The newspapers all glossed over what the pirates did to the women. Since most of the initial published Morning Star content was correspondence to and from Lloyd’s, the marine insurance house, this was not surprising. An insurer's primary concern was what the pirates stole and the damage done to the ship, not what happened to the passengers. Only one account of the events on board alluded to the women's ill-treatment at the hands of the pirates. The absence of reference to it in other accounts could have stemmed from a desire to protect their reputations. After all, in the patriarchy of British society, a man's honour was traditionally fixed in the purity of his wife or daughter. Yet a deeper look reveals the women of the Morning Star stood at the centre of a turbulent confluence of old and new gender and class constraints specific to the pre-Victorian era in Britain. Early nineteenth-century men expected women at sea to always conform to the mores of their social class on land. This included during extreme situations like shipwrecks, or when subjected to sexual coercion or violence. The early nineteenth-century societal attitudes towards sexual assault in Britain at the time often made women morally complicit in the crimes committed against them. Their society swiftly judged and vilified them accordingly.

Since pirates operated outside of accepted societal conventions, the sexual violence committed against the Morning Star women was a rare exception to this judgement. In Spain, authorities openly treated their assaults with compassion and understanding. However in Britain, excusing the women from judgement over the sexual violence inflicted on them manifested as ignoring their stories entirely. The omission of the women from the Morning Star story obfuscated the fact that if it had not been for their bravery and fortitude, the ship and its occupants would have sunk to a watery grave at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

By the nineteenth century women had been on the sea, either intentionally or under duress, for centuries. They remained largely absent from formal records until the escalation of transoceanic passenger travel revealed the increase of their presence on board.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed significant change to the appearance, armament, mobility and size of state shipping. Naval vessels transformed from the medieval large craft that could aid and transport armies, to the modern ships that were heavily armed and easily manoeuvrable. Warships advanced from ships of war in 1500 to weapons of war by 1650. Although the reforms to naval administration and fiscal policy discussed in the previous chapters were crucial to deliver improvements to the size and shape of fleets, transnational interactions and knowledge also facilitated the architectural enhancements to warships. Yet, the thriving international theatre of shipbuilding expertise was not the only influence for the design of these vessels. Their development was also shaped by the character, ambitions and influence of individual monarchs, as heads of state. Personal aspirations, maritime expertise and interstate competition all contributed to the structure of fleet composition, as well as to the visual appearance of warships.

Naval ships were a product of their surroundings, which included their rulers, and for this reason Louis Sicking and Hervé Coutau-Bégarie have suggested that a cultural and ecological divide existed between the northern and southern European maritime theatres. Warship architecture, maritime expertise and tactics deployed in warfare varied by location and this affected the potency of sea power, knowledge and the cultural traits used to connect navies with their nations. For these reasons, this chapter explores and assesses whether the architectural improvements to the English and French navies from 1500 to 1650 should be perceived as products of national or transnational influence.

To ensure that the integrity of data is maintained, it is important before discussing architectural advances to address the instances when different methods were used to measure an early modern vessel's size. This varied not only according to the years of focus, but also by geography, meaning that England and France did not always use the same procedures for determining a ship's dimensions. As techniques and formulae used for this differed by both time and location, direct comparisons between crafts that were not sourced in the same location can be difficult to draw judgement on concisely.

Source Information for Chart 4

Below is a non-exhaustive list of the documents consulted in the production of this chart. It provides an advisory guide of relevant sources that, when combined, account for the growth and decline of the English and French fleets. For some years, namely the earliest years of this study, and during the late sixteenth century in France, the data presented is produced by estimates and is supported by statistical trends and manuscripts that account for a small part of the navy's whole.

Most oared vessels had only one deck and, therefore, did not have their tonnage recorded because of reduced capacity to store tuns of cargo. Tunnage typically applied to sailing craft, not oared. For consistency, all vessels that were primarily propelled by oar have been separated in this chart from other sailing craft.

Small vessels such as pinnaces, flutes, shallops and brûlots have not been included in the following charts when they are not typically referred to as part of the squadrons, but instead as an auxiliary to them. Their primary purposes were to transport troops and provisions, and to accompany the larger carracks and galleons. The majority were not armed with multiple heavy cannons because they were not designed to be so. The exceptions to this rule are galliots. These vessels were small-armed galleys and they are included when they are mentioned in source. Another reason for their inclusion is that it is only fair, bearing in mind that the lesser rowbarges of England for 1545 are also integrated because they were recorded in naval inventories of the time. Where there is evidence that these vessels were armed, and so could be used for purposes other than just to transport goods, they have been included.

The strength of both fleets for the years 1640 to 1650 is covered in chapter six.

For the first quarter of the sixteenth century, neither the naval administrations of the Tudor nor Valois dynasties changed notably from their medieval predecessors. Apart from the admirals, most officials overseeing the navy's upkeep were employed on an ad hoc basis. When the navy was required for service, it was organised through relying on similar (and in some instances the same) private networks as the army. Yet, with the expansion of long-distance trade, and with both state-approved and non-sanctioned violence at sea increasing, the early modern period quickly witnessed a rising demand for naval power. In turn, with the growth of armed sea forces, reform to administrative infrastructure was required to accommodate for it. However, the political and geographical differences between England and France, covered in this chapter, led to the emergence of two distinct organisational structures for controlling and maintaining these resources. The role and authority of the respective admirals, in particular, was reformed with significantly different results. Whereas in England the overall responsibilities of the admiral for naval affairs diminished as administrative bodies were created to oversee many of the office's tasks, France on the other hand, experienced quite the opposite, as its most senior position received greater jurisdictional control over the kingdom's sea forces.

Scholarship that has addressed the role and authority of the two admiralties has come to the same opinion. The French admiral held greater administrative responsibility than his English counterpart. He controlled and exercised his rights over the admiralty courts, while also being the principal orchestrator for organising maritime resources for war. In England, on the other hand, the lord admiral's role was more superficial. Although he was expected to command naval campaigns, it was chiefly the monarch and their professional administrative specialists who transformed and then subsequently upheld administration, especially after the creation of the Council of Marine Causes. The holder of the English admiral office then, unlike in France, was, according to C. S. L. Davies, ‘remote from the day-to-day administration.’ Historians have consequently questioned the purpose of the redundant English office, with N. A. M. Rodger and Andrew Thrush suggesting that England's naval administration was ‘quite capable of functioning without’ it.

On 18 July 1545, a French invasion force of between 150 and 250 ships approached the coast of the Isle of Wight. Mariners, gunners and soldiers formed a force of around 50,000 men commanded by Admiral Claude d’Annebault. Both England and France had been preparing for this engagement since Henry VIII's successful siege of Boulogne in September of the previous year. To Francis I, the ousting of the English from Boulogne was essential not only for his kingdom's defence but also for national pride. By launching an attack on English territory, Francis hoped to coerce the Boulogne garrison into retreat.

With the navy of the English crown at its greatest size for over a century, the Tudor king did not halt, but instead continued to build new warships in the royal dockyards while waiting for the appearance of his rival's sea forces. Sightings and rumours soon circulated across the Channel of vessels being equipped for war in Marseille, Brittany and Dieppe. Meanwhile, in the Italian Provinces, French commissioners were recruiting mercenary ships and their crews to support an invasion of England. The English regime responded by also seeking the recruitment of armed Italian bands.

Previous clashes in the living memories of Henry and Francis had shown that naval warfare was in its infancy and often led to disastrous results. In August 1512, two of the largest warships in the English and French fleets had clashed at St Mathieu. The Regent and la Cordelière, using traditional medieval tactics, met their doom as Regent grappled and boarded the Breton vessel, only for a fire to break out on la Cordeliére that quickly spread to the connected English ship, decimating both, along with their crews. Naval warfare continued to adopt the boarding-and-close-combat tactic, and in April of the following year, disaster would strike again when the English Admiral Edward Howard died in a failed attempt to board a French galley in the Channel.

Thirty-two years later, the English and French rivalry was revived in the Solent for what would be the most heavily armed sixteenth-century sea conflict between the two powers.

Success or failure in battle is determined by several factors, from strategy and military genius, to weaponry and the weather, but ultimately, as the military tactician Carl von Clausewitz acknowledged during the early nineteenth century, ‘superiority of numbers admittedly is the most important factor in the outcome of an engagement’. Clausewitz's treatise On War, however, concerned land-based warfare, although many of its points applied to the sea. It was Julian Corbett who reinvented strategic military studies during the early twentieth century by defining it in relation to maritime theatres. Among his findings, Corbett suggested that although state fleets expanded during the period in question, privateers performed most of the work. Corbett's claim has been little disputed by maritime and naval scholars. The actions of decentralised armed forces were pivotal to the success or failure of military campaigns at sea.

Yet, even the term privateer limits the wide-ranging number of decentralised forces employed by the state between 1500 and 1650. The use of private shipping, manpower and resources was not limited solely to the activities of those described as such. States hired merchant vessels and their crews to increase the size of their fleets, while also often employing them to provision other naval vessels. Both England and France not only provided letters of marque (or congés) to these private vessels in order to aggravate and hinder the enemy but could also integrate them within the state's fleet when it proved necessary. Nor were statesmen dependent on the national resources of their realm to achieve this. As David Trim has shown, ‘Calvinist corsairs’ operated transnationally with Dutch, English and French privateers often carrying letters of marque signed by the leaders of other Protestant nations.

Although construction schemes, coupled with the advancing tactics used in naval warfare as the period progressed, led states to reduce their reliance on private vessels, royal warships were not in great enough abundance to totally replace the hiring of private craft. Besides this, there was no overpowering drive among states to completely oust them from service. In fact, there were justifications to continue employing them. These ships could be quickly mobilised and were generally less costly to repair and replace.

Admirals were not the only officeholders to experience change to their responsibilities. Although the senior admiralty remained an important component of the state by securing the affiliation of the navy to the nobility and, in turn, to the crown, a team of statesmen and administrators were also required to support it. As fleets expanded with greater numbers of warships, it was important that the admiral, as head of the navy, had a skilled and experienced team of mariners and officers to facilitate the fleet's rise and maintenance. This chapter considers the enhanced, and in some cases wholly new, administrative devices designed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to ensure the navy's survival. These new apparatuses provided the means for the crown and its agents to expand and consolidate their grip on military resources, creating a politically and militarily strengthened state.

With the crown supporting the development of new administrative structures designed to control its expanding resources, historians have referred to this period as one that witnessed the centralising of early modern state infrastructure. Yet, states did not always have shared goals and models for achieving centralisation because their processes could be led and shaped by dissimilar things. For this reason, it is important to avoid a direct comparison between England and France that relies on a single definition of the term, although it does need to be taken into account that differences in both aims and infrastructure existed.

Accounts of state formation often implicitly seek to assess developments with an understanding that the concentration of a kingdom's resources around something or someone was always the intended and natural outcome – a teleological approach. The term implies that, in seeking to advance, a state's political framework required a geographically central body. The hearts of these organisations were located in the capital cities of the realms, which was where the main seats of government were based. As a logical outcome of the state-building process, when transforming or reinforcing the connections of the wider political network (the peripheries of the realm) to the centre of state, the core of the domain would also be strengthened. Yet, because of differences in the size, diversity and history of their terrains, England and France controlled disparate political infrastructures.

Naval power for both England and France increased in potency and priority during the early modern period. Due in no small part to the expansion of the global maritime theatre, state navies became essential to national defence as an arms race at sea escalated. Yet, as this study has shown, there was no single method or design for naval growth and, consequently, the size, strength, structural organisation and general appearance of the English and French fleets differed. Expansion and advances to the navies were influenced by a number of factors, and through combining them, it is possible to account for how and why one state navy was dif-ferent from another. Geography and its related administrative framework, as well as the influence of other competitive European powers, were central to how navies were shaped. Along with these two factors, one further feature was at the centre of naval strength: the political stability and patronage of the crown. With the exception of some of the noble galleys that served the Mediterranean, the core component of the standing navy was the property of the ruling monarch. Warships constructed for the kingdom were not declared in documentation as the property of England or France, or assigned to the state, but instead, were identified as the personal possessions of the reigning monarch. This distinction is fundamental to understanding the navy at the time, for its strength was dependent on the political power and will of the monarch. As a consequence, the standing navy, up until the mid seventeenth century, has to be understood as a private military body owned by the sovereign, which was bolstered by private ships for campaigns.

The standing navy (often referred to in records as the ‘Navy Royal’ and ‘La Royale’) was a resource that the state and its merchants relied on for protection, but it was ultimately owned by the monarch. The crown safeguarded national shipping through coastal patrols to frighten off belligerent forces, and in turn, the merchants aided the funding of the fleet through customs duties. In this sense, F. C. Lane's work on the controlling of violence at sea, for which he coined the phrase protection rent, remains a useful descriptor for the relationship between naval and merchant shipping. The crown's personal sea forces were employed to protect and defend the nation.

War was the greatest expense of any early modern state. It often stretched fiscal resources to their limits, forcing statesmen to seek alternative methods for accumulating and managing revenue that challenged traditional systems of collection. Whereas some unpopular avenues pursued for economic growth had detrimental effects on state and society, such as the debasement of coinage and Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, others were significant stimuli for national development, with mercantilism being an important example. Historians have argued since the pioneering work of John Brewer, that the fiscal-military state developed during the second half of the seventeenth century. It is difficult to suggest that it emerged earlier. Even David Parrott's innovative study on the reforms and growth of the French army during the Cardinal de Richelieu's premiership concludes by stressing the financial restrictions of the time. Despite the expansion to military forces, the fiscal demands of the 1630s did not lead to the transformation of the state's financial apparatus. Parrott has argued – and Alan James has reinforced in the case of the navy – that, by the time of Richelieu's death in 1642, France was still encountering one financial crisis after another. These issues were only resolved through short-term solutions, just as their predecessors had practised during the previous century.

With this said, changes to the state's traditional financial apparatus were attempted during this period because of military demands. The Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), the Spanish War (1585 to 1604) and the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648) were long conflicts of attrition, fought at great financial cost. As a response to the longevity of these wars, competing powers were forced to acquire additional revenue that their normal frameworks did not provide, with high-interest loans and ship-money systems being increasingly depended on to fund armed forces.

That new fiscal schemes more often than not failed, as would eventually befall Charles I's ship-money design of the 1630s, is more an indication of political and structural constraints rather than a lack of innovation. Financial reforms that held the potential to alter the traditional socio-economic structure and customs of the state were opposed throughout society.

By 1650, the English and French navies were in an uncertain and brittle condition. The civil wars that tore both kingdoms in half also caused divisions within their sea forces. The expanded naval arsenals that had been enhanced under royal patronage now possessed deeply conflicted loyalties underpinned by political change. If the last one hundred and fifty years of history had shown anything to those holding office in each navy, it was that strength at sea was dependent on the financial and political stability of the state. Navies had the potential to strengthen under developing and unchallenged political regimes. After over a century of administrative, military and religious change, England and France emerged during the early seventeenth century with stronger political infrastructures. These advances provided both states with a firmer grip over their national finances and regional disparities, while simultaneously providing the means for them to support the construction of large fleets. This study explores how, and why, the English and French standing navies were able to rise and decline between 1500 and 1650.

The two countries’ histories are deeply interconnected, and their navies’ progressions are too. With naval power playing a prominent role, the kingdoms fought against each other on no fewer than nine occasions during the period. Under the Tudor and Valois dynasties, the two powers were at war between 1511 and 1514, 1522 and 1525, 1543 and 1546, 1548 and 1550, 1557 and 1559, and finally, 1562 to 1563. Following this, under the Bourbons and Stuarts, although relations were somewhat more amicable, the two would again conflict during the major English naval campaigns on the Île de Ré and La Rochelle between 1627 and 1628. This is also not to discount the points at which the two formed fragile alliances against Spain under the House of Habsburg, which could be equally important for the exchange of administrative and political ideas, technology and, shipbuilding and sailing expertise. Examples of such alliances include the League of Cognac in 1526, the Treaty of Nonsuch in 1585 while Spain allied with the French Catholic League, the English support offered in Normandy and Brittany between 1589 and 1591, and the talks between Henri IV and James I from 1608 to 1610.