Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
The following excerpt is from England’s Medieval Navy, 1066-1509, by Susan Rose.
War at Sea
Despite the fact that the most usual service provided to the crown of England by the navy of England was the transport of men and war material to the scene of conflict, occasions did, of course, arise when an engagement with the enemy at sea became unavoidable. How did these fleets largely composed of merchant ships with crews that, on the surface, had little experience of this kind of situation and no training acquit themselves in a war situation? What weapons were to hand? Was there any general understanding of the way in which a battle at sea should be fought? Was there any discussion of the nature of war at sea, or a code of conduct comparable to the chivalric code which had some influence on the conduct of armies and knights when fighting on land?
The idea of a just war was well understood in this period and applied generally to all forms of conflict. In the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, war might only be undertaken by the authority of a ruler and in a just cause, that is, to right a wrong. It should also be fought out of a desire to bring about some good end, not in a spirit of revenge or for gain.
(…)
Writings on War at Sea
The points about the need for a just cause and the avoidance of mercenary motives before going to war, and about the need to restrain pillage and truce-breaking, made with some force by writers like the author of the Tree of Battles, were problematic in the context of war at sea at this period. Monarchs undoubtedly saw themselves as fighting for a righteous cause, but there is room to doubt whether individual shipowners and masters saw things in quite the same light. The possibility of gain in the form of a prize cargo or a prize ship was often present. Events on the high seas, moreover, were often beyond the reach of any royal authority or royal court. Theorising of this nature, therefore, does not seem to have had much effect on war at sea.
There were clearly great difficulties in enforcing even a modicum of laws about such matters as truce-breaking in a period when communications were slow and often interrupted, and the self-interest of a shipowner or master could take precedence over the letter of the law. The frequency and the vehemence of recorded complaints about robbery at sea by those who lost valuable property give some idea of the size of the problem. It is, however, very difficult to disentangle possibly legitimate actions authorised by the monarch from out-and-out lawbreaking. The violence of some attacks also makes it unlikely that any codes of chivalric conduct had an influence in the rough and lawless environment of many seamen.
The Black Book of the Admiralty, of which the oldest manuscripts date from the early fifteenth century but which contains even earlier material, includes among the articles relating to what the ‘admiral is to doe in tyme of war at sea or land’, the statement that ‘noe man be soe bold as to robb or pillage the holy church nor to ravish any woman upon paine of death’. The articles then go on to give directions about the division of prizes between the Crown, the admiral and individual ships’ companies.
(…)
Discussion of the most effective way to wage war and organise military forces was also a feature of the later middle ages. Much of this discussion was based on Vegetius’ De Re Militari, written at the very end of the fourth century.
The work was translated into both French and English in the late thirteenth century, was incorporated by other writers into their works, and even appeared in verse. One particularly notable adaptation was that by Christine de Pisan in her Livre des Faits et Bonnes Meurs de Sage Charles V, written in 1404. This included her suggestion that, in a sea battle, sailors who were good at swimming underwater should be provided with sharp instruments to make holes in the enemy ships, causing them to sink.
(…)
Vegetius’ own recommendations were perhaps either obvious to a good commander, or too closely tied to the style of galley warfare usual in the Mediterranean of his day to be very useful to later commanders in northern waters. Using scouts to try and find out the preparedness of the enemy, as he recommends, or linking ships with grapnels in a boarding action seem very much like ‘best practice’ to use a modern phrase. Other recommendations like the hurling of containers of lime or soft soap onto an enemy’s deck to make then slippery have left no trace in any medieval records, except in the chronicle accounts of one or two battles. There is a suspicion that this was what a chronicler felt should appear in an account of a naval battle rather than any actual event.
Image 1 Caption: This graphic image makes clear the ferocity of fighting at sea between vessels grappled together. (British Library)
Image 2 Caption: An image from the mid thirteenth century showing an attack on a town. (Corpus Christi, Cambridge)
Image 3 Caption: The battle of Sluys, the most renowned sea battle fought before 1500. (British Library)
To learn more about England’s Medieval Navy, click here.
For media inquiries, please contact Jacqui Davis.
No comments yet.