Royal Scots Navy - Expansion Under James IV

Expansion Under James IV

James IV continued his father's policy of building up the navy. He loved ships and saw the importance to Scotland of having a strong navy. He built 38 ships for his fleet and founded two new dockyards. In 1489 Sir Andrew Wood with his 2 ships cleared the Scottish seas of English privateers, capturing 5 and bringing them as prizes into Leith. That same year Lutkyn Mere, a Danish pirate who had long infested the North Sea, was captured and hanged with his crew. In 1490 Henry VII of England, by way of reprisal against Wood, fitted out three privateers under Stephen Bull; but after a running fight from the Forth to the Tay, Bull and his three ships were captured by Wood.

In 1491 Wood, who had obtained a royal licence to fortify to erect a fortalice (a fortified tower house) at Largo in Fife, employed English captives on the work. Besides making naval reprisals Henry VII of England played the diplomatic game of fomenting the semi-independent Lord of the Isles and the Islesmen to throw off the sovereignty of Scotland, with such success that from 1493–1495 (following the official forfeiture of the Lordship in 1493) and in 1498 James made at least four expeditions to the western seas to secure the doubtful allegiance of the Island chiefs and was largely successful - as a fluent Gaelic speaker, the last Scottish king to be so, James was able to deal with the Islanders in their own language.

In 1494 he was convoyed by the man-of-war Christopher and other ships, and accounts are given of a large row barge and two smaller vessels built at Dumbarton to curb the Islesmen. In the expedition of 1495 the king was accompanied by Sir Andrew Wood in Flower. In the legislation of the Scots Parliaments of 1493 and 1503 requiring all seaboard burghs to keep "busches" of 20 tons to be manned by idle able-bodied men, James and the Estates had not only the improvement of the fisheries in view, but the manning of the mercantile marine and the navy.

The Barton family also remained prominent in the annals of the Scottish navy, in the form of John's son Andrew. In reprisal for the seizure of his father's ship in 1476 by the Flemish, he received a royal commission on 6 November 1506 from King James against the Portuguese, and was said to have preyed on their commerce in the English Channel. In 1508 he was sent by James IV to assist his uncle, King John of Denmark, against Lübeck. In 1511 he was sent to Copenhagen with his two ships Lion and Jenny Pirwin and in August that year, in a fight in the English Downs, Barton was slain, and his two ships captured by Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Edward Howard and transferred to the English navy.

Barton's commission against the Portuguese is often called a letter of marque, but it was in fact a "letter of reprisal", a different sort of document, which remained in use in Scotland long after other countries had abandoned it. Whereas a letter of marque authorized action against the king's enemies during wartime, a letter of reprisal was issued to a man who had been individually wronged by foreign governments - typically when they failed to bring their own pirates to justice for an attack.

The offended skipper was authorized to forcibly seize ships and goods from the offending country as compensation, even in peacetime, until such time as their court system did him justice. In this way, the Barton family were at war with Portugal for almost a century (c. 1470-1563), eventually subcontracting an entire fleet of privateers under their letter of reprisal. This ancient practice continued until the start of the eighteenth century. There was with a quasi-national conflict against Hamburg in the 1630s, and Jacobite privateers continued to fight under letters of reprisal issued by James VII against the Prince of Orange during the years of peace in 1697-1702.

Another unusual feature of the Scottish navy was that the office of Lord High Admiral was hereditary, being occupied by the Earl of Bothwell from 1488 to 1567 and again in 1581-95, and then by the Duke of Lennox for much of the seventeenth century. The result was that Scotland's Admiralty court was controlled by a nobleman rather than the crown, the government did not develop a naval administration like the English Navy Board, and the Lord High Admiral retained the power to issue letters of marque in his own name.

In spite of the survival of these medieval-style private jurisdictions, James IV succeeded in building up a navy that was truly royal. Dissatisfied with sandbanks at Leith, James himself sited a new harbour at Newhaven in May 1504, and two years later ordered the construction of a dockyard at the Pools of Airth. The upper reaches of the Forth were protected by new fortifications on Inchgarvie. His greatest achievement was the construction of the Michael, the largest ship up to that time launched in Scotland, the building of which cost £30,000. Work on the ship commenced in 1506. First launched on 11 October 1511 at Newhaven, she sailed up the Forth to Airth for further fitting. The Great Michael, as she was popularly known, weighed 1,000 tons, was 240 feet (73 m) in length, was manned by 1,000 seamen and 120 gunners and was then the largest ship in Europe (according to the chronicler Lindsay of Pitscottie). She had Sir Andrew Wood as quartermaster and Robert Barton as skipper.

Pitscottie's description of the ship conveys the sense of pride and awe that she instilled in a contemporary;

In the same yeir the king of Scottland bigit ane great scheip callit the Great Michell quhilk was the greattest scheip and maist of strength that ewer saillit in Ingland or France. For this scheip was of so greit statur and tuik so mekill timber that scho waistit all the wodis in Fyfe except Falkland wode, by of Scottland ye and money wther strangeris was at hir devyse be the kingis commandement quho wroght werie bessielie on hir, bot it was yeir and day or scho was compleit. To wit, scho was xij scoir of futtis of length and xxxv futte withtin the wallis; scho was ten fute thik in the waill, cuttit jeastis of aik witht hir wallis and burdis on ewerie syde sa stark and thik that na canon could gang throw hir. This great schipe cummerit Scottland to get hir to the sie; from tyme scho was aflott and all hir mastis and saillis compleit, witht towis and ankeris effeirand thairto scho was comptit to the king to be xxx thowsand pund of expenssis by hir artaillye quhilk was werie great and costlie to the king by all the laif of hir order. To wit, scho buire mony cannons sex on everie syde witht thrie great basselis, tua behind in hir dock and ane befoir, witht iijc schott of small artaillyie, that is to say moyen and batterit facouns and quarter fallcouns, slingis, pestelent serpitantis, and doubill doggis witht hagbut and cullvering, corsebowis and handbowis. Scho had iijc marienaris to saill hir, sex scoir of gounnaris to wse hir artaillye for this scho had ane thouwsand men of weir by hir captans skipiris and quarter maisteris. Quhen this scheip past to the sie and was lyand in the rade, the king gart schot ane cannon at hir to say hir gif scho was wicht, bot I hard say it deirit hir nocht and did her lyttill skaith .

James IV had three other large ships, the Margaret built in 1505, Treasurer, and the James. Timber for the Margaret came from Strathearn, Kincardine, Alloa, France and Norway, and perhaps Caithness. With these ships, the focus of the Scottish navy shifted decisively, from hiring the ships of patriotic sea captains, to being a force of purpose-built warships owned by the king. James often visited while his ships were building and the ships were hung with tapestry when he dined aboard.

In the campaign against England, the Scots fleet consisted of sixteen ships with tops and ten smaller craft, partly King's ships, partly hired ships and partly privateers. Commanded by the James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Arran and Gordon of Letterfourie, feudal magnates with no naval experience, it did nothing effective. Arran was later superseded by Sir Andrew Wood, but refusing to give up command he sailed for France to form a junction with the allied French fleet, but failed to do anything effective against the fleet of England. The English ambassador, Nicholas West described the preparation of the fleet on 13 April 1513;

"On Monday because I had no business, for a pastime I went down to Leith to th'entent to see what shyps were prepared ther, and when I came thidre I found none but 9 or 10 small topmen, amongst whom the ship of Lynne was the biggest, and other small balyngiers and crayers, and never one of all these was rigged to the war, but one little topman of the burden of three-score tonne. And from thence I went to the New Haven, and ther lyeth the Margaret, a ship nighe of the burden of the Cryst of Lynn, and many men workying upon her, som setting on her mayn top, and som caulking her above water, for under water she was new tallowed. Ther was also upon the stocks a litell galley in makyng, aboute 50 fote longe as I suppose, which they said the kyng made to rowe up and down upon the water to and from Strivelynge: ther is never a boorde yet upon her nor never a man wrought upon her when I was ther."

The Scottish fleet sailed to France via Carrickfergus to aid Louis XII on 15 July 1513. John Barton died at Kirkcudbright on his return to Scotland. In 1514 the Great Michael was sold to France for 40,000 francs tournais, but some of the other men of war, and in particular James and Margaret, returned to Scotland with Antoine d'Arces, sieur de la Bastie. The poet Gavin Douglas accused Regent Albany of selling three great ships and other small barques. Entries in the Exchequer Rolls of 1515 and 1516 show the victualling of King's ships at Dumbarton and Dunbar, which with Leith were the principal naval harbours of Scotland, but the fleet of James IV seems to have disappeared soon after Arran's expedition to France and before the reprisals of the English and other privateers and the storms of the northern seas. The importance of the private shipping was emphasised in 1524, when an English diplomat Thomas Magnus noted that Robert Barton was an especial friend of Margaret Tudor, Magnus had been given a copy of a letter from the John Stewart, Duke of Albany, Margaret's rival for power, giving Barton instructions on provisions for Dunbar Castle which he believed to be a forgery.