by commissioning royal shipyards at Woolwich and Deptford. His main focus was maintaining control of the English Channel; whoever controlled the Channel, be it England or France, had the upper-hand in being better suited to both repelling and launching invasions. As Henry’s reign lengthened, the navy grew larger: twenty-six ships were purchased fully built, an additional thirteen joined the fleet due to being captured from enemy combatants, and he purchased others from premiere Italian and Hanseatic shipbuilders. Most of his ships could hold two hundred sailors, one hundred eighty-five soldiers, and thirty gunners. Beyond building and commissioning new ships, Henry organized the navy as a permanent force with a permanent administrative and logistical structure funded by taxes and overseen by the newly-minted Navy Board. He founded dockyards, planted trees for shipbuilding, and set up a school for navigation. He designated the roles of officers and sailors and closely monitored the construction of warships and their guns. He fostered naval architects who perfected the Italian technique of mounting guns in the waist of the ship, thus lowering the center of gravity and making a better platform. Henry also initiated cannon foundries in England; by the late Elizabethan age, English iron workers used blast furnaces to produce cast-iron cannons that, while nowhere near as durable as bronze cannons, were cheaper to make and thus able to be more easily outfitted in ships. Henry funded these measures by misappropriating taxes and using money seized from monasteries during the English Reformation. Henry’s burgeoning navy would pay dividends not only in repelling a French invasion at the Battle of the Solent but also by enhancing England’s prestige. 

Henry's flagship, The Mary Rose, which sank in 1544 at
The Battle of the Solent

Two particular ships of Henry’s navy are worth mentioning. The Mary Rose, built between 1509 and 1511, was Henry’s personal flagship and the first true English gunship of the royal fleet. She was Henry’s crown jewel, but he was unnerved when she was outdone by Scotland’s Great Michael, which displaced twice the tonnage of The Mary Rose. Henry countered Scotland’s rival ship by commissioning the Henry Grace a Dieu, later known as Great Harry. Launched in 1514, she was, like The Mary Rose, equipped with gunports and heavy bronze cannons. The Great Harry was the first English two-decker, and she carried an impressive compliment of firepower: twenty-one heavy bronze guns, one hundred thirty iron guns, and one hundred barrel guns. The shipbuilding tug-of-war between England and Scotland opened the door to a new kind of naval warfare; the Great Michael, Mary Rose, and Great Harry were the precursors to the ‘ship of the lines’ built in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. 

a cutaway of The Great Harry, England's largest ship
during the reign of Henry VIII

Most of the Tudor Navy’s ships weren’t as grandiose as those mentioned above, and a ‘tour de force’ through the evolution of European fighting ships is telling. In 1470, fifteen years before Henry VII brought an end to the Wars of the Roses by seizing the English throne, the main ‘fighting ship’ was a design of Spain and Portugal called the Caravel. Caravels were basically enhanced fishing vessels with a small stern castle, a quarter deck, and a poop deck (but no forecastle); they displaced around eighty to one hundred tons and were traditionally used as merchant ships. Two of Christopher Columbus’ ships were Caravels. Another type of Caravel, the Redunda, differed from the typical Caravel by the use of square rather than lateen sails. At the same time as Spain and Portugal’s Caravels, the English were using Carracks. Carracks had high masts with a massive main sail; the hull was deep and round with a high forecastle and a framework for an awning. The stern castle was placed high with a poop deck supported on wooden pillars. A barrel on the side of the ship was used for storing salted meat. Five small cannons were placed in the stern castle, and a small swivel gun was placed in the mizzen top. The Great Mary was a Tudor Carrack. By 1520, during the early reign of Henry VIII, Carracks began to be outdone by ‘Tudor Galleons’ called ‘Great Ships.’ These were titanic, impressive ships with many decks, large sails with top- and gallant-sails, and numerous cannon ports (such as was the case with the Great Harry). Most nations with a coastline had a ‘Great Ship’ of some sort if only as a showpiece; over time, however, as technology advanced, ‘Great Ships’ became less about showing prestige than about carrying the battle. It’s during the emergence of the Great Ships that carrying heavy guns and firing through open ports originated in naval warfare. 

clockwise from upper left: a Spanish Caravel, a Spanish Caravel Rotunda,
a Tudor Great Ship, and a Tudor Carrack

Henry’s first two successors – his son Edward VI and first daughter Queen Mary – didn’t pay much attention to the English navy. They saw it merely as a deterrent of foreign invasion. When Mary married Philip II of Spain, English shipwrights were able to examine the infamous Spanish galleons and implement sophisticated Spanish shipbuilding techniques in the English navy. The lessons learned would play a crucial role for the reign of the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth shared her father’s belief that naval strength couldn’t be slighted; when she ascended the throne in 1559, the navy consisted of thirty-nine ships grouped into five categories (a foreshadowing of the rating system that would be used in the Royal Navy), and Elizabeth maintained a steady building rate to bolster those numbers higher. It was a good thing she did, too: her staunch Protestantism meant that the good relations between England and Spain during the reign of her predecessor were a thing of the past. Protestant England and Catholic Spain set their teeth against one another, and Elizabeth made waves by supporting the piratical ‘Sea Dogs’ who preyed on Spanish merchant ships carrying gold and silver from the New World. Tensions with Spain ratcheted up year after year until they boiled over in 1587: her support of English pirates and the Raid on Cadiz in 1587 – in which the infamous Drake destroyed dozens of Spanish ships – led to outright war. The Spanish resolved to invade England, and to this end they launched the Spanish Armada. In 1588 the English navy, built up and perfected by Elizabeth, foiled Spain’s plans. After a running battle that lasted a week, the Spanish ships (or, at least, those that remained) limped southward to return, battered and broken, to their home ports. Though many factors played a part in the Spanish disaster, the poor design of Spanish cannons meant they were much slower in reloading in a close range battle, allowing the English to seize the upper-hand.

the Battle of the Spanish Armada 1588