charge for an 18-pounder was fifteen pounds, and the sea-service charge was but nine pounds.[1]
ELIZABETHAN FALCONET, AT THE SEIGNEURIE, SARK.
The ships of Henry VII. appear to have been the first English ones to be fitted with regular port-holes. The Regent and Sovereign certainly had them in their poops and forecastles. The invention of the device has been ascribed to Descharges, a shipbuilder of Brest, about the year 1500, but there is no doubt that it was of a rather earlier date. The numerous small guns of the Henry Grace à Dieu, and of the other large ships of her time, were mounted on the upper deck, in the tops, in the poop and forecastle, and under the break of the poop and forecastle, so as to command the waist and sweep it, should boarding be attempted there. Among these small guns were:—Fowlers, short, light weapons, with or without a separate breech which could be unshipped and reloaded while another was being discharged; port-pieces, small fowlers with the same peculiarities; curtalds, short heavy guns, apparently employed for high-angle fire; slings, demi-slings, bassils or small basilisks, and top-pieces, all of diminutive calibre and relatively large powder-charge, working on swivels or pivots; hail-shot pieces, carrying a charge of cubical dice; and hand-guns or calivers, which, though fired from the shoulder, required to be supported on a pivot or staff.
Among the stores of the Henry Grace à Dieu at her commissioning were two lasts, or 4800 pounds of "serpentyn" powder in barrels, and six lasts, or 14,400 pounds of "corn" powder, also in barrels.[2] This, and the provision of shot, must have been more than ample, for the larger guns could be fired only very seldom, there being no mechanical contrivances for working them; and it is recorded as a marvellous thing by Du Bellay that the action
