PMarione
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Joined: 26 Mar 2007
Posts: 883
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 Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting indeed.
From another list:
| Quote: | If you look closely at the Cowdray drawing of the sinking of the Mary Rose, at first it appears a bit muddled and one assumes incorrectly that it is just an artists impression.
Behind the masts sticking out of the water you can see the houses of one of my ancestors, German Richards and his tenants and neighbours at Brading going up in smoke, as the French landing parties exact revenge on them, for killing some of their number.
German Richards was a Centinar and a Vice Admiral of the Isle of Wight. He had seventy villagers and tenants in his band.
The surviving records of the events are extremely vivid and detailed. Reading them has been fascinating, and build up into a very detailed sequence of events.
Historians focus on the feast at Portsmouth and the sinking, but when you read the accounts you realise that until the Mary Rose went down, it was a vry carefully worked out plan. Invasion of the south coast had been a serious threat ever since our empire in France fell in the 1450's.
Landings had occurred many times before. Trained bands from Somerset, Wiltshire and Worcestershire had been mobilised to the Island many times over the previous hundred years, against just such an event.
The French had landed at St Helens, and had drawn up their galleys onto the shore.
The pre-determined and ancient Isle of Wight anti-invasion plan swung into action.
The women and children were put into carts and sent inland along with the horses and cattle up the Downs. The French sailors in search was fresh water, wood and plunder started moving towards Brading, where there was a bridge, a gun in an earthwork bastion, and a swampy stream next to the channel that left Bembridge as almost an Island. You can clearly see all these in the Cowdray drawing.
The Isle of Wight trained band managed to surprise and ambush the foraging French sailors killing several with their bows, and forcing the remainder to run back to the galleys.
Messages were sent to Portsmouth announcing the defeat of the initial landing and asking for reinforcements. The King and his offices realised that there was a good chance that the French would attack the islanders again, and this time in more force.
They instructed the Isle of Wight trained bands to retreat much further inland, if the French landed in force again, in order to draw the crews away from the galleys and up into the hills.
This plan was being carried into action when the Mary Rose came out of the harbour.
The English were in a terrific hurry to get over to these galleys, because they hoped to attack them whilst many of their crews were away inland on the Isle of Wight. If the English could destroy the semi empty galleys, before the crews could get back to them, they could cripple the French force.
With a over excited English crew trying to get the Mary Rose out of Portsmouth and over to St Helen's, possibly with Spanish crew members unfamilar with the ship, they could well of been in trouble even without a galley mounted cannon firing at them.
It is of course quite possible that the Mary Rose had gone in really close to the galleys, in their hurry to destroy the semi defenceless galleys.
If this was the case, and a galley had retained a gun crew, they may have had a very easy close ranged shot. Cannons on galleys of this period routinely fired 24 to 36" stone cannonballs.
One of those would cause enormous damage at close range.
Just the realisation that one of these "superguns" was being trained on your ship must have been enough to cause disarray.
Sadly German Richards does not seem to have left his memories, but a year later he was made Bayliff of two former monastic properties at Lydd in Kent and at Tintern Abbey, probably in compensation for his losses at Brading.
Nick Balmer |
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