t was decided to proceed no further
without reconnoitring the enemy. The larger ships anchored, the smaller
were beached. The fighting-men landed and camped on the shore to recover
from the distresses of their voyage, during which they would have been
cramped up in narrow quarters.

Instead of, like a modern admiral, sending some of his lighter and swifter
ships to take a look at the enemy, King Edward arranged a cavalry
reconnaissance, a simpler matter for his knightly following. Some of the
horses were got ashore, and a party of knights mounted and rode over the
sandhills towards Sluys. They reached a point where, without being observed
by the enemy, they could get a good view of the hostile fleet, and they
brought back news that made the King decide to attack next day.

The French fleet was commanded by two knights, the Sieur de Kiriet and the
Sieur de Bahuchet. Kiriet's name suggests that he came of the Breton race
that has given so many good sailors and naval officers to France, so
perhaps he knew something of the sea. Associated with the two French
commanders there was an experienced fighting admiral, a veteran of the wars
of the Mediterranean, Barbavera, who commanded the Genoese ships. Though
they had a slight superiority of numbers and more large ships than the
English, Kiriet and Bahuchet were, as one might expect from their prolonged
inactivity, very wanting in enterprise now that the crisis had come. They
were preparing to fight on the defensive. It was in vain that the
experienced commander Barbavera urged that they should weigh anchor and
fight the English in the open sea, where numbers and weight would give them
an advantage that would be lost in the narrow waters of the Eede estuary.
They persisted in awaiting the attack.

The French fleet was anchored along the south shore of the river-mouth,
sterns to the land, its left towards the river-mouth, its right towards the
town of Sluys. The vessel on the extreme left was an English ship of large
size, the "Great Cristopher," captured in the Channel in the first days of
the war. The ships were grouped in three divisions--left, centre, and
right. Kiriet and Bahuchet adopted the same plan of battle that King Olaf
had used at Svold. The ships in each of the three divisions were lashed
together side by side, so that they could only be boarded by the high
narrow bows, and there was an addition to the Norse plan, for inboard
across the bows barricades had been ere