Medieval naval warfare in the Mediterranean Sea differed little from that in ancient times, galleys still constituting the war fleets. But on the Atlantic Coast and in northern Europe, larger waves and stormier weather made the fragile, narrow galleys more difficult to use, resulting in a considerable reliance on sailing ships. As the techniques of sailing improved and mariners learned to maintain a course much nearer to the direction from which the wind blew, the galleys lost some of their
advantage as ships that could move independently of the wind. So they gradually assumed a smaller role in the north, especially as the medieval governments in that region often lacked the resources to maintain substantial fleets of vessels specialised for war. Warships increasingly depended primarily on sail, with oars as auxiliary and naval vessels more and more were merchant ships pressed into military service.
This difference meant that navies could not count on ramming. Sea fighting, usually a confused and disorganised melee, consisted entirely of boarding and the combat of soldiers. Tactics did not hinge on sailing in formation, something difficult for primitive sailing vessels in any case. The ships carried infantry, shock action predominating with bowmen providing support. Ships protected themselves from boarding with rope nets, which made the soldiers attempting to cut their way through vulnerable to both missile and shock weapons. High structures, called castles, on the bows and sterns of ships provided defensive positions and posts for the bowmen to shoot at enemy ships and boarders, and for the heavy and light infantry to defend the ends of the ship should boarders gain control of the deck between the castles. They also provided positions to support with missiles their own boarders of hostile vessels.
Although the use of clumsy sailing vessels, which, unlike galleys, could manoeuvre only with difficulty and not ram effectively, removed much of the advantage of a flank attack and made it hard to count on committing a reserve at the right time and place; dependence on the wind did not eliminate concentration as an element of tactics. A fleet to the windward of another could either refuse or delay battle or initiate it by sailing down wind upon its opponent. Because of the difficulty of sailing ships against the direction of the wind, the leeward fleet could not readily take the
initiative against one to the windward. Naval commanders thus sought the windward positions and often attempted to bring their whole fleet against a portion of the hostile fleet, planning to
overwhelm it before the remainder could come upwind to its rescue. In general, though, fleets usually fought in unorganised masses, coming alongside their antagonists for the boarding combat.
On one occasion an English fleet intercepted an invading force, and the English captain made double use of his windward position. As he sailed down wind and came close to the heavily manned hostile flagship, the English captain had his men throw lime into the wind, which then blew onto the enemy ship, blinding the soldiers and sailors and making it easy for the English to come alongside and capture the ship and its crew.
Thus two kinds of sea warfare coexisted in medieval times, the largely galley warfare in the Mediterranean and the predominantly sailing warfare in the Atlantic and north. The advent of cannon, which wrought no permanent change in land warfare, profoundly influenced sea warfare
and favoured the sailing ship over the galley. Initially sea-fighters merely substituted gunpowder weapons for bows, as did warriors on land. The castles of merchant ships and the few specially built warships carried numbers of small cannon as antipersonnel weapons. These provided better support for the heavy infantry and, because they did not need to be portable, usually had greater power than arquebuses and Spanish muskets.
Yet these changes, analogous to those on land, altered sea warfare no more than the substitution of the matchlock for the crossbow had modified land warfare. But carrying to sea-cannon comparable to some of those used in sieges did bring about a revolution in sea warfare. These large guns could attack and seriously damage the structure of ships just as they harmed the masonry walls of
medieval fortifications and provided a weapon system in some ways analogous to the ram of the galleys. Not only did guns attack the buoyancy of ships and damage the rigging, but also when a cannonball pierced the side of a wooden vessel, it showered the interior of the ship with splinters that wounded the sailors and soldiers aboard the ship.
A ship could carry twenty, thirty, or even more cannon on each side, all firing a ball weighing nine pounds or more. This necessary arrangement of the guns changed ship-to-ship combat from the bow-to-bow of galleys to a broadside-to-broadside array. In spite of the vulnerability of the side of a slowly sailing ship to the ram of the galley, the new cannon-armed ships could vanquish the galleys of the Mediterranean. A salvo of twenty to thirty heavy cannonballs usually inflicted so much damage on a fragile, lightly built galley that one broadside disabled it.
But this new naval warfare did more than doom galleys. It also largely abolished the infantry combat of the soldiers and sailors on ships locked together for this purpose. A major naval
campaign signalled the transition to artillery warfare at sea when the Spanish sent a large armada of ships against England.
In the summer of 1588 more than 100 Spanish ships entered the English Channel with the purpose of covering an invasion of England by the army in the Spanish part of the Netherlands, a force led by the redoubtable Duke of Parma. Because a cooperating Dutch fleet blockaded the Duke’s army, the diversion provided by the Spanish armada availed Parma nothing. The English, with a
somewhat larger fleet, waited to engage the Spaniards.
The Spanish naval commander, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, did not resemble Parma. His principal qualification to lead the armada (that he was one of the richest men in Europe) meant he could help defray the costs of the expedition, and King Phillip II appointed him in spite of Medina Sidonia’s accurate protestations of ignorance of sea warfare and his excuse that he was always seasick.
Baron Howard of Effingham commanded the English fleet. A capable politician, diplomat, cavalry commander, and seasoned sailor, he planned to avoid a pitched battle with the Spanish armada.
Howard had experienced seamen as subordinates, among them Sir Francis Drake, the brilliant privateer, Martin Frobisher, an explorer, and John Hawkins, a former privateer and a proficient naval administrator.
The Spanish armada, which carried 18,000 soldiers, had larger ships, half of them displacing more than 500 tons. The English fleet, with about 5,000 soldiers aboard, had much smaller ships, almost all of them displacing less than 500 tons. These differences, which reflected the Spanish reliance on the traditional boarding tactics and the English doctrine of depending on cannon fire, meant that the English ships possessed greater manoeuvrability than the taller, larger Spanish vessels.
The English vessels carried 1,972 guns, compared with only 1,124 on the Spanish armada. Almost all of the English cannon consisted of culverin, a long gun firing a 17-pound metal ball. The
Spaniards had larger guns, many firing a less effective 25-pound stone shot. Spanish predominance in guns depended on their 163 heavy cannon to only 55 mounted in the English fleet. Firing a
50-through ships at short range. Nevertheless, Spanish naval tactics relied primarily on boarding by the greater numbers of their excellent infantry, supported by over 1,000 small, antipersonnel guns mounted largely in the bow and stern castles of their ships.
When the fleets met, the English had the windward position and exploited it when groups of English ships approached the armada in line ahead and, as they passed, fired their broadsides at the Spanish ships. The Spanish ships, which still used the line abreast formation characteristic of galley fighting, could make only an inadequate reply. But the English did little damage because, wary of the heavy Spanish cannon, they kept their range long, which rendered their fire inaccurate and the impact velocity of the culverin shot low. Nevertheless, the English secured far more hits and inflicted on the Spaniards losses in personnel and morale.
The more manoeuvrable English ships easily followed Howard’s strategy of avoiding Spanish efforts to close and use their boarding tactics and the shock action of their larger numbers of fine infantry. The engagement had much in common with the successful attack of the nimble, javelin-armed peltasts on the heavier hoplites, who could never close for shock action.
This combat continued for over a week as the Spaniards moved through the channel. Both fleets had exhausted most of their ammunition, but when the English had partially replenished theirs from shore and realised the Spaniards no longer had any 5o-pound balls for their big guns, the English closed the range. Without fear of the Spaniards’ boarding their more agile vessels, the English ships came close to the Spaniards and, with the higher velocity of the diminished distance, repeatedly pierced the Spanish ships. During this combat at short range, the Spaniards suffered 6oo killed, 800 wounded, and the impairment of the seaworthiness of many of their vessels.
Thwarted in his effort to open the way for Parma and unwilling to face headwinds or again to brave the English fleet in the channel, the Duke of Medina Sidonia led the Spanish armada and its
damaged ships back to Spain on a stormy and ill-supplied voyage around Scotland and Ireland during which the Duke lost over half of his ships. The stress of this naval campaign and the arduous return voyage greyed Medina Sidonia’s hair at the age of thirty-eight.
The success of the English in relying on the missiles of their powerful ship-borne artillery signalled the full emergence of a new type of naval warfare, which had developed slowly during the century.
The missiles of the artillery had replaced the shock action of ships and men in sea combat.
The transition from the narrow, shallow-draft galley to the broad and deep sailing ship also had a major effect on the logistics of naval operations. Since command of the sea depended on bases from which the ships could receive supplies and obtain repairs, the adoption of the sturdy, large-capacity sailing ship had a marked effect on the range of naval operations, the new ships’ greater cargo-carrying capacity vastly increasing the distance from their bases at which they could operate.
For example, a large sailing warship could remain at sea for three to five months without needing to replenish food and water. This greater endurance and consequent independence of ports increased the ratio of naval force to space.
Nevertheless, the slow and the uncertain rate at which wind-propelled warships sailed meant that they still required bases adjacent to their zone of operations because of the time needed to return to a port for supply and maintenance and again resume their stations. Since bases relatively distant from the theatre of operations meant proportionately fewer ships available to control a given area of the sea, ships comparatively near a source of supply would permit a smaller number of ships to maintain the same size squadron on the station in the combat zone.
So, navies still needed friendly ports capable of supplying food and water and carrying out repairs close to their zone of operations. When conducted against an opponent inferior in force but anxious to leave his base, operations by the stronger navy at too great a distance from its own base could render it the weaker or compel it to exercise only an intermittent command of that part of the sea.
Yet, compared with galley fleets, the new sailing ships revolutionised the logistic capabilities and strategic range of navies. Back