HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

343

although the difference, to confess the truth, was not very material, the crewsof the former amounting to about seventeen persons on the average to eachvessel, while taking the whole fleet in the aggregate, they somewhat exceededtwenty. It may be asked, how it was possible for vessels so diminutive, as theymight at the first moment of consideration be deemed, to contend with suchenormous floating fabrics as were indisputably employed in the service of France.The difficulty, however, though perhaps consequential, is not insurmountable,on a little cool reflection. The amount of the crews stated to have belonged tothe armament employed against Calais, comprised the mariners only : in theaccount of the vessel taken by the earl of Huntingdon, on board which four hun-dred persons are said to have been found slain at the time of its surrender, thesoldiers are certainly numbered as well as the seamen. It is a fact too well knownto admit of controversy, that even in the present day, when the furniture andrigging of ships is much more complex than it could be in the time of Edwardthe Third, when the rigging of the largest vessel of war scarcely exceeded thenumber of ropes now used on board an ordinary hoy, that thirty seamen, withthe additional aid of other men on board, will prove sufficient to navigate avessel capable of transporting, perhaps, to the most remote quarter of the world,five hundred persons. The apparent difficulty will now materially shrink in itsconsequence ; and those who have been unable to detach the idea of contempti-bility from a vessel described as fitted for war, merely because it was navigatedby twenty persons only, will discover, if they have candour and patience enoughto pay a little attention to the several points, that their opinions, far as theyrelated to dimensions, have perhaps been too hastily formed.

In respect to the shape and mode of construction practised at this time,there is little other evidence than the rather vague testimony of coins, sculp-ture, or uncouth painting, all so ill descriptive, at least in many points, of theobject they were intended to represent, that they might be considered rather asperplexing, than elucidating investigation. There are, nevertheless, somepoints, and those far from immaterial,, which, from the concurrent testimonyof all three, appear too well established to admit of rejection. Although it isevident the whimsical representation of what is called a ship, impressed on theNoble of the victorious Edward, (and in all probability intended by him totransmit to the latest posterity the remembrance of his success) can never beconsidered as correct, yet it is evident from thence, that the vessels deno-minated ships, were in point of shape infinitely shorter than the gallies, that

their