Читать книгу Champions of the Fleet. Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empire онлайн

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The future “nucleus crew” of the Dreadnought, who were to act as ship-keepers on board when the ship went round to moor with the rest of the fleet laid up in the Medway, had been warned to be at Deptford by the morning of the 10th of November. They were drawn apparently from the ships lying off Gillingham, just below Chatham, or “Jillingham Ordinarie”—the “Fleet Reserve,” as we say nowadays—and numbered, all told, ten men and a boy. These were the names of our original “Dreadnoughts” of three hundred and thirty-three years ago, and their quarterly pay, according to “The Accompte as well Ordinarie as Extraordinarie of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of ye Quene’s Majestie’s Maryn cawses,” 1574, a quaint, bulky, ponderous, parchment covered volume, of massive proportions, laced with faded green silk, and bound with leather straps, now well worn and in parts frayed nearly away:

THE “DREADNAUGHTE.”

MARYNERS. Robarte Baxster, boteson:—xij wekes vj daies xxxvijˢ vjᵈ Richard Boureman, cooke: xij wekes vj daies xxixˢ vᵈ John Awsten: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ Nicholas Francton: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ Christofer Parr, gromett: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ jᵈ Henry Osbourne: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ James Laske: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ Richard Shutt: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ Robartt Woodnaughtt: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ William Appleford: xij wekes vj daies xxjˢ vᵈ John Huntt, master gonner: xij wekes vj daies xxxijˢ ijᵈ

This is what the Dreadnought looked like as she lay in the dock on the Tuesday morning that saw the ship take the water. Imagine a solid-looking heavily-timbered hull, round bowed, with long, raking forward prow or beak, reaching out some ten or twelve yards ahead of the actual vessel, and with at the after-end a lofty towering poop with shallow overhanging balustraded gallery. Amidships the vessel is of a width equal to nearly a third of her length. From the “greate beaste,” the figure-head—a dragon—“gilded and laid with fine gold,” representing one of the supporters of the Queen’s arms, set up on the tip of the beak, away aft to the stern gallery is a distance of, over all, about a hundred and twenty feet. The body of the hull itself has a keel length of some eighty feet—from rudder post to fore-foot. Along the water-line the bends are all tarred over, with varnished side planking above, tough oak timber from the Crown lands of the Sussex Weald by Horsham. The topsides above are varnished to the bulwarks, where a touch of colour shows; ornamental carved and painted work in royal Tudor green and white, laid on in “colours of oil” and garnished with Her Majesty’s family badges in gold, and with here and there, on the balustrades of the quarter-rails and stern gallery, an additional touch of red. On the stern, “painted in oils,” are the arms of England, with the Lion and the Dragon, the Queen’s royal supporters, and below, on a scroll, Her Majesty’s motto, Semper Eadem.