Susan Rose - Medieval Naval Warfare 1000-1500 (Warfare and History)

Medieval Naval Warfare, 10001500

How were medieval navies organised, and how did powerful rulers use them? Medieval Naval Warfare, 10001500 provides a wealth of information about the strategy and tactics of these early fleets and the extent to which the possibilities of sea power were understood and exploited.

This fascinating account brings vividly to life the dangers and difficulties of medieval seafaring. In particular, it reveals the exploits of the Italian city states, England and France, and examines:

why fighting occurred at sea

how battles were fought

the logistical back up needed to maintain a fleet

naval battles from the Mediterranean to the North Sea.

With accompanying maps and illustrations, this much needed account will appeal to students of military history, medievalists and the general reader alike.

Susan Rose is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at University at Roehampton Surrey. She is also author of The Navy of the Lancastrian Kings (1982).

Warfare and History

General Editor

Jeremy Black

Professor of History, University of Exeter

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Medieval Naval Warfare 10001500

Susan Rose

First published 2003

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2002 Susan Rose

Typeset in Bembo by HWA Text and Data Management, Tunbridge Wells

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Rose, Susan, 1938

Medieval naval warfare, 10001500 / Susan Rose.

p. cm. (Warfare and History)

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. Naval art and scienceHistoryTo 1500. 2. Naval history. 3. EuropeHistory, Naval. I. Title. II. Series

V43.R66 2001

359.00940902dc21

2001041987

ISBN 0415239761 (hbk)

ISBN 041523977X (pbk)

For David, Bernard, Philip and Dinah

Contents

List of illustrations

Maps

Plates

The English Channel and Western approaches

The English Channel and the North Sea

The Mediterranean Sea

Preface

In the period with which this book deals, 10001500 AD, the peoples of Western Europe had little if any contact with those of both the Far East and the Americas. As every schoolboy used to know, Columbus did not sail the ocean blue until 1492 while da Gama did not reach India and the port of Calicut by the Cape route until 1498. On the east coast of the Americas there were no indigenous craft capable of a long sea voyage and the use of watercraft in warfare was confined to the transport of warriors from one island to the next on raiding expeditions. In the East, there were large and highly successful ships in the service of the Emperor of China but no interactions between Chinese and western sailors. Even the mainly Arab trading vessels of the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Indian Ocean were little known to Mediterranean seafarers from the Christian states. The infamous Crusader Baron Raymond de Chatillon in the late twelfth century is one of the few medieval Europeans who certainly attempted to use ships on the Red Sea. It therefore seems justifiable for this work to concentrate on events in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the so-called Western approaches and the North Sea. To most European sailors, even at the end of our period, the maritime world of which they had knowledge, was that shown on Ptolemys world map from his Cosmographia with no hint of the existence of the Pacific Ocean or the Americas and a landlocked Indian Ocean. The routes which they travelled, the ports where they sought shelter, the enemies whom they feared, were all to be found in the familiar waters of the seas stretching from Iceland in the North to the coasts of North Africa in the South. Stories of the East were avidly read but it is doubtful if the fantastic voyages of Sir John Mandeville were clearly differentiated from the more soundly based stories of Marco Polo.

Any discussion of naval warfare must necessarily take some account of the construction and design of the ships in use at the time. This book, however, is not primarily concerned with this aspect of maritime history. Both the documentary and archaeological evidence for the details of the design of medieval ships in Western Europe can be found in the works of, among others Ian Friel, Gillian Hutchinson and Sean McGrail.concern here is the way in which ships and mariners were drawn into the service of rulers, to serve their ends in war. This involves an attempt not only to investigate the strategy and tactics used in any battle but also to try and understand the degree to which the possibilities of seapower were understood and exploited. This concern has also been informed by an attempt to bear in mind the limitations imposed on mariners by the nature of the element in which they operate. Ships at sea, even in coastal waters, are always subject to the forces of wind, tide and current. These forces may limit the way in which ships can operate quite as much as their design.