ty of these boys was to swarm up the mast, and set
and furl the lighter sails.

In the reign of King John (A.D. 1217), Herbert of Burgo, the captain of
Dover, hearing of an invasion intended by Lewis the Elder, son of the
King of France, in favour of the discontented barons, assembled in the
king's name forty tall ships from the Cinque Ports, and took, sunk, and
discomfited eighty sail of Frenchmen in a gallant engagement on the high
seas. These ports did great service under Henry the Third and Edward
the First. Among other brave deeds, they fitted out one hundred sail,
and encountered two hundred sail of Frenchmen with such success, that
they effectually ruined the navy of France. Many years happily passed
before that country recovered the loss of her men and ships. I will
give a fuller account of this action further on. Numberless are the
tales of a like description to be told.

Besides the twenty-three mariners which these warships of the Cinque
Ports carried, there were on board a considerable number of fighting
men, knights, and their retainers, armed with bucklers, spears, and bows
and arrows. They also used slings and catapults, and perhaps
stink-pots, like those employed by the Chinese at the present day, as
well as other ancient engines of warfare. That ships of war were
capable of holding a considerable number of men, we learn from the
well-known account of the death of the brave young Prince William, son
of Henry the First. When crossing the channel from Normandy, in an
attempt to make his ship get ahead of that of his father, he kept too
close in with the shore, and consequently ran on a rock called the
Shatteras. He might have been saved; but hearing that his sister, the
Countess of Perche, still remained on board, he ordered the boat in
which he was escaping to put back to rescue her. On arriving alongside,
so large a number of people jumped into the boat, that she was swamped,
and all were lost. On this occasion two hundred people perished, only
one, the ship's butcher, escaping to the shore, and through him the sad
tidings were known. Now, if we turn to any old illustrated History of
England, we shall find, probably, a print professing to describe this
very event. Yet, on examining it, we shall see that the vessel is not
large enough to carry twenty people, much less two hundred. The artists
either made their sketches from river barges, or row-boats, or drew a
ship from one they saw at a d