| Ships in 1588~1628 |
By 1588, when the Spanish armada sailed against England,
the latest type of warship had yet to be proved in battle. The last
big sea battle, at Lepanto in the Mediterranean in 1571, had been
fought between fleets of oared galleys. The new sailing galleons,
designed to fight with broadsides of cannon, were still an unknown
force.
Numbering 130 ships in all, the Spanish Armada included 20 of the
new galleons in its fighting screen of 64 "great ships"
whose task was to protect the fleet of 36 transports and 22 light
scouting craft from attack by the English fleet. The Rrmada was intended
to fight in the old style: closing and boarding with masses of soldiers.
But the English galleons fought at long range with their guns, hustling
the Armada through the Channel. The Armada suffered its heaviest losses
on its return to Spain, with over 25 ships wrecked and sunk off the
rugged west coast of Ireland.
Mayflower, the famous Pilgirm ship of the early seventeenth century,
sailed from Plymouth to New England between September 6 and November
11, 1620. A typical merchant ship of her day, Mayflower displaced
about 180 tons, measured barely 29 meters (96.5 feet )long at the
waterline, and carried 100 passengers. A replica , Mayflower II, repeated
the famous voyage in 1957.
Right years after the Mayflower voyage, the new Swedish warship Vasa
capsized and sank in Stockholm harbor on her maiden voyage. Her recovery
in 1961 gave the world its only complete specimen of an intact seventeenth
century warship. Vasa carried 64 guns on two decks, and was richly
decorated with painted and gilded carvings. |
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But 1588 England had abandoned the galleass: a sailing warship with
a lower deck of oars, armed with 50 light guns. |
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The flagship
of the Spanish Armada, San Martin, was a Portuguese galleon of 48
guns.
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Vasa was lost
in 1628 because she suffered from a serious design fault. She had
been built too narrow for her length , and carrying heavy guns on
the upper as well as the lower gun deek made her dangerously top-heavy.
France was to prove most successful at designing stable, heavily-armed
warships with the lower gun deck at a safe height above the water. |
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Spanish soldiers. In some Armada ships, soldiers outnumbered sailors
and gunners by over three to one. The smaller English ships were better
sailed and fought.
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Galleass officer and overseer with whip. The need to rest and replace
rovers meant that spare men had to be carried in the galleasses, all
of whom needed food - a waste of space which could have gone to guns
and ammunition. |
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| Pilgrim
family. Half Mayflower's passengers died during their first American
winter. |
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| Rich young
officers carried sweet-smelling pomanders to hide the many stinks
of life aboard ship. |
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| The Corgeous
carvings encrusting Vasa's stern had the Royal Arms of Sweden as their
centerpiece, as she was a royal flagship. |
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Wreck
of the galleass Girona at Dunluce, on the coast of Northern Ireland.
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