king and his admiral, Sir Edward Howard, for the victualling of the fleet fitted out this year to aid in the war against France, it appears that the Regent was to carry 700 soldiers, mariners, and gunners.[1] A ship apparently still larger than this, however, is described as having been sent to sea this same year by the Scottish king in a fleet which he equipped for the assistance of France, but which was, in a storm, scattered and destroyed on its way to that country. This Scottish ship, called the Great Michael, the largest that had been built in modern times, was 240 feet in length by 56 in breadth,—dimensions, however, which, in the latter direction especially, were materially diminished by the thickness of the planking, which, that it might be proof against shot, was not less than 10 feet. She carried 35 guns (all on the upper deck), besides 300 smaller pieces of artillery called culverins, double-dogs, &c.; and her complement consisted, besides officers, of 300 seamen, 120 gunners, and 1000 soldiers.[2] But Henry did not satisfy himself with merely building ships; he laid the necessary foundations for the permanent maintenance of a naval force by the institution of the first Navy Office, with commissioners, or principal officers of the navy, as they were styled, for the superintendence of that particular department of the public service. He also established by royal charter, in the fourth year of his reign, the "Corporation of the Trinity House of Deptford," for examining, licensing, and regulating pilots, and for ordering and directing the erection of beacons and lighthouses, the placing of buoys, &c.; to which he afterwards added subordinate establishments of the same kind at Hull and
- ↑ Fœdera, vol. xiii.
- ↑ See note on Anderson's Hist. of Commerce, by Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 42, and the authorities there referred to. "She cumbered all Scotland," says Lindsay of Pitscottie, "to put her to the sea; and when she was committit to float, with her masts and sails complete, with tows [ropes] and anchors effeiring [appertaining] thereto, she was counted to the king to forty thousand pounds of expenses by her orders and cannons whilk she bare."
