The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #62576 Message #1116913
Posted By: IanC
16-Feb-04 - 08:30 AM
Thread Name: Gold.Vanity. Can you REALLY sink a ship?
Subject: RE: Gold.Vanity. Can you REALLY sink a ship?
I was just re-reading Demond Seward's "The Hundred Years War" and thought of this thread.
Seward's account of The Battle of Sluys (1340) says (p43):
"... there were even divers who tried to sink the enemy ships by boring holes in their hulls below water ..."
Oddly enough, Sluys is in the Netherlands (Lowlands) and the battle was essentially between English Cogs (converted merchant ships) and Galleys, and other vessels, belonging to the French, their allies the Castillians (Spanish) and a Genoese mercenary fleet under Barbanera (Barbenoire, or "Blackbeard" to the French).
Sewards sources are a number of contemporary chronicles, but mainly Froissart and Geoffrey le Baker for accounts of Sluys. The information doesn't appear to be in Froissart, though, and I don't currently have access to a full version of de Baker or any of the other contemporary chronicles:
The Chroniques de London depuis L'An 44 Henri III jusque d L'An 17 Edward III
Chronicon Monasterii de Melsa
Adam Murimuth, Continuatio Chronicarum
Chronicon de Lanercost
:-)