ships, besides small craft. Two hundred of
these vessels were employed after the king's landing in ravaging the
northern coasts of France and destroying the hostile shipping.

In the year 1347 Edward organised another great naval expedition against
France, this time in order to give him the command of the sea during his
siege of Calais. The fleet was drawn from all the ports of the kingdom,
and small contingents came from Ireland, Flanders, Spain, and the king's
own possession of Bayonne. There are two lists in existence of the
numbers of ships and men contributed by each port to this expedition.
They agree very closely. According to one of them, the united fleet
consisted of 745 ships, and 15,895 mariners, or an average of about
twenty mariners to each ship. This figure, of course, does not include
the fighting men. About fifty of these vessels were fighting ships
fitted with castles, and the remainder were barges, ballingers (which
appear to have been a kind of large barge), and transports. The largest
contingents, by far, came from Yarmouth, which contributed 43 ships and
1,950 men; Fowey sent 47 ships and 770 men; and Dartmouth supplied 32
ships and 756 men; while London, independently of the king's own
vessels, sent only 25 ships manned with 662 men.

In 1350 Edward III. and the Black Prince fought a famous naval battle
off Winchelsea against a fleet of forty Spanish ships. The battle is
generally known by the name of L'Espagnols-sur-Mer. Edward was
victorious, though he lost his own ship, through its springing a leak
when colliding with one of the Spanish vessels. The tactics of the
English consisted chiefly of boarding, while the Spaniards, whose
vessels were much the higher, attacked with cross-bows and heavy stones;
the latter they hurled from their fighting-tops into their adversaries'
ships.

From the foregoing, we can infer that the naval resources of England in
the first half of the reign of Edward III. were very great. During the
latter half of his reign he neglected his navy, and the French and
Spaniards, in spite of all their previous losses, rapidly gained the
upper hand at sea, and ravaged the English coasts. In 1372 the Spanish
fleet assisting the French inflicted a severe defeat upon an inferior
English squadron which had been sent to the relief of La Rochelle. This
battle is memorable because it was, probably, the first sea-fight in
which artillery was employed, the Spanish ships having been part