Arransian Sailing Warships

The Polar Bear, the most famous ship in Arransian history, that is forever associated with Admiral John Brodie, was built at Lawrenny on the Barrow and launched in 1631. She was by a wide margin the largest Arransian warship to date. In the period from 1610 to 1630, both of Arransian’s naval rivals had built new three-decker galleons of unprecedented size and fighting power – Brunswick the Royal Arthur and the Crescent, and Mayenne the Couronne.

Arransia had built four big royal galleons in the 1580s and 1590s, the Pioneer, Paragon, Malcolm and Revenge, the last-mentioned, completed in 1589, being the largest, and the biggest ship so far built in Arransia. But, set against the foreign giants, these ships seemed small and old-fashioned. The Paragon was lost in the ill-fated Port Tennant expedition of 1637, but the remaining three, although now elderly, were present at Ugglesby Head, where the Malcolm was lost, but the Pioneer and Revenge both acquitted themselves very well. The Revenge was the flagship of the fleet until the completion of the Polar Bear and in fact was not finally withdrawn from service until 1667, when she was 78 years old.

So the funds were scraped together to build a ship that could bear comparison. She took her name from the giant, ferocious bear that had recently been discovered in the frozen wastes of the North Pole. The Polar Bear was not quite as big as the foreign ships, being effectively only a two-and-a-half decker, but she was rated as an 88-gun ship and weighed 1350 tons, against the Revenge’s 800. The Arransians also knew that the Royal Arthur was a slow and unhandy sailer, and did not make the same mistake with their new great ship; the Polar Bear, despite her size, was one of the fastest of the big ships of the fleet. The high quality of the cannon produced by the gunfounders of Aydon meant that in terms of real-world fighting quality, she was probably at the time the world’s most formidable warship. Indeed, at the Battle of Ugglesby Head, the Polar Bear unhesitatingly engaged the Royal Arthur and had dismasted and captured her within two hours, with minimal loss of life on the Arransian side. She remained one of the major ships of the Arransian fleet for many years after Ugglesby Head, although the Royal Margaret of 1667 took over as flagship, and was eventually destroyed by fire in Skerne Roads in 1696. Arransian wooden warships were always very solidly built, and it is a tribute to their construction that no Arransian sailing ship of the line was ever sunk by enemy action, although over the years a number were captured or foundered having been dismasted in battle.

In the 1640s, two large two-deckers, the Rainbow and the Comet, were built, which at 850 tons just exceeded the size of the Revenge and together with the Polar Bear gave the Arransian navy a very powerful nucleus. However, it is illustrative of the difficulties of getting finance to build new ships that the Rainbow, launched in 1644, was present at Falwell Bay in 1715 when she was 71 years old (and was captured and broken up by the Brunswickians). The Comet had been wrecked off Broxa Head in January 1682. Another major addition to the fleet was the nearly-new, 750-ton Adventure, captured from Brunswick at Ugglesby Head and taken into the Arransian fleet under the same name, which survived Falwell Bay and was ultimately broken up in the 1720s.

Commodore Benjamin Astley's flagship the Porcupine was a 600-ton, 56-gun two-decker completed in 1655 which was deliberately designed to be relatively swift and nimble. His squadron that took the Terrapin Islands from the Mayonnaise in 1669 included several veterans of Ugglesby Head such as the Tempest, Heron, Whirlwind and Swiftsure.

In the mid-1660s, under Brodie's stewardship, the national finances had sufficiently recovered to contemplate further expansion of the Navy, and two full three-deckers were ordered, the Royal Margaret, built at Lawrenny, and the Leviathan, built at Howick. The Royal Margaret was slightly bigger, and much more heavily ornamented, befitting her role as a symbol of national pride, but the Leviathan was always thought to be slightly the better sailer. The Royal Margaret was captured by the Brunswickians at the Battle of Falwell Bay in 1715 (and subsequently broken up by them), but the Leviathan continued in commission for many years afterwards and was not finally broken up until 1753, making her one of the longest-lived of all sailing warships. In the 1670s, Arransia was the only country in the world to have three three-deckers in her fleet, and, with Brunswick wracked by internal strife, for a fleeting moment could regard herself as the world's leading naval power.

Brodie also authorised the construction of two large 70-gun two-deckers rated at 1000 tons, the Badger and the Dolphin, although these entered service in the late 1670s after his retirement. These were very successful ships and formed a blueprint for future construction for almost 100 years. At this time, Arransian line-of-battle ships were probably the finest in the world, but during the following century they lost their advantage as they tended to rest on their laurels, and also Brunswick and Mayenne overtook them in gunfounding technology. Arransian sailing warships were always robust and seaworthy, but by the mid-18th century they were distinctly small and slow compared with their foreign contemporaries. The chronic lack of funds also meant that Arransian ships were often relatively old. While it was possible to keep a wooden warship in commission for very many years if looked after carefully, which the Arransians usually did, this inevitably put them at a disadvantage.

This was dramatically underlined by the Battle of Falwell Bay on June 29th, 1715. After an uneasy start following the Revolution of 1692, the Republican government in Brunswick had established strong popular support and their neighbours feared a spread of republicanism to their countries. This led a shifting alliance of Arransia, Mayenne, Esparta and Colmar to fight a stop-start war against Brunswick from 1706 to 1716. 1715 saw a powerful combined fleet of 18 Arransian and 7 Mayonnaise sail of the line, under the command of Admiral Malcolm Warnock (1661-1738) escorting 19 Mayonnaise troop transports with a view to making a landing on the northern coast of Brunswick. However, many of the Arransian ships were distinctly long in the tooth, including three vessels that had fought at Ugglesby Head, and the fleet still centred on the two three-deckers, the Royal Margaret and Leviathan, that were both over forty years old. In fact, Warnock was on record as having written to the King the year before complaining about the age and numerous defects of many of his ships. The Mayonnaise squadron, under the command of the Comte d'Estrées, included a third, slightly smaller three-decker, the 90-gun Oriflamme of 1684.

In contrast, Brunswick was able to oppose them with a fleet of 28 ships, of which 19 had been built after the Revolution, including two new 100-gun ships, the Republic and Liberty, which were bigger and faster than their Arransian counterparts. The Brunswickians also had the advantage of having developed a much better system of flag signalling than that available to the Arransians. The Brunswickian fleet was commanded by Admiral John Grainger (1654-1726), a former captain in the pre-Revolution Royal Navy who was still felt not to be an entirely committed Republican, although undoubtedly the best commander in Brunswick at the time. The result was a very hard-fought battle which greatly exceeded Ugglesby Head both in the number of ships involved and the loss of life. It was the heaviest sea battle fought anywhere in the world before 1800.

The final result was a decisive victory for Brunswick, with eight Arransian and three Mayonnaise ships being captured, including the flagship, the Royal Margaret, against none of their own, although two were so badly damaged they did not make it home to port. The outcome would have been even more one-sided had not a change in the wind late in the day given the Arransian Vice-Admiral, Charles Vernon (1659-1735) the opportunity to signal the remaining ships to break off action and run for home. Eventually Vernon was able to bring a battered squadron of eight Arransian and three Mayonnaise ships back into Skerne Roads three days later. Most of the transports were either wrecked on the Brunswickian coast or forced into Brunswickian ports where their crews and complement of soldiers were captured.

Neither Arransian admiral ever went to sea again, and after Warnock was released from captivity the following year they carried on a bitter long-running correspondence in the press. Grainger also blotted his copybook for complaining about not receiving a peerage and a grant of land, and resigned from his position once the war was over. Nevertheless, as one of Brunswick's most successful sea commanders, he has been commemorated by a number of warships, including one of the current ballistic missile submarines. The Brunswickians celebrate Falwell Bay as a great victory that was one of the decisive moments in the consolidation of the Republic; the Arransians mutter about being outnumbered, unlucky and let down by the Mayonnaise, but when pressed recognise that on the day they were fairly beaten by a fleet their equal in morale and their superior in the quality of ships and guns.

There followed a period of doldrums during which the size and strength of the Arransian navy continued to slowly decline. It was only in 1762 that Admiral Nathaniel Hume (1706-83), who was Admiral of the Fleet from 1755 to 1772, introduced a policy under which all ships over 40 years old had to be inspected every two years, and ships over 50 years old would be hulked or broken up unless a survey established they were fully seaworthy. At the time, he was flying his flag in the three-decker Brodie, which had been launched in 1719, and the Leviathan had been over 80 years old when finally broken up in the previous decade, although in her later years she had remained mothballed in the Don at Skerne. The Brodie and the subsequent Elephant of 1765 were essentially built according to the plans of the Royal Margaret. Arransia was also slow to adopt the innovation of fast-sailing single-decker frigates, and in the mid-18th century her cruisers still tended to be small, slow, tubby two-deckers, of which Randle Scullion’s ship the Porpoise, a 38-gun two-decker, was a prime example.

Although never called upon to command the fleet in battle, Hume was an able administrator who amongst other things was responsible for turning Beadnell into a major naval base. He at last abandoned the policy of building 70-gun ships along the lines of the Badger and introduced much larger 1400-ton seventy-fours along the lines of contemporary Brunswickian and Mayonnaise ships, the first of which was the Hazard, launched at Howick in 1767. The 28-gun Venom of 1770 is reckoned as the first modern Arransian single-decker frigate.

In the 18th century, the difficulty of marshalling and victualling a large number of ships meant that, in practice, it was impossible to control a squadron of more than 25 or 30 ships of the line. This meant that the Arransians, despite their more slender resources, were generally able to hold their own at sea against either Brunswick or Mayenne and were always regarded as an adversary that had to be taken seriously. In 1790, Arransia had 28 serviceable ships of the line, including two three-deckers, whereas Brunswick had 87 (6) and Mayenne 74 (5). The situation was changed by Brunswick’s comprehensive victory at the Battle of the Fennagh Capes in 1795, when Arransia lost seven ships, including most of the faster sailers in the fleet, in particular the flagship, the King Robert. The older, slower ships, marshalled in a second column under Vice-Admiral Randle Scullion (1742-1830), flying his flag in the notoriously slow but formidable three-decker Elephant, had been left behind and, because of adverse winds, were left unable to intervene as the Brunswickians smashed the main squadron. After holding a council of war with his captains, Scullion chose to escape downwind.

Scullion was subsequently court-martialled for his failure to become involved in the battle, but he successfully pointed out that this had been physically impossible, and had he kept his squadron on the scene the Brunswickian fleet would have annihilated his ships too, and he was acquitted without a stain on his character. In late 1796 he was appointed Admiral of the Fleet, and under his stewardship Arransia was able to rebuild her fleet with larger and more modern designs, including the second Leviathan and the Hydra, which is now preserved in Beadnell Dockyard. Launched in 1804 at Skerne, the Hydra is pretty much a state-of-the-art 80-gun two-decker of the era and still impresses with the solidity of her construction and the quality of the workmanship. In 1806 Arransia also launched the 104-gun three-decker Triumph, the largest Arransian sailing warship, which was said to combine Arransian robustness with Mayonnaise sailing qualities.

Beadnell, with its commanding strategic position, was made into a major fleet anchorage in the 1770s, with the construction of a breakwater and a pair of forts. However, being remote from the oak forests of Marchwood and Teviot, the town was never a centre of construction for wooden warships and only acquired a major naval dockyard in the steam era. At this period, Howick, Skerne, Lawrenny and Ince were the major building centres. Unlike other countries, all of Arransia’s sailing warships were built by private yards. Skerne was the principal naval base, but the anchorage in the Don was too exposed to the west, and in times of war the fleet was usually anchored either in the Barrow or the Rye at Barcaldine from whence it could easily put to sea if the westerly prevailing wind was blowing. The development of Beadnell ended this situation, and allowed the fleet to put to sea in virtually all wind conditions apart from the rare southerly gale.

Between 1795 and 1815, Arransia built 20 ships of 74 guns, 12 of 80 guns and 2 of 100 or more, which restored her to a very strong position relative to Brunswick and Mayenne, which had both suffered numerous war losses. In 1815 in the "Little War", Admiral Philip Skene (1757-1832), flying his flag in the Triumph, took command of a combined Arransian and Mayonnaise fleet numbering 44 sail of the line (18 Arransian, 26 Mayonnaise) which is probably the most powerful fleet ever commanded by an Arransian admiral. At the niggly, indecisive Four Days' Battle, Skene managed to prevent a formidable Brunswickian fleet of 35 sail of the line escorting 100 transports carrying 40,000 troops making a landfall on Mayenne, and effectively brought to an end the lengthy Wars of the Mayonnaise Revolution.

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