e battleship of to-day. The 'pinnace'
(quite different from more modern pinnaces) was the frigate or the
cruiser. And, in Henry VIII's fleet of 1545, the 'row-barge' was the
principal 'mosquito' craft, like the modern torpedo-boat, destroyer, or
even submarine. Of course the correspondence is far from being complete
in any class.

The English galleon gradually developed more sail and gun power as well
as handiness in action. Broadside fire began. When used against the
Armada, it had grown very powerful indeed. At that time the best guns,
some of which are still in existence, were nearly as good as those at
Trafalgar or aboard the smart American frigates that did so well in
'1812.' When galleon broadsides were fired from more than a single deck,
the lower ones took enemy craft between wind and water very nicely. In
the English navy the portholes had been cut so as to let the guns be
pointed with considerable freedom, up or down, right or left. The huge
top-hampering 'castles' and other soldier-engineering works on deck were
modified or got rid of, while more canvas was used and to much better
purpose.

The pinnace showed the same sort of improvement during the same
period--from Drake's birth under Henry VIII in 1545 to the zenith of his
career as a sea-dog in 1588. This progenitor of the frigate and the
cruiser was itself descended from the long-boat of the Norsemen and
still used oars as occasion served. But the sea-dogs made it primarily a
sailing vessel of anything up to a hundred tons and generally averaging
over fifty. A smart pinnace, with its long, low, clean-run hull, if well
handled under its Elizabethan fighting canvas of foresail and main
topsail, could play round a Spanish galleasse or absurdly castled
galleon like a lancer on a well-trained charger round a musketeer
astraddle on a cart horse.[4] Henry's pinnaces still had lateen sails
copied from Italian models. Elizabeth's had square sails prophetic of
the frigate's. Henry's had one or a very few small guns. Elizabeth's had
as many as sixteen, some of medium size, in a hundred-tonner.

[4: Fuller in his _Worthies_ (1662) writes: 'Many were the wit-combats
betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a
Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson (like the
former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his
performances. Shakespeare, like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk,
but lighter in sailing, cou