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"1545
The captain of Henry VIII's ship the Mary Rose, Roger Grenville of Stowe (father of Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge) dies in the sinking of the ship. This ship was acting as the flagship of vice-admiral Sir George Carew when the ship was struck by a squall and sank at Spithead (Portsmouth) on July 19th."-
@sim How big was the goddamn fish
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@sim Turns out squall also stands for storm.
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@nerthos
Lol! No idea. -
@maiyannah Google revealed that but the idea of a damn huge fish crashing against the fleet's flagship, sinking it and killing the king's captain is much more amusing.
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@nerthos No wonder Ahab was after a big fish.
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@sim Now I'm wondering if I'm mixing it up as I know the term has to do with fish.
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@nerthos
Yeah, the winds... I was confused for a moment where you got the idea of fish from. -
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@sim Both the cargo and the ship itself were incredibly costly. Relative cost of big warships hasn't changed much over the years, just like today back then one big warship was a considerable drain on a nation's resources
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@nerthos
Yeah... and if you're a pirate, you can get even more money if you capture one of the ships and keep the crew alive, and either hold them for ransom or sell them into the slave trade. -
@sim Generally capturing big ships wasn't done because big ships require fleet support and are slow and hard to hide. If pirates captured one they'd only manage to get a small fleet chasing them.
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@nerthos
Good point. I think it was more likely that they sought after transport ships... not big war ships. -
@sim Basically. A commercial ship is lightly armed because cannon decks take up loads of space, so having a faster ship means you have the advantage. A military ship only has weaponry as far as valuables goes, and is well armed and generally with an escort. I don't discard the possibility of pirates going after a ship or two that returned from a battle in bad shape, but they wouldn't go after normal military convoys, much like modern pirates run from coast guard and navy ships.
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@nerthos
Yeah, as a pirate I wouldn't want to grape with those guys on a good day... lol. More profitable to take on the Merchant ships. -
It's also a matter of men: the USS Constitution was a frigate, not a big, first-rate ship of the line, but still carried 450 crew, 55 Marines and 30 boys (during battle all these men would be manning guns (25 each side, each w/ 3-4 men), running sail, replacing entire masts and patching holes). The Cutty Sark, last of the tea clippers, carried less than 35. @nerthos @sim
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