During the late 15th and even more so during the 16th century, the experience of sailors during naval warfare changed considerably. Before the invention of naval artillery, sailors and officers usually won battles in the open sea only by close hand-to-hand combat. The main alternative was ramming a vessel broadside, a very risky maneuver. Before the invention of gunpowder, medieval war machines could be used to sling or catapult projectiles against the decks of enemy ships during naval encounters near shore. On the open sea, smaller war machines could be used from the attacking vessel. If burning pitch was hurled, it could burn the sailors as well as set part of the ship on fire. In the days of sailing vessels, a ship was disabled if the rigging and sails were severely damaged. Catapulted rocks could jeopardize a ship, but the damage to individual enemy sailors was limited. On the open water, an attacking ship had to row or sail close enough to an enemy ship to toss grappling hooks against the rails, then haul the ship alongside to board it for combat. With the pitching and tossing of ships in the open sea, arrows were usually less effective than on land. Sailors often had to fight aboard the enemy ship, with daggers, swords, clubs, and other medieval types of weaponry. One group of attackers was often assigned to search the captain’s cabin and the bridge for maps and sailing charts. When an attack was imminent, some captains tossed their maps into the sea rather than risk their being seized and used by the enemy. The Portuguese, for example, were famous for destroying their sailing charts in the face of an attack.
Naval artillery consisted of large carriage-mounted cannons. Although cannons had been used in naval warfare as early as the 14th century, they required heavy, awkward mounts on the main deck of a ship. This location made smaller ships top heavy and exposed both the artillery and sailors operating it during bombardment. Not until the early 16th century did military engineers devise a better method for installing naval artillery. Gun decks were added, closer to the waterline for better stability, along with gun ports through which the weapons could be discharged. The main disadvantage was that if a ship with cannons close to the waterline was damaged and began to sink, water could pour in through the gun ports and the weight of the weaponry could drag the ship underwater. This happened to the English vessel Mary Rose in 1545 while engaged in battle with the French near the coast of Portsmouth. Most naval artillery during the Renaissance was made of iron and fired stones or pieces of iron. Bronze cannons were significantly lighter, but also much more expensive to produce. (Some ancient bronze statues were melted down during this period to provide the raw material for casting cannons and other weapons.) The weight and deployment of this type of artillery ultimately led to the popularity of the full-rigged, relatively large galleon as a battleship.
European superiority in naval artillery won the 1571 Battle of Lepanto for the Christian coalition united against the Turks, the greatest military triumph of the Renaissance. The victory was celebrated in songs, poems, paintings, and tapestries. This encounter is also famous in military history as the last major battle involving ships propelled by oars. The ships of the Holy League met the Turkish fleet near the Gulf of Corinth, and more than 500 vessels participated in the conflict. Including slaves, conflicts, and press-ganged men as oarsmen for the galleys, along with sailors, there were at least 140,000 individuals involved in the battle. The Christian captains ordered their officers to fire at point-blank range, killing some 20,000 Turkish sailors by cannon impact, fire, or drowning. The damage inflicted on a ship’s personnel by repeated artillery fire could be horrific, for example, during the 1596 English attack on the Spanish port of Cadiz when ships were burning: “The spectacle was very
Warfare
Lamentable on their side; for many drowned themselves; many, half-burnt, leapt into the water; very many hanging by the ropes’ end by the ship’s side, under the water even to the lips; many swimming with grievous wounds, strucken under the water, and put out of their pain. And withal so huge a fire, and such tearing of the ordnance in the great Philip, and the rest, when the fire came to them, as if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured” (Scott 1976, p. 259, letter written by Sir Walter Raleigh). The English sunk almost all the enemy ships in the harbor.
World History
