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Stretcher-men appear on the scene and remove the wounded, but there is more than one serge-clad figure that lies heedless of fire or water, friend or foe. These are they who have fought their last fight and have laid down their lives and all that they had for their country.

Inside the turrets the aspect of affairs is very different from what we saw a short time ago. The gun-layers are standing at their sights, the guns' crews are working levers to and fro, the big breech-blocks are swinging on one side, the huge pointed projectiles rising on their hydraulic hoists till they come in line with the bore of the gun. Another lever is pulled, and the rammer-head, hitherto somewhat in the background of the turret, advances towards the gun, impelled by what looks not unlike a monster bicycle chain crawling up from below, and stiffening itself as it advances along a horizontal trough of steel. The rammer-head meets the base of the big shell and drives it resistlessly and with no apparent effort into the gun. It retires; the charges of explosive, divided into sections and carried in cylinders which come in turn in line with the breech, are then one after the other pushed into place by the indefatigable rammer-head, the breech-block is swung to, turned and locked, and the gun is ready to fire again.

We are now in full view of the enemy's squadron, which consists of five large armoured cruisers. Two of these are in a bad way. One on our starboard bow has lost two out of her three funnels as well as a mast. She is barely moving through the water, and has a strong list to port, which is so pronounced as to prevent her elevating her guns, whose projectiles all strike the water short of us, though we are at comparatively close range. Only two or three of her larger pieces are able to fire at all, and these but at intervals. Her foremost turret is nothing but a chaos of broken metal from the midst of which a pair of mutilated cannon point forlornly skyward.

The midships turret nearest to us is in hardly better case. Her superstructures look like the ruins of a town after an earthquake, and several large holes gape in her sides. A dense black smoke sweeps upwards from the midst of the wreckage. About half a mile ahead of her a consort is also stationary and on fire, the flames driving away in sheets to leeward. The ship that followed us as second in the line is very badly damaged also, and is just discernible on the horizon astern under a pall of smoke. These casualties leave us evenly matched--three to three--with plenty of fight left in us, but with the volume and efficiency of our fire considerably reduced. Our own funnels are still standing, but riddled like collanders, the fore-bridge has been swept away, and with it our dear old skipper; but his place has been ably filled by the commander, who is fighting the ship from the conning-tower, which still stands. Both squadrons--the German in line ahead, ours in bow and quarter line--are heading due east, but, just as we are abreast the badly damaged cruiser to which I have referred, the enemy begins edging away to the north-east. We fail to see the significance of this manoeuvre at first, and the admiral, who, though rather badly hurt by the fall of the fore-bridge, is still in the conning-tower with the commander, may have visions of "crossing their T" astern, when there is a sudden shout from aloft. A man is leaning over and gesticulating wildly from the control-platform and pointing towards our starboard bow. There, not far from the burning enemy ship, the glass shows three pairs of what look like black cricket-stumps. Simultaneously there is a gleam in the sea alongside, like the white of a shark's belly when he turns to seize his prey. The deadly torpedo had missed us by a couple of feet.

We instantly turn sharply to port, signalling our consorts to do the same, and all head northwards at our best speed. This brings the enemy's line, which had been turning more and more to port, on a parallel course, and all three ships at once concentrate on us--the nearest ship. We get a worse hammering in the five minutes that follow than we have sustained during the action. The after turret is jammed, one of the guns in the starboard turret loses its muzzle, and fire breaks out in two places amidships, and can only be got under with the most strenuous efforts and great loss of life.

For the first time during the fight a cheer rings out fore and aft. Almost at once the little guns begin banging away again. This time their long muzzles are nosing about in the air. What are they firing at? "There they are!" cries someone, pointing to the south-east, where two big amorphous monsters have appeared high up in the clouds. Zeppelins, right enough; and the bang, bang, bang of the lighter artillery rises in crescendo from every ship and destroyer till the air echoes like Vulcan's forge. Up come the pair of enormous sausages at a high rate of speed, and as they pass over our destroyer flotilla they begin dropping their bombs. Dull concussions thud apparently on the ship's bottom; fountains of white water spout all round the small craft.

But none are hit. The leading "gas-bag" is heading straight for us. She has probably spotted our damaged condition, and reckons us an easy prey. But our gunners are getting closer to her every shot, and presently she turns slowly to starboard, dropping a futile bomb as she goes. She now presents a fine broadside target as big as a Dreadnought, another shot gets home somewhere, and she makes off in the direction she came with her nose down, tail in air, and a pronounced list to port. Her consort turns too, and scuttles off at top speed. She hopes to "live to fight another day" over some peaceful English village where there are no nasty, disagreeable quick-firing guns, shrapnel-shell, and other unkind greetings from those she would destroy.

The day is drawing to a close. We are heading homewards in tow of a consort. Low down under the tawny sunset that dim purple line is the coast of "Old England"--the motherland we are engaged in defending from the assault of the most unscrupulous enemy she has ever encountered. The wind has fallen, the waves are hardly more than ripples, and evening is closing down with a soothing hush over land and sea. We have cleared up after the smashing and racket of the battle as far as possible, but we can hardly crawl along, and are bound to go into dockyard hands for some weeks at any rate.

"Are we downhearted?" "No!" For we have given much better than the best efforts of the Huns could give. Two of their ships are at the bottom, with most of their crews; though, thanks to the exertions and humanity of our gallant seamen, a considerable number of them have been saved from a watery grave. To this bag may be added three if not four submarines and a badly damaged Zeppelin, so we are not ill-satisfied with the day's work. We have just passed several "tall ships" on their way out to relieve us on patrol, and as we begin to get under the land there is a whirring up aloft in the gathering dusk, and a dozen sea-planes, like a flight of wild-ducks, come swooping seaward and make towards the Channel.

And now let us consider how this guardian fleet and the men who man it came into being. In the following pages my object will be not so much to describe well-known sea-fights as to give a series of pictures of the sailor and of the navy at different stages of "our island story".

A Lesson from Caesar

"Storm and sea were Britain's bulwarks, Long ere Britons won their name; Mightier far than pikes and halberds Wind and wave upheld her fame; Storm and sea are Britain's brothers, Keep, with her, their sleepless guard; Britain's sons, before all others, Share with them their watch and ward.

The portability and rapid construction of these boats commended them to Caesar's military eye, and later on, in one of his Continental wars, he ordered his soldiers to make some light boats in imitation of those he had seen in Britain, in order to carry his army across a river. But, though Caesar especially mentions these vessels, he does not say that the British of his day had no other or larger vessels. Though they made use of hides and wicker, they must have known something of wooden vessels. There is no doubt that they or their ancestors had large "dug-outs", hollowed from huge trunks of trees in the same way as Robinson Crusoe constructed his famous boat. We know this because many of these have been discovered buried in the mud of our rivers. One of them, found in the bed of the Rother in 1822, was 60 feet in length and 5 feet wide. Others have been found in Lincolnshire, Scotland, and Sussex, though none of them was nearly as long as the Rother boat. We must remember, too, that the Phoenicians had traded to Cornwall for tin, probably for centuries, and the Britons must have been familiar with their comparatively advanced types of shipbuilding.

But many writers on naval matters are of the opinion that our British ancestors, whose coracles are described by Caesar, had, even at that time, really stout and formidable ships. The reason is this. The Veneti, a race who inhabited western Brittany, and the country at the mouth of the Loire, were a kindred race, and when attacked by Caesar received assistance from Britain. Now the strength of the Veneti seems to have been in their ships, which gave the Roman galleys considerable trouble, and it seems more than likely that the British assistance they received came in the form of a squadron of similar vessels.

According to Caesar, the ships of the Veneti "were built and fitted out in this manner: their bottoms were somewhat flatter than ours, the better to adapt them to the shallows, and to sustain without danger the ebbing of the tide. Their prows were very high and erect, as likewise their sterns, to bear the hugeness of the waves and the violence of the tempests. The hull of the vessel was entirely of oak, to withstand the shocks and assaults of that stormy ocean. The benches of the rowers were made of strong beams about a foot wide, and were fastened with iron bolts an inch in thickness. Instead of cables they used chains of iron, and for their sails, utilized skins and a sort of thin, pliable leather, either because they had no canvas and did not know how to make sailcloth or, more probably, because they thought that canvas sails were not so suitable to stand the violence of the tempests, the fury and rage of the winds, and to propel ships of such bulk and burden". It is evident that these ships were for that period quite up to date. They were strongly built and iron-bolted, and had already discarded hempen cables for iron ones.

Above all, they were specially constructed to battle with the heavy weather of the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea, and to take refuge from its fury in the rivers and creeks of the western coase Babiloine avoit touan galleys, relying principally on their oars, and therefore comparatively long and light, were not so seaworthy in Northern waters, and the same difference, in construction, between the ships of the Mediterranean and those of the Northern nations may be traced right down to comparatively modern ages. One gets very bad weather in the Mediterranean at times, notwithstanding its traditional blue skies and sapphire seas, but the big Atlantic rollers are absent.

We have now to pass over a gap of several hundred years, during which time there is little or no information available about the ships belonging to these islands, the greater part of which, as a matter of fact, had become a province of the Roman Empire. There seems to have been a "Classis Britannici", or British squadron, but this was entirely a Roman organization, and had as much to do with the north of France--or Gaul--as Britain. The remains of an old ship--just the keel and lower ribs--which were not long ago unearthed on the right bank of the Thames, just below Westminster Bridge, are considered likely to have belonged to a galley of this squadron, and we know that there was a legion of what we may term British Marines, who formed the fighting portion of the fleet. Tiles have been found at Dover and other known stations of the Romano-British Fleet which bear the following inscription: "C.L., B.R.", which the experts in such matters interpret as standing for "Classiarii Britannici"--that is to say, "British troops trained for sea-warfare". We are also told by Vegetius, the old writer I have already quoted, that the badge of these troops was a "circle", which, by the way, is a somewhat curious coincidence, since that of the Marines of our own day is a globe. These were the men who defended the shores of our island against the growing numbers of pirates from northern Europe, for the rowers of the Roman galleys were merely the machinery of propulsion, and were probably much less considered than the steam-engines of a modern battleship. These troops also manned part of the wall built from the North Sea to the Solway in the vain attempt to keep out the Picts and Scots, for traces of them are to be found at Bowness at its western end. The North Sea pirates, then generally referred to as Saxons, became such a menace that the East Coast received the name of "The Saxon Shore", and a "count" or high official was specially appointed to take charge of its defence.

In A.D. 410 the Romans, attacked by the northern nations in their own country, finally abandoned Britain. The British, who had been practically a subject race for nearly 400 years, could make no head against the fierce Picts and Scots, who at once took advantage of the withdrawal of the Roman garrison and swarmed into the North of England. In desperation, the British king, Vortigern, offered to buy the assistance of two Jutish or Saxon pirates--Hengist and Horsa--who were doing a little raiding on their own account on the southern coast. They drove off the northern invaders, in accordance with the bargain that was struck, but, returning home for more of their Danish and Saxon fellow-countrymen, came back and gradually got the country into their own hands. According to another theory, many colonies of Saxons had been established on the East Coast during the time of the Romans, and it was the special business of the "Count of the Saxon Shore" to rule over them. However this may have been, England became a Saxon country, the remnant of the Britons being driven into Wales and Cornwall.

The most famous "finds" of this kind were at Gokstadt, in south Norway, in 1881, and at Nydam, in Schleswig, in 1863. In the latter case the ship does not seem to have been used as a sarcophagus, but with another, which had almost entirely rotted away, was found in a bog. Possibly if the huge oval mound now utilized as a cemetery at Inverness, and known as "Tom-na-hurich" , were tunnelled into, another Viking ship might be brought to light. In the case of the Nydam ship, Roman coins found on board fix her date as being somewhere about A.D. 250. Both from these ships and fragments of others that have been found in various places it is abundantly evident that their builders were as skilled shipwrights as ever existed. Space does not allow us to go into details of their construction, but we may say at once that their finish was perfect, and that their lines were not only beautiful but wonderfully well adapted for contending with the stormy waters of the northern seas. Neither of them appears to have belonged to the largest type of Viking ships, which may be roughly divided into "Dragon Ships" or "Drakkars", "Eseneccas" or "Long Serpents", and "Skutas" or small swift scouting-vessels. It seems just possible, by the way, that our modern slang expression "skoot"--"get away quickly", "clear out"--may be derived from this word. We must try in the next chapter to understand what these Viking ships were like.

FOOTNOTES:

"If we go backward we die: if we go forward we die: Better go forward and die."--Viking war-call.

"Nulla vestigia retrorsum."--Motto of 5th Dragoon Guards.

Ancient War-ships

"Piracy was the exercise, the trade, the glory, and the virtue of the Scandinavian youth. Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow limits, they started from the banquet, grasped their arms, sounded their horn, ascended their ships, and explored every coast that promised either spoil or settlement." GIBBON.

"Outlaw and free thief, My kinsfolk have left me, And no kinsfolk need I Till kinsfolk shall need me. My sword is my father, My shield is my mother, My ship is my sister, My horse is my brother." CHARLES KINGSLEY.

IF we take the dimensions of the actual Viking boats that have been unearthed, as I have related in the last chapter, we shall have an excellent foundation upon which to form an idea of the bigger and more important ones. Now the Gokstadt boat is nearly 80 feet long and 16 feet 6 inches wide at her greatest beam, and carried mast and sail. The Nydam ship is 75 feet in length, with a beam of 10 feet 6 inches, and had no mast. Both are very flat amidships, and have very fine or sharp ends, but it is evident that in proportion to her length the Gokstadt boat had a much greater beam.

There is an old manuscript in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, dating from about A.D. 1000, in which appear three pictures of Noah's Ark . The house part of the design is frankly impossible--it would capsize the ship--but the hull in each case--the boat part--is not at all unlike the well-known Bayeux-tapestry ships, but of a better and more seaworthy shape, though in some of them the big dragon figure-head is unduly exaggerated. The space between the benches was called a "room", and the port and starboard portions of this were known as "half-rooms". The crew were all told off to these half-rooms as their stations, except those quartered forward and aft. Thus the "Long Serpent" had eight men to each "half-room", and from this item of information it has been estimated that she carried a crew of something between six and seven hundred men. Goodness knows how many King Canute's big "Dreadnought" carried.

Some of these Viking ships were very smartly decorated. Armorial bearings had not then been invented, but their sails were worked with the most beautiful emblematic and intricate embroidery, and were not infrequently made of velvet, though generally of a coarse woollen material called "vadmal." Some of the most elaborate ones were actually lined with fur. Not only the ships themselves, but also their sails, like the swords of their warriors, were given poetical sounding names: "The Cloth of the Wind", "The Beard of the Yard", and "The Tapestry of the Mast-head", are some of them. Along their gunwales, above the oars, which worked through holes in the ship's side, ran the "shield-row", composed of circular wooden shields or targets, with big shining bosses of brass or other metal in the middle. Each shield overlapped the next till it touched its boss, and so gave a double protection to the rowers. This was a very ancient custom, as shields were carried in this way by Phoenician ships as far back as 450 B.C. As a general rule, the Norsemen's shields were black and yellow, the Danes' red, and the Saxons' white with red or blue edges.

Now it appears that these same guardian spirits were extremely susceptible to this sort of "wireless", not only in Norway, but everywhere. And it also seems that--how or in what way I am unable to explain--the figure-heads of the Viking ships had much the same properties as the "Nithstangs". So it was that in Iceland, at any rate, there was a law that ships must remove their figure-heads before approaching the land, "and not approach it with gaping heads and yawning snouts", lest they might scare the guardian spirits of the land. Having carried out this regulation, it was customary for the seamen to hoist a polished shield to the masthead and so flash the signal that the guardian spirits need not now be alarmed. That some connection existed between these "heads" and the "Nithstang" is further shown by a drawing in an old manuscript of that period, which depicts a human head set on a pole, which is fastened to a dragon figure-head. And again, in a wall-painting in the church of Tegelsmora in Upland, in which the famous King Olaf is seen waging a desperate battle with our old nursery friends the "Trolls", the bowsprit of his ship is adorned with the skull of an ox.

But we must leave the ships and come to their crews. To begin with, they were all "soldiers and sailors too"! They were equally at home on the battle-field ashore and in handling their cherished "long-ships" afloat. The Scandinavians believed that the soul of a warrior killed in battle went at once to Valhalla, which represented their idea of heaven.

There they confidently expected that the brave fighter would spend a happy eternity of fighting and feasting. It is said that their remote forefathers had brought this weird form of belief from the depths of Central Asia--but that must be a very old story. But fighting was the breath of their life. They revelled in it, though they did not despise the plunder which was generally the reward of victory. Many of these fierce warriors were subject to and even cultivated a species of madness, almost amounting to demoniacal possession, which induced them to tear off their clothes and hurl themselves almost naked into the fray, feeling endued with the strength of seven men.

These "Berserkers", as they were called from this custom, were doubtless most dangerous opponents in their "Berserk" fury. Nowadays it is generally accepted that the braver the man the more modest he is about his deeds of valour; the boaster is considered likely to be but a broken reed in the day of battle. But it was quite otherwise with the Viking warriors. They gloried in boasting aloud of their prowess, of the deeds they had done, and of those that they were ready to perform.

The tactics of the Vikings, if they failed to ram their opponents, was to lash the bows of as many friendly and hostile vessels together as possible, so as to form a floating battle-field. The fighting-platforms were not, apparently, raised above the bows, as later on in mediaeval times. They were somewhere about the level of the gunwale, and when several ships were lashed together, all these platforms provided a battle-ground upon which the Berserker and his emulators could indulge in the furious hand-to-hand combats which were their delight. If they could do this they were probably more than pleased that they had failed to ram their enemy. I doubt if every ship was built with a ram, but, on the other hand, it is certain that some ships were specially built for use as rams, and even strengthened by iron plating. So that we see that the armour-clad is no new invention.

In the larger "long-ships" a fighting-gangway ran along behind the shield-row, connecting the fore and after platforms. Beneath the latter, which was somewhat elevated so that the steersman could look ahead, was the sleeping-place for the commander of the ship. Other sleeping accommodation was provided under the foremost platform, while, if at anchor, those of the crew who were not on watch slept under awnings or tents, set up on framework which could be erected for the purpose in the centre of the vessel. The men slept in leather bags, which were equally useful either ashore or afloat. In short, these ancient war-vessels were so well and scientifically built, so well arranged and equipped, and so well manned that we cease to wonder at the long voyages they were able to perform by taking advantage of the summer months.

There is not the slightest doubt that the Vikings discovered the continent of America long before Columbus did. They went by way of Iceland, and so were able to touch land more than once on their journey, but they got there all the same. They established a colony in Greenland about A.D. 985. From there they made several expeditions to the southward, and discovered a densely wooded country which is supposed to have been some portion of Nova Scotia. The climate of Greenland must have been very different from what it is at present, for the Viking colony lasted for 400 years, till, in the fifteenth century, an enormous mass of ice was swept down by the Arctic current, piled itself up along the coast, and entirely cut off the settlement--which at that time consisted of thirty villages with their churches and monasteries--from the rest of the world, so that before long every trace of it disappeared.

No. For the ancestors of the British seamen and sailors of Elizabethan and modern times I think we should rather look to the Danes, who, it must be remembered, between 870 and the Norman Conquest, were not only continually invading England, but established themselves in a great part of it, especially in the east and north, and to those of the Conqueror's followers who traced their descent directly from the Northmen or Vikings. It is their spirit which has brought us victory both by land and by sea, but more especially by sea, and not the spirit of Alfred's Saxon subjects, who had to pay others to fight for them. Again, take such pre-eminent commanders as Drake and Nelson. Is not the former name one which takes us directly back to the "Draakers", the "Dragon-ships" of the Vikings, and has not Nelson a distinctly Danish sound about it?

The ships of King Alfred "were full-nigh twice as long as the others; some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were both swifter and steadier, and also higher, than the others. They were shapen neither like the Frisian nor the Danish; but so it seemed to him that they would be most efficient."

FOOTNOTE:

Fighting-ships of the Middle Ages

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, like Cortez, the discoverer of Mexico at a later date, dispelled any thoughts of retreat that might have been lurking in the minds of his followers by destroying the ships which had brought them over. He had come to stay. Now the Normans, though of the same blood as the seafaring Vikings, who had sailed and fought their Dragon-ships to the very ends of the known earth, had been so long settled in France that they had adopted not only the French language, but French ideas, which were not, generally speaking, of a nautical nature.

William's idea with regard to the Cinque Ports was probably not so much the general defence of the kingdom as the defence of his communications with Normandy. With their assistance he could be sure of always being able to move troops either way across Channel as his exigencies required. Thus, when in 1083 William, who was then in Normandy, heard rumours of the intention of the Kings of Denmark and Norway and the Count of Flanders to invade England with a great fleet, he hurried over-Channel with so great an army that "men wondered how this land could feed all that force". Without the assistance of the Cinque Ports he might have had some difficulty in doing this.

Now, to begin with, it is obvious that in each of these cases the artist was cramped for space. He had to decide between the calls of accuracy and of decorative effect, and almost invariably he gave way to the latter.

In the rather fascinating pictures that appear in mediaeval manuscripts, too, the monkish artists had to work in a small space, in which they wanted to put a great deal of ornamental and other detail. They probably knew little or nothing about nautical affairs into the bargain. In the result their ships present the same crescent-shaped hulls as those in the seals of the period, and give the impression of being very small affairs indeed, thanks to the large-sized nobles and men-at-arms with which they are densely packed.

The tonsured artist argued very much on the same lines. If he painted a ship it was not a picture of a special ship. What he wanted to portray was the saint or hero of his manuscript--very often Alexander the Great--on a voyage or crossing a river. If he drew him on the same scale as his vessel he would be a mere dot or blob of paint. He wanted to show his face, his armour, robes, crown, halo, or what-not. So, though he could not help knowing that it was inaccurate, he drew him--and, generally speaking, his companions--on a scale about 500 per cent larger than that of the ship in which he was depicted as performing a most cramped and uncomfortable voyage.

We must not therefore accept these brilliantly coloured works of art as corroborative of the accuracy of the figures of ships appearing on the seals of Dover, Yarmouth, Poole, and other English and foreign ports, and in the fifteenth century of various noblemen who held the appointment of Admiral of England or France. But there are, nevertheless, a great many useful details to be learned from these sources of information. From seals we can trace the gradual evolution of the poop and forecastle from the early platforms or fighting-stages, the supersession of the steering-oar or "steer-board" by the rudder, the beginning of cabins, the progress of fighting-tops and action aloft. We see, too, the mode of wearing banners, streamers, and flags, and gain some idea of the gradual growth of sail-power, which culminated, we may say, in the sailing battleship of Trafalgar days.

If we consider the question of mediaeval shipbuilding as a whole, we shall find it difficult to believe that the scientific methods of construction which distinguished the Viking ships, and the improvements on them which were made by Alfred the Great, had all been forgotten and thrown on one side, and that these fine specimens of the shipbuilder's art had been replaced by anything like the ridiculous little "cocked hats" that are supposed to represent the shipping of the British and other Northern nations between 1066 and 1450.

The sea-going ships of these peoples, intended especially for sailing, would naturally be considerably shorter and broader in the beam than the Viking class of ship, which relied principally on oars for propulsion, and was rather too long and narrow to sail well under ordinary conditions of weather. Moreover, though they carried a single sail, they were not intended to contend with heavy winter weather.

Many of the mediaeval ships were most gorgeously painted and decorated. When the French king Charles VI fitted out a great naval armament at Sluys, in 1386, for the invasion of England--which did not come off, by the way--Froissart tells us that "gold and silver were no more spared than though it had rained out of the clouds or been scooped out of the sea". One young noble covered his mast with gold-leaf. "They made banners, pennons, and standards of silk, so goodly that it was marvel to behold them; also they painted the masts of their ships from the one end to the other, glittering with gold and devices and arms: and specially it was shewed me", says old Froissart, "that the Lord Guy de la Tremouille garnished his ship richly; the paintings that were made cost more than ten thousand francs. Whatsoever any lord could devise for their pleasure was made on the ships: and the poor people of the realm paid for all; for the taxes were so great, to furnish this voyage, that they which were most rich sorrowed for it, and the poor fled for it."

But the continually growing decoration in the way of flags, standards, pennons, and streamers must by no means be overlooked. They were, perhaps, the most striking characteristic of the mediaeval war-ship.

The standard or pennon of the owner or commander of the ship--and it must be remembered that he was in those days not a seaman, but always a soldier--was planted at the foremost corner of the poop or after-castle, on the starboard side. A ship called after a saint would have, in addition, the banner of that saint, and in the case of the Cinque Ports we may be sure that their arms, "three lions with half a galley in place of tail and hind legs", were displayed on some portion of the vessel. In royal ships there were other banners with the various royal badges, and there were hosts of streamers, pendants, and guidons as well. When fully "dressed", with all her flags flying, the mediaeval war-ship must have made a brave display. Galleys, in addition, had a small staff with a pendant attached to the loom of every oar on such occasions.

But in the Middle Ages there was nothing like this. All decisive fighting was practically hand to hand and man to man, except for the use of the ram by galleys and the exchange of arrows and stones at comparatively close quarters. But victory was only achieved, as a general rule, when the enemy's ship was boarded and her crew defeated in a bloody tussle, at the end of which no one but the victors remained alive, unless, perhaps, some knight or noble who was worth preserving for the value of his ransom. The military portion of the crew, the archers, men-at-arms, and their knightly leaders, carried the usual arms of their day. The seamen, who were in the minority, probably used knives, short swords, and spears, and made themselves very useful in hurling big stones, heavy javelins called "viretons", unslaked lime, and other disagreeable missiles from the "top-castles" at the head of the mast or masts.

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