SHIPS AND SEAMEN 



built into the ship instead of being more or less independent structures, 

 and the rig soon became very much more elaborate. It was the galleon 

 type, adapted to British requirements by a general tendency to make 

 it lower in the water, faster and handier than the Spaniards', that 

 became the standard of British design, and right down to the end of 

 the seventeenth century it was really only a matter of steadily develop- 

 ing this along what seemed and proved to be practical lines. 



Discipline on Shipboard. 



The punishments laid down under the Laws of Oleron already 

 mentioned give a vivid insight into the life on shipboard at that time 

 and we have full information of what things were like in the fifteenth 

 century. Flogging was general, even for swearing, and under many 

 flags the punishment for theft was to be tarred and feathered and then 

 to run the gauntlet of the whole crew, to be finally dismissed the ship 

 more dead than alive. The Spaniards prescribed a similar punish- 

 ment for gamblers, although it appears to have had little effect in stop- 

 ping the trouble. No better result came from the power of the 

 Admiralty to cut out offenders' tongues. Keel-hauling was a quite 

 usual punishment which grew from the still older one of ducking in the 

 sea, and one must remember how foul and barnacled most ships were 

 to realise in full the terrors of being dragged under the ship's keel with 

 a rope. 



The Construction and Repair of Ships. 



In the early days it was customary to build a ship wherever a stretch 

 of the river bank appeared to be advantageous for the purpose, when 

 a slip was constructed which might not be used for more than the single 

 vessel. So it was that the Great Harry founded Woolwich Dockyard, 

 for she was laid down in an open space near Erith where there was no 

 vestige of an establishment. A large number of nobles and prelates 

 contributed the material to her construction and as some of this material 

 was very expensive, steps were taken to protect it. Then quarters and 

 mess-rooms were erected for the shipwrights, who were then fed by the 

 State, and so the dockyard grew up around the slip that had been only 

 intended for the construction of one vessel. 



As regards repairs the earliest way was to bring a ship to a suitable 

 spot at the top of a spring tide, haul her as far as possible up the bank, 

 and, when she had made a berth for herself, to build a dam round her 

 stern as elaborately as might be convenient. The famous first dry dock 

 which Henry VII built at Portsmouth cost, according to the accounts, 

 £193 Os. 6fd., and was little more than a basin which was closed by 

 two gates with the space between them filled in with clay and rubbish. 

 Undocking a ship was a tedious business and on one occasion it is 

 reported that it took twenty men twenty-nine days, working day and 

 night v/henever the tide suited, to clear the entrance and release the 

 vessel. 



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