of the seventeenth century these gradually evolved
into a Royal Navy maintained entirely by the country as a whole and
devoted solely to the national defence. But in earlier days this modern
system was difficult everywhere and impossible in England. The English
monarch, for all his power, had no means of keeping up a great army and
navy without the help of Parliament and the general consent of the
people. The Crown had great estates and revenues; but nothing like
enough to make war on a national scale. Consequently king and people
went into partnership, sometimes in peace as well as war. When fighting
stopped, and no danger seemed to threaten, the king would use his
men-of-war in trade himself, or even hire them out to merchants. The
merchants, for their part, furnished vessels to the king in time of war.
Except as supply ships, however, these auxiliaries were never a great
success. The privateers built expressly for fighting were the only ships
that could approach the men-of-war.

Yet, strangely enough, King Henry's first modern men-of-war grew out of
a merchant-ship model, and a foreign one at that. Throughout ancient and
medieval times the 'long ship' was the man-of-war while the 'round ship'
was the merchantman. But the long ship was always some sort of galley,
which, as we have seen repeatedly, depended on its oars and used sails
only occasionally, and then not in action, while the round ship was
built to carry cargo and to go under sail. The Italian naval architects,
then the most scientific in the world, were trying to evolve two types
of vessel: one that could act as light cavalry on the wings of a galley
fleet, the other that could carry big cargoes safely through the
pirate-haunted seas. In both types sail power and fighting power were
essential. Finally a compromise resulted and the galleasse appeared. The
galleasse was a hybrid between the galley and the sailing vessel,
between the 'long ship' that was several times as long as it was broad
and the 'round ship' that was only two or three times as long as its
beam. Then, as the oceanic routes gained on those of the inland seas,
and as oceanic sea power gained in the same proportion, the galleon
appeared. The galleon had no oars at all, as the hybrid galleasses had,
and it gained more in sail power than it lost by dropping oars. It was,
in fact, the direct progenitor of the old three-decker which some people
still alive can well remember.

At the time the Cab