were more numerous
than the crew of sailors which navigated the ship, for the largest vessels
of the time were not of more than two to three hundred tons, and as oars
were not used in the rough seas of the Channel and there was only one mast
with a single square sail, and perhaps a jib-foresail, the necessary hands
for sailing her were few. There was a dual command, the knight or noble who
led the fighting-men being no sailor, and having a pilot under him who
commanded the sailors and navigated the ship. This dual arrangement (which
we have seen at work in the fleets of more ancient days) left its traces in
our Navy up to the middle of the nineteenth century, when ships of the
Royal Navy still had, besides the captain, a "sailing master" among their
officers.

The King owned a small number of ships, which he maintained just as he kept
a number of knights in his pay to form his personal retinue on land. During
peace he hired these ships out to merchants, and when he called them back
for war service he took the crews that navigated them into his pay, and
sent his fighting-men on board. But the King's ships were the least
numerous element in the war fleet. Merchantmen were impressed for service
from London and the other maritime towns and cities, the feudal levy
providing the fighting complement. A third element in the fleet was
obtained from the Cinque Ports. There were really seven, not five, of
them--Dover, Hythe, Hastings, Winchelsea, Rye, Romney, and Sandwich. Under
their charter they enjoyed valuable privileges, in return for which they
were bound to provide, when the King called upon them, fifty-seven ships
and twelve hundred men and boys for fifteen days at their own expense, and
as long after as the King paid the necessary charges. The naming of so
short a term of service shows that maritime operations were expected not to
last long. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to keep a medieval fleet at
sea, and the conditions that produced this state of things lasted far into
the modern period. Small ships crowded with fighting-men had no room for
any large store of provisions and water. When the first scanty supply was
exhausted, unless they were in close touch with a friendly port, they had
to be accompanied by a crowd of storeships, and as the best merchantmen
would naturally have been impressed for the actual fighting, these would be
small, inferior, and less seaworthy ships, and the fleet would have to pay
as much a