THE CHANNEL PIRATES. 275 



Next year we read of Henry preparing to again attack France. The enemy had 

 ir. creased their naval force by hiring a number of Genoese and other Italian vessels. The 

 king sent a preliminary force against them under his kinsman, the Earl of Huntingdon, 

 who, near the mouth of the Seine, succeeded in sinking three and capturing three of the 

 great Genoese carracks, taking the Admiral Jacques, the Bastard of Bourbon, " and as much 

 money as would have been half a year's pay for the whole fleet." These prizes were 

 brought to Southampton, "from whence the king shortly set forth with a fleet of 1,500 

 ships, the sails of his own vessel being of purple silk, richly embroidered with gold." The 

 remainder of Henry's brief reign for he died the same year is but the history of a 

 series of successes over his enemies. 



It must never be forgotten that the navies of our early history were not perma- 

 nently organised, but drawn from all sources. A noble, a city or port, voluntarily or 

 otherwise, contributed according to the exigencies of the occasion. As we shall see, it 

 is to Henry VIII. that we owe the establishment of a Royal Navy as a permanent 

 institution. In 1546 King Henry's vessels are classified according to their " quality," 

 thus: "ships/' "galleases/' "pynaces," "roe-barges." A list bearing date in 1612 

 exhibits the classes as follows : " Shipps royal," measuring downwards from 1,200 to 800 

 tons; "middling shipps," from 800 to 600 tons; "small shipps," 350 tons; and pinnaces, 

 from 200 to 80 tons. According to the old definition, a ship was defined to be a "large 

 hollow building, made to pass over the seas with sails/' without reference to size or quality. 

 Before the days of the Great Harry, few, if any, English ships had more than one mast or 

 one sail ; that ship had three masts, and the Henri Grace cle Dien, which supplanted her, 

 four. The galleas was probably a long, low, and sharp-built vessel, propelled by oars as well 

 as by sails; the latter probably not fixed to the mast or any standing yard, but hoisted 

 from the deck when required to be used, as in the lugger or felucca of modern days. 

 The pinnace was a smaller description of galleas, while the row-barge is sufficiently 

 explained by its title. 



The history of the period following the reign of Henry V. has much to do with 

 shipping interests of all kinds. The constant wars and turbulent times gave great 

 opportunity for piracy in the Channel and on the high seas. Thus we read of 

 Hannequin Leeuw, an outlaw from Ghent, who had so prospered in piratical enterprises 

 that he got together a squadron of eight or ten vessels, well armed and stored. He not 

 only infested the coast of Flanders, and Holland, and the English Channel, but scoured the 

 coasts of Spain as far as Gibraltar, making impartial war on any or all nations, and styling 

 himself the " Friend of God, and the enemy of all mankind." This pirate escaped the 

 vengeance of man, but at length was punished by the elements : the greater part of 

 his people perished in a storm, and Hannequin Leeuw disappeared from the scene. Shortly 

 afterwards we find the Hollanders and Zeelanders uniting their forces against the Easterling 

 pirates, then infesting the seas, and taking twenty of their ships. "This action," says 

 Southey, "was more important in its consequences than in itself; it made the two provinces 

 sensible, for the first time, of their maritime strength, and gave a new impulse to that 

 spirit of maritime adventure which they had recently begun to manifest." Previously a 

 voyage to Spain had been regarded as so perilous, that " whoever undertook it settled his 



