Navy

NAVY

NAVY. Up to the late fifteenth century, permanent navies with ships built only for warfare were unimportant in Europe. Wars at sea were fought with infantry weapons and they could be used on merchantmen temporarily armed for war. Maritime cities with many large cargo carriers could rapidly form powerful navies, and mercantile power was easily converted into sea power. The only specialized warships were the oared galleys, but they could be built quickly in large numbers when a war began. The sea power of a state became visible only during wars. One part of this system was retained in most early modern navies as, to a considerable extent, they were manned with seamen recruited from the mercantile marines. In peacetime, only a nucleus of seamen was employed by the navies. Permanency was created by warships, dockyards, and cadres of leaders, which gradually became corps of officers.

The introduction of heavy guns able to damage ships at a distance stimulated the development of specialized, heavily built, sailing warships that could carry such guns, use them efficiently in combat, resist gunfire, and stay at sea during long periods of time. Guns and specialized warships were expensive, and only states were able to make major naval investments. The size of the permanent navies became increasingly important for the control of the sea for offensive and defensive purposes and for diplomatic influence. Guns and warships also gave states a new role as the most efficient protectors of private shipping. The growth of the European navies reflected both the improved efficiency of a specialized technology and the increased centralization of resources to the states.

Galleys and sailing warships had different capabilities, and they were often regarded as parts of different organizations. Most Mediterranean galleys were of about the same size in all navies. There was a general rise in their size from the mid-sixteenth century to the early seventeenth century, but otherwise galley navies can be measured by number of galleys. In contrast, sailing warships were built in widely different sizes at the same time and size increased over time. The average size of European ships-ofthe-line grew from around 1,200 modern displacement tonnes in 1680 to 2,400 displacement tonnes in 1790. Consequently, the number of ships is of limited value in comparing the navies.

The displacement, that is, the weight of the ship including stores, began to be used to measure size in the eighteenth century. For earlier centuries, approximate displacements can be calculated from dimensions, contemporary tonnage calculations, or the size of crews. This makes it possible to compare different navies and measure fluctuations over time with one measurement that reflects fighting power and manpower requirements. Typically, galleys that relied on muscle power for their propulsion had about one man per tonne displacement. Sailing warships in the latter half of the seventeenth century had manning establishments that required around one man to three tonnes displacement while eighteenth century warships normally had around one man to four tonnes.

MEDITERRANEAN GALLEY NAVIES

The early permanent navies in the Mediterranean developed with the traditional galleys as the main component. Their rise was closely connected with the power struggles for control of the Greek archipelago and Italy and trade in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1450, only Venice had a major peacetime galley navy. Up to about 1500 the Ottoman and Venetian navies increased in size during the struggle for control of Greece. After that, the Italian Wars (1494–1559) stimulated the growth of the French and Spanish galley navies. The latter included the naval resources of Sicily and Naples. The Papal States, Tuscany, Genoa, and the Order of St. John on Malta developed minor galley navies. Finally, from the 1540s to the 1570s, the great contest between Spain and the Ottomans led to a dramatic increase in the galley navies. In terms of manpower (including chained oarsmen) and requirement of provisions, they were the largest concentrated military forces of the sixteenth century. Logistical problems often made them sluggish in operation.

The end of the imperial contests in the Mediterranean around 1580 was followed by a major reduction

The Mediterranean Galley Navies
Approximate number of galleys in continuous service and in reserve
	1500	1525	1550	1575	1600	1650	1700	1750
Venice	150	120	150	175	150	75	50	20
The Ottoman Empire	200	100	125	300	100	100	30	15
Spain	-	15	60	150	70	40	30	-
France	10	20	50	20	-	36	42	12
The Papal States	3	3	3	6	10	5	5	4
The Order of St. John	3	3	4	4	5	6	8	4
Tuscany	-	-	5	6	6	6	6	-
Genoa	-	1	1	3	6	10	6	6
Naples	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	4
A hyphen indicates that the state existed but it had no navy. A period means that the state did not exist at that date (and consequently no navy could exist). Naples was part of the Spanish monarchy from around 1500 to 1713/14. The Dutch Republic was created in a revolutionary process around 1580.
SOURCE: Glete, 1993.

of the galley navies, which continued during the seventeenth century. The limited utility of oared forces was revealed during two wars between Venice and the Ottomans (1644–1669 and 1684–1699), and both powers reduced the number of galleys. They were now primarily used for routine patrols and transfer of troops, and all major Mediterranean powers created sailing navies as their main force at sea during the seventeenth century. In the first half of the eighteenth centuries galleys were abolished or cut down to insignificant numbers, and by the end of the century they had disappeared in the Mediterranean.

EARLY SAILING NAVIES, 1500–1650

Sailing warships with guns began to be built by several states in the decades around 1500. They were few in number and major fleets were still formed by requisitioned or hired merchantmen. Merchantmen often protected themselves by sailing in convoys. Early sailing, gun-armed navies were developed primarily by states without strong mercantile marines: Portugal, France (Brittany), England, Denmark, and Sweden. They were closely related to royal ambitions to explore new technology in order to control coasts, territories, and trade routes, but a sailing navy was not regarded as necessary for great power status. The Habsburgs, who controlled Spain and the Netherlands with their large mercantile marines, for a long time did not develop naval power in the Atlantic, and for the French kings the sailing navy usually had a low priority. The Mediterranean powers preferred galleys, which at least up to the mid-sixteenth century proved viable as a weapons system in competition with sailing warships, which were still in their infancy.

The sailing navies grew during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century without entirely replacing temporarily armed merchantmen as an important instrument of warfare. Experience of war such as the Anglo-French contests up to 1559, wars in the Baltic in the 1530s and 1560s, and the Anglo-Spanish confrontation from 1585 to 1603 showed that specialized gun-armed warships had considerable advantages over traditional great cargo carriers provided with infantry and a few guns, which were gradually abolished as combatants. Merchantmen built to carry a substantial number of guns, and specialized for trade in contested waters such as the Mediterranean and the East and West Indies, became useful as temporary warships from the late sixteenth century up to the 1650s and 1660s. The English, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, and Swedish navies were reinforced by considerable numbers of armed merchantmen during major wars, and Venice fought the war with the Ottomans from 1644 to 1669 with hired English and Dutch merchantmen. Armed merchantmen were used for the European penetration of the Indian Ocean and the China Seas, and they remained the main European

Major Sailing Navies, 1500–1650
Total displacement (in 1,000 tonnes) of warships owned by state navies or, in the case of Spain, on long-term charter by the states. Portugal and Spain were governed by the same Habsburg monarchs. All figures are approximate and figures in parentheses are uncertain.
	1500	1520	1545	1570	1600	1630	1650
England	5	14	15	14	27	31	49
France	(10)	(12)	(5)	(3)	-	27	21
Portugal	?	?	?	?	.	.	(25)
Denmark	?	(8)	(8)	15	11	19	22
Sweden	-	(1)	7	21	24	17	28
Spain	-	-	-	3	(50)	(50)	(30)
The Dutch Republic	.	.	.	.	(20)	40	29
A hyphen indicates that the state existed but it had no navy. A period means that the state did not exist at that date (and consequently no navy could exist).
SOURCE: Glete, 1993.

force at sea in this area until the early nineteenth century.

It is not meaningful to look for a European balance of power at sea in this period, but powers who were antagonists, such as Denmark and Sweden in the Baltic and Spain and the Dutch in Western Europe, attempted to balance each other. The English and French navies were primarily maintained for control of the Channel, although the French civil wars rendered France almost powerless at sea from the 1560s to the 1620s. The absence of a French threat gave the English the opportunity to deploy the navy in the Atlantic during the war against Spain (1585–1603). The sixteenth-century Portuguese navy, of which too little is known to quantify its size, was primarily developed for control of the sea route to India. When Portugal was united with Spain in 1580, it formed the nucleus of a new Habsburg navy.

THE EUROPEAN BATTLE FLEETS, 1650–1790

The three Anglo-Dutch maritime wars from 1652 to 1674 and the rise of the new strong monarchy in France was the start for a major growth and transformation of the European fleets. Armed merchantmen were still chartered in large numbers during the first Anglo-Dutch Wars, but they proved deficient in combat with major warships. The English and the Dutch fought several intense battles for control of the Channel and the North Sea. It became obvious that fewer large ships with heavier guns had an advantage over more numerous smaller ships. This realization resulted in a long-term increase in the size of warships and made it uneconomical to use armed merchantmen in naval warfare. Tactics changed to make full use of large ships, which could continuously fire heavy broadsides and resist enemy gunfire. Growing corps of sea officers developed professionalism and a new doctrine that emphasized disciplined battle lines and well-drilled gun crews. Improved foundry technology made it possible to produce cheap iron guns that reduced the cost of permanent naval armament.

The naval conflicts between England and the Dutch were influenced by competition about trade and colonies. The French fleet expanded dramatically in the 1660s mainly as a result of increased royal power. It gave France naval supremacy over its traditional antagonist Spain as the Spanish navy declined

The Three Largest Sailing Navies, 1650–1720
TOTAL APPROXIMATE DISPLACEMENT (IN 1,000 TONNES)
	1650	1660	1670	1680	1690	1700	1710	1720
England	49	88	84	132	124	196	201	174
The Dutch Republic	29	62	102	66	68	113	119	79
France	21	20	114	135	141	195	171	48
SOURCE: Glete, 1993.

to a medium-sized force in the latter half of the seventeenth century. France could also challenge the two great maritime powers at sea in conflicts that predominantly were Continental. However, the combined Anglo-Dutch navies gained superiority at sea over France in the 1690s and could use their navies to support allies in the Mediterranean and for military actions on the Iberian peninsula in the early 1700s. French naval power collapsed in the 1710s and Great Britain emerged as the dominant sea power. Britain retained this position until the twentieth century, and other great powers were reduced to more or less successful challengers of British supremacy over the European and transoceanic sea-lanes.

The first of these challenges came from a new combination of naval powers, France and Spain, which began to act as allies in the eighteenth-century struggle over colonies and trade in America and Asia. The new Bourbon regime in Spain launched an ambitious Atlantic naval policy that made Spain into the third largest naval power in Europe for most of the century. During the war of 1739–1748, both Bourbon powers were defeated by Britain at sea. They started major programs of new construction, but the war of 1756–1763 resulted in a victory for Britain, partly because Spain joined the war after France already had suffered large losses at sea. During the 1760s and 1770s French and Spanish battle fleet strength outpaced the British by a wide margin, and during the War of American Independence the combined Bourbon navies were frequently able to place severe limits on British operational freedom on sea and on land. France and Spain continued with large shipbuilding programs in the 1780s, with the intention to renew the challenge against Britain in future contests in the Atlantic.

The other two Atlantic powers, Portugal and the Dutch Republic, preferred neutrality during most of the eighteenth century. Both were primarily interested in defense of their worldwide empires of trade and colonies, but not in expansion. Portugal had maintained a navy of around 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes after it regained independence in 1640, increasing it to 25,000 to 35,000 tonnes in the eighteenth century. The Dutch navy was kept steady at a level of 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes from the 1720s to about 1780. The failure of the Dutch policy of neutrality in the War of American Independence forced the Dutch to join the Atlantic naval race and increase the navy to around 120,000 tonnes during the 1780s.

In the Baltic, Denmark and Sweden remained the only major naval powers up to the early 1700s, when Russian conquests of Swedish-controlled territories made it possible for Russia to build a navy. Sweden and Denmark traditionally regarded it as important that the other power should not be able to control the Baltic Sea, and this shaped their naval policy. Russia under Peter I rapidly created a major navy and for most of the eighteenth century, the Danish, Swedish, and Russian navies were of the same magnitude. Denmark usually had the largest battle fleet, but the other two navies also maintained large oared flotillas of galleys, oared frigates, and, by the 1780s, gunboats. By 1790, the Swedish navy had to a considerable extent become an archipelago fleet. Oared vessels were intended for cooperation with the army along archipelagic coasts, not for the open sea. From around 1780, the Russian navy began to expand and created a new fleet in the Black Sea. This was a part of Catherine II's expansionist policy in the Balkans, and it was the beginning of a period when Russia was a major European power at

The Three Largest Sailing Navies, 1720–1790
TOTAL APPROXIMATE DISPLACEMENT (IN 1,000 TONNES)
	1720	1730	1740	1750	1760	1770	1780	1790
Great Britain	174	189	195	276	375	350	372	473
France	48	73	91	115	156	219	271	324
Spain	22	73	91	41	137	165	196	253
SOURCE: Glete, 1993.

The Baltic Sailing Navies, 1650–1790
TOTAL APPROXIMATE DISPLACEMENT (IN 1,000 TONNES)
	1650	1675	1700	1725	1750	1775	1790
Denmark-Norway	25	29	46	47	66	83	87
Sweden	28	35	53	34	45	50	48
Russia	-	-	-	55	59	75	145
A hyphen indicates that the state existed but it had no navy.
SOURCE: Glete, 1993.

sea, replacing Spain in the nineteenth century as owner of the third largest battle fleet.

In the Levant, Venice and the Ottomans began to build sailing navies in the 1670s, although information about the latter navy is incomplete. Both navies had reached a size of around 40,000 tonnes by 1700. The Venetian navy did not expand further but the Ottoman navy grew to one of the largest in Europe, with a strength of around 60,000 tonnes in the 1720s. Both navies were gradually reduced as a result of the long period of peace in the eastern Mediterranean after 1718, and the Ottoman navy was unprepared for the new challenge from Russia in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea from 1768 on. The Turks responded with a new expansion from a low level to about 70,000 tonnes in 1790. Russia had by then a fleet of around 45,000 tonnes in theBlack Sea, while Venice since the mid-eighteenth century had maintained a navy of around 20,000 tonnes.

The total size of the European sailing navies was around 200,000 tonnes in 1650, around 750,000 tonnes in both 1700 and 1750, and almost 1.7 million tonnes in 1790. After that they declined markedly. Rising timber costs and reduced naval ambitions in several European states in the wake of a series of British naval victories during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars limited further growth.

See also Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars ; Armada, Spanish ; Galleys ; Italian Wars (1494–1559) ; Shipbuilding and Navigation ; Shipping .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acerra, Martine. Rochefort et la construction navale française, 1661–1815. 4 vols. Paris, 1993. Broad survey of French naval administration, shipbuilding and technology.

Bruijn, Jaap R. The Dutch Navy of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Columbia, S.C., 1993. A comprehensive synthesis of modern scholarship.

Dull, Jonathan R. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774–1787. Princeton, 1975. Emphasizes the importance of naval strength.

Glete, Jan. Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe and America, 1500–1860. 2 vols. Stockholm, 1993. Navies and naval technology as parts of the state formation process. Displacement calculations in this article are from this book.

Guilmartin, John Francis, Jr. Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century. London and New York, 1974. A reevaluation of galley warfare and the introduction of guns at sea in general.

Harding, Richard. Seapower and Naval Warfare, 1650–1830. London, 1999. Broad survey of the role of the sailing battle fleets in history.

Lavery, Brian. The Ship of the Line : Vol. 1, The Development of the Battlefleet, 1650–1850; Vol. 2, Design, Construction and Fittings. London, 1983–1984. British battleship development in its technological, administrative and political framework with a list of British ships-ofthe-line.

Lyon, David. The Sailing Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy: Built, Purchased and Captured, 1688–1860. London, 1993. A detailed and intensively researched work of reference.

Modelski, George, and William R. Thompson. Seapower in Global Politics, 1494–1993. Seattle, 1988. A quantitative approach to long-term trends and fluctuations of political power.

Phillips, Carla Rahn. Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century. Baltimore, 1986. Spanish warship technology and naval administration in the seventeenth century and its institutional framework.

Symcox, Geoffrey. The Crisis of French Sea Power, 1688–1697: From the Guerre d'Escadre to the Guerre de Course. The Hague, 1974. The critical phase in European naval history when France lost the initiative to the maritime powers.

Teitler, Gerke. The Genesis of the Modern Professional Officer Corps. Translated by Mrs. C. N. Ter Heide-Lopy. Beverly Hills, Calif., 1977. The development of sea officer corps in the largest navies.

Jan Glete