Safe Shall the Wooden Walls Continue: Navies in the mid-1600s
“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.”-Psalm 107: 23-24 (KJV)
To a modern viewer, used to nuclear-powered submarines and interplanetary spacecraft, sailing ships seem hopelessly primitive. Yet just as black-water vessels mark the pinnacle of technological achievement today, the great blue-water ships of the mid-1600s marked the summit of human knowledge and ingenuity of their day.
Building and maintaining the great battle-line ships that were the backbones of war fleets required assembling mass resources and constructing them into technically varied and detailed apparatus, necessitating large numbers of skilled laborers. Many of the materials needed long-distance transportation and special storage; the best ship timbers needed to be seasoned literally for years before being used in construction. It is not a coincidence that the first industrial-level project in the history of the Greater West, the Arsenal of Venice, was a shipyard, as were the great projects that followed, the Arsenal of Constantinople and the shipyards of Trebizond, Chatham, and Brest.
Just as armies grew greater in size and organization in the 1600s, so did the navies. The mid-1600s are dotted with titanic naval struggles that would’ve been unimaginably vast to the contenders’ grandparents, and still stupendous compared to conflict on land. The Roman field armies at Thessaloniki fielded roughly 600 cannons, most of which were twelve-pounders or lighter. The battles between Triune and Lotharingian fleets frequently saw
eight thousand cannon being used, most of which were twelve-pounders or larger. Even the much smaller battle between the Romans and Lombards at Palmaria included nine times more artillery than the combined Roman field armies at Thessaloniki. A single large Roman battle-line ship threw more cannon weight-of-shell than a couple of tagmata.
Feeding such gargantuan monsters required a tremendous amount of organization, material, and wealth.
In 1635 the three main naval powers of the Greater West were the Triunes, Romans, and Lotharingians, with the Spanish, Scandinavians and Arletians occupying a second-tier but still significant level.
All six have naval administrations overseeing naval yards, some of which include dry docks. The administrators are salaried, although corruption and graft is extremely common given the low pay involved. Construction and procurement is a mix of government and private, varying from state to state. Typically the biggest warships are constructed in government yards such as the Arsenal of Constantinople, while smaller warships are ordered from private shipyards.
Supply contracts, whether for shipbuilding materials or victuals, on the other hand usually go to private contractors who bid for the orders. Here is where much of the serious graft takes place as administrators ensure the contracts end up in the hands of their friends/family or even their own hands. This naturally generates incentive to skimp on the cost and thereby qualities of the materials/victuals concerned to ensure maximum profit. Governments are well aware of this issue; for the Romans they can look all the way back to Belisarius’ Vandal expedition which was delayed when sailors got sick from substandard biscuit. However the private sector is the only way of guaranteeing the necessary volume for maintaining these huge fleets.
Efforts are made so that certain requisitions come from government stockpiles to help ensure quality. The Roman navy’s weaponry, including cannons, muskets, powder, and shot is typically provided by government metal works, assembly shops, and powder mills. These are operated specifically to serve the military’s need and not to generate a profit for the government, in an effort to keep costs low. This usually works in peacetime, but in war even in this field the Roman government must resort to private contractors to ensure the needed volume.
The Roman navy of 1635 is a professional structure, with prospective officers having to spend three years as midshipmen at sea and pass Academy training, with everyone paid in cash. Unlike the army though, it is disjointed from the theme system. Even with the fully professional army, the theme is the basis for supply and recruitment. The Thrakesian theme still supplies, mans, and pays for the Thrakesian tagma. The difference is that now it does not provide plots of land for pay; coin from taxes on the local inhabitants provides the pay. This is also why some themes could support much larger tagmata than others during the Great Latin War.
During the Laskarid and Second Komnenid dynasties, the Roman navy was supported on a similar basis as the tagmata. Its theme consisted of Kibyrrhaiotai and the various islands, those territories providing the land plots and recruits. However in these times those territories cannot provide nearly enough cash to support the war fleets, although most sailors and naval officers are still drawn from those lands. Their taxes contribute to the upkeep of the navy, but are supplemented significantly from the Imperial treasury. Otherwise Rhomania would not be one of the great naval powers.
While all the naval powers use purpose-built warships, armed merchantmen can still make up large percentages of war fleets. They have the virtue of being comparatively cheap, especially since there’s no peacetime upkeep. Rhomania has a Merchant Reserve system. Ships and their crews on the list have to maintain certain gunnery proficiency levels and can be called up for military service, but in exchange the owners get noticeable tax exemptions. Lotharingia has a similar system, in which all Indiamen have to be assigned; as a rule these Lotharingian Indiamen, large and comparatively heavy-built for commercial vessels, are the best armed merchantmen of any of the powers with the exception of the largest Roman Ship Lord vessels.
During the Great Latin War this proved a quick way to supplement the navy and much of the blockade of the Lombard coast was conducted by these reserve merchantmen. However one often gets what one pays for. While cheap, they are not particularly effective; their best service during the war was serving as naval auxiliaries, particularly in supplying Roman armies.
With the growth in number of larger battle-line ships, the armed merchantmen lack the toughness to slug it out. Furthermore, while the number of guns they carry may be comparable to battle-line warships, typically said guns are lighter. Also the proliferation of light warships, brigs, sloops, and fregatai make things even more hazardous. Merchantmen are built for cargo hauling, not speed. This makes them poor blockaders or scouts, while the lighter weight of their guns make all but the largest vulnerable to a skillfully handled light warship. While all naval powers still use armed merchantmen to buff up their numbers at the beginning of the 1600s, their use in combat operations fades away well before the end of the century. The Roman and Lotharingian merchant reserve systems continue, but solely as a way to easily gain auxiliaries in times of war, within no intention to use them in combat save possibly as convoy escorts. (Privateers looking for loot rather than a fight will typically shy away from well-armed merchantmen, even if regular light warships might not be so easily deterred. However privateers are, due to their much higher numbers, the main threat to commercial traffic.)
Naval strength is usually measured in terms of battle-line ships. The approach is anachronistic for the beginning of this period, as the sharp delineation between battle-line and light warships wasn’t as clear-cut back then. Also the rating system wasn’t fully established. However both the rating system and dividing line were clearly established by the latter third of the 1600s, and while altering in detail, would be followed through the end of the Age of Sail. One major change in the future would be that smaller warships still considered battle-line warships in the mid-1600s would not be considered such a century later.
The naval ratings in 1650 were as follows:
First-rate: 90 guns or more.
Second-rate: 76-89 guns.
Third-rate: 61-75 guns.
Fourth-rate: 50-60 guns.
(First through Fourth are considered battle-line ships in the mid-1600s, although fourth-rates would eventually drop out in later years.)
Fifth-rate: 37-49 guns. (Sometimes called a poor-man’s battle-line ship. They often function as such in far-flung waters.)
Sixth-rate: 25-36 guns. (Fregatai of the time are all considered sixth-rates, with larger ones later moving up into the fifth-rate.)
Seventh-rates: 13-24 guns. (Usually known as sloops. Over the course of the seventeenth century, there would be a trend to the upper end of this scale.)
Eighth-rates: Less than 12 guns. (Brigs are the eight to eleven gun ‘big boys’ of this group and are what are typically referred to when referencing an eighth-rate, although technically even a two-gun ketch would fall into this category.)
There is, of course, more to a warship than just her number of guns. Sea handling ability, thickness of planking (armor), and the weight of the individual guns matter too. As a general rule, the more cannons a warship carried, the heavier the guns were. Thus a larger warship might have a throw-weight much higher than a smaller one far out of the proportion one would expect just by looking at the number of guns. A ninety-gunner might have a throw-weight twice that of a seventy-gunner.
Most battle-line ships of the era were fourth and third rates. This is because although they were weaker than second or first-rates, they were much cheaper. Cannons require gun crews and bigger guns require bigger crews. Across the board, the naval powers could build and maintain two 70-gunners afloat for the cost of a single first-rate.
The weakness though is that a single third-rate would be at a disadvantage against the first-rate. The third-rate’s lighter guns could fire faster, theoretically making up some of the disadvantage of fewer pieces. However first-rates, which were very expensive and also prestige symbols, were built to be very tough with thick planking. Firing faster does little good if cannonballs can’t penetrate the hull.
That said, while first-rates were a terror to any of their smaller foes, there never were very many of them. Even after fourth-rates stopped being considered battle-line ships, third-rates still made up the vast majority of battle-line ships right up to the age of steam.
In 1635 only two states in all of the Greater West had first-rate ships, Rhomania and the Triunes. The Romans only had three, the 98-gun
Andreas Niketas and the 92-gun
Theodoros Megas and
Konstantinos Megas. The
Andreas Niketas, considered the first true three-decker, is already over thirty years old in 1635. Despite having slightly less guns, the newer
Theodoros and
Konstantinos are considered better warships. Slightly bigger and longer, they handle better at sea than
Andreas Niketas, and because of that they’re fitted with a few more big guns so the throw weights of all three are comparable.
The Triunes have seven. Although none are as old as
Andreas Niketas, they suffer from similar problems. Over-gunned for their size, they are poor ship-handlers, restricted to summer operations in the Channel and North Sea. The Atlantic and further waters have to be covered by smaller warships. However these first-rates are designed specifically for slugging it out with Lotharingian warships in the Channel and North Sea, where their toughness and firepower give them a significant advantage. Due to the shallow depths of their coast, Lotharingian warships are on average smaller than those of the other powers, although they help to make up that with sheer numbers.
Of the naval powers, Rhomania has the most battle-line ships at 91 hulls. (On paper, that is; ready for active service is often a different matter as ships laid up regularly deteriorate despite efforts and are not necessarily ready for battle.) Of these, there are the three aforementioned first-raters, seven second-raters, twenty eight third-raters, and fifty three fourth-raters. Of those fifty three, thirty nine are 50-gunners, putting them just above the line. The ratios are comparable for the other major sea powers.
Those numbers include the Sicilian fleet, the only one of the Despotates to muster battle-line ships, although both Egypt and Carthage have some fifth-rates. The Sicilian contribution is four small third-raters and fourteen fourth-raters and their numbers were included in the totals of the Roman fleet unleashed on Lombard Italy. The Roman and Despotic navies are used to close cooperation and the services get along very well, with joint exercises, identical training regimens and doctrines, and ships designed to the same pattern.
Seven of the Roman fourth-raters are stationed in the East, all but one 50-gunners. They are reinforced by twelve fifth-raters, all 40 or 44-gunners, which are usually big enough to face any threats while being relatively economically. Most have Malay, Taprobani, or Digenoi crews and officers, bearing the brunt and winning much of the glory at the battle of the Lingga Islands against Aceh in 1633.
Armed merchantmen from the Ship Lords still play a much larger role in Roman fleets in the East, comprising the bulk of the combatants in the various naval battles against the Triunes during the Great Latin War. They suffer from the same weaknesses as armed merchantmen in the west, but Latin fleets here also are mostly armed merchantmen. Latin battle-line ships can sail directly from their home waters, unlike the Romans who have yet to circumnavigate Africa, but they lack the naval yards of Taprobane that are responsible for the locally built fourth, fifth, and sixth rates that made the Lingga Islands and the Java campaign possible. Also the wealthier Ship Lords possess some very large and tough merchantmen, built from teak and displacing over 1000 tons. When fully outfitted for war, these ships have a throw-weight comparable to a fourth-rate.
The Triunes are slightly behind at 88 battle-line ships, but because of their seven first-rates and fifteen second-rates, their combined throw-weight is higher than the Romans. The Lotharingians have 86, but nothing bigger than a third-rater and most of those are on the smaller side, although they also possess more large fifth-raters than any other power.
The Spanish meanwhile have 56 battle-line ships, three of which are second-raters. Partly making up for the fewer number of hulls is that their third-raters are generally on the larger end of the scale, ten of them fine 72-gunners that are considered, size-for-size, the best warships of their day for all-around quality. Most of these ships are new, built for the Andalusi war, playing a vital part in dominating the waters between Iberia and Africa.
Scandinavia meanwhile has 43 and Arles 41, although both, particularly the former, can reinforce with large numbers of fifth-rates. That was how the Scandinavians were able to field a comparable fleet to the Lotharingians at the battle of Kronborg in 1633.
The immediate aftermath of the battle of Palmaria, with the addition of the Lombard prizes, marks the relative peak of the Roman navy. Building and maintaining battle-line ships, especially as the size of them steadily increases over the course of the seventeenth century, is expensive, especially so for Rhomania.
Laws and Inspectors to protect forests in order to guarantee a supply of naval timber have been in place in Rhomania since the early 1400s. Despite such efforts, timber shortages are a serious problem by the early 1630s, even with the boost provided by the Istrian and Dalmatian forests taken from Hungary, the reason those lands were valued by the White Palace in the first place.
Warships have grown massively in size since the 1400s, with a single battle-line ship consuming hundreds, even thousands, of trees in her construction. And not any odd piece of lumber will do. They have to be of the right shape and size for their purpose. Especially difficult to procure are good mast timbers as ideally the mast should be from a single straight tall tree. Given the lack, many Roman masts consist of smaller timbers bolted together to form a larger spar. It works but makes said mast more vulnerable to breakage, which is why so many Roman vessels lost their masts during the battle of Jamaica.
The Romans import naval stores, including hemp, canvas, pitch, and turpentine, from Russia and Georgia, but these can’t compare in volume to the Scandinavian and North Terranovan sources of naval stores. Even with the eventual completion of the Don-Volga canal, making the shipment of large timbers and other bulky naval goods much easier, the Triunes for example can produce a similar-sized warship for cheaper than the Romans. While on the scale of a single ship, it isn’t significant, but over the course of a fleet it makes for substantial extra expense for the Romans compared to the Triunes.
The Romans try to compensate for this, and not just with the Don-Volga canal. Warships are designed at the Constantinople Arsenal with blueprints, with efforts made to standardize construction and create proper ship classes. There is always some variation because of the pre machine tool era, but the
Guard-class fregatai and
Belisarios-class third-rates are considered to be marvels of the Age of Sail, admired both then and now.
Due to the cost, the Romans build very few first or second rates during the Age of Sail. As ship sizes increase the mainstay of the Roman fleet becomes the third-rate, typically mounting 70-74 guns, with a few second and first rates added in as prestige symbols and squadron flagships. Other navies have the same pattern; even for the Triunes, a first-rate is a massive expense. However the proportion of first and second to third rates remains lower in the Roman navy after 1650 compared to the other major players.
In 1635 however, that is in the future. The Roman navy may rest proudly on its laurels. Its honor has been restored on the Danube, and its service around Italy and particularly at Palmaria recognized with respect across the Greater West. But great as Palmaria was, it quickly pales in comparison to the battles to come as the Triune and Lotharingian fleets put out to sea.