Introduction

The 2007 field season lasted six weeks, from 27 May to 8 July. 45 people were involved, of whom 30 were divers. 64 items were recovered (see Annex 1 below). An accumulation of sand across the centre of the site and a period of sustained poor weather, made this the most difficult season since work began on the wreck in the early 1990s.

Objectives

It was firearms of the kind that were found on the Alderney wreck, that, more than any other weapon, drove the changes which, both tactically and strategically, transformed the sixteenth century field of battle. And it was success or failure on the field of battle (or the prospect of either thereof), that in large part determined the balance of power in Europe. Elsewhere we have described the firearms from the wreck and discussed how they were designed and functioned; here, without going into any depth, we consider their tactical usage and the kind of fighting for which they were intended.

From longbow to matchlocks: The Great Debate

As was observed in the section on heavy ordnance, comparisons between the Alderney ship and the Mary Rose of forty-seven years before, are extremely illuminating when it comes to understanding the nature of the military transformation that took place during the sixteenth century. On the Mary Rose, which was heavily armed for close-action fighting, very few firearms were found; on the Alderney wreck, by contrast, firearms were the main weapon find. On the Mary Rose numerous longbows were found; on the Alderney wreck not a single bow or arrow has been excavated. Between the Mary Rose of 1545 and the Alderney ship of 1592, a revolution in weapons, weaponcraft, organization, tactics and strategic thinking had occurred. The revered English longbow that had won great victories upon which history had pivoted, was no more, and the triumph of gunpowder weaponry was complete.

Marked weapons, desertion and corruption

One of the stocks (322) had a large W carved into its underside. The crude nature of the cutting, indicates that it was not the work of the manufacturer. More likely, it is the monogram of its owner or the identity mark of the armoury or county arsenal from which it came. The presence of this mark device raises the issue of corruption, which had become almost institutionalized within the Elizabethan military. As we shall see, it existed in many forms, but one of the most destructive to military performance was the thriving black-market that existed for firearms. Just two years before the Alderney wreck, in an attempt to reduce weapon losses, the government ordered that all firearms be marked.

Stowage and maintenance

The firearms from the ship appear to have been stowed in bundles, as concreted assemblages have been seen on the seabed at times when the current has removed some of the soft overburden from the site. It is also possible that they were stored in boxes for Ordnance Office records mention the provision of chests for muskets and calivers. So far no evidence has been found on how, within the bundles, the guns were arranged one against the other for protection.

Firearms from the wreck

^{Large concretion recovered by the Aderney Dive Club soon after the wreck's discovery. The long object protruding from the top is a musket or caliver.}

Advantages and disadvantages of firearms

^{Musketeer versus a lancer}

One advantage of firearms that was recognized by several commentators of the day, but not always since, was their psychological impact. Both small-arms and heavy artillery, especially in the first half of the sixteenth century, could be remarkably inaccurate, but one should never underestimate their ability to instill raw, enervating fear in an enemy by no more than the roar of their discharge. Machiavelli (whose Art of Warre was first published in English in 1560, reprinted 1573 and 1588) believed that the noise of a single harquebus would strike more fear in a group of peasant footmen than the hostile advance of twenty armed men. Machiavelli, of course, was not a soldier, but Robert Barret was, and, in 1598, he noted that ‘a vollie of musket or hargebuze goeth with more terrour, fury, and execution, than doth your vollie of arrowes’. Even against trained soldiers, particularly pikemen, a volley of small-arms fire could be extremely unsettling and throw even the most disciplined formation into disorder. Sir John Smythe (1590) believed that a well delivered first volley was more effective than the next four put together. Sir Roger Williams wrote that against ‘great troops, the musketeers are the terriblest shot and most profitable that ever was devised’. The year before the loss of the Alderney ship, Giles Clayton in his Approuved Order of Martiall Discipline, observed that ‘many times it hath beene seene that battailes have been gotten by shotte onely, without push of pyke, or stroke of weapons’. When small-arms were backed up by artillery, just the sound of their collective discharge could be devastating. As David Eltis noted, ‘The psychological effects of artillery and harquebus fire helped to break up the order of a pike-square even faster than mere casualties alone would have done’. Werner Schodeler recalled how, at the Battle of Marignano in 1515, when all the artillery and firearms were discharged, there ‘was such a thing that one might have thought that the skies had opened with every fury, and that heaven and earth were breaking apart under enemy fire’. A more vivid picture of pitched battle is given by Luigi Collado (Practica Manuale di Artigleria, 1586) when he recalled how, in pitched battle, ‘every instant you felt cannon balls and harquebus shot whistling by your ears and every hour you saw the earth sown with pieces torn from the bodies of your companions’.

Firing

^{Harquebusier or caliverman discharging his weapon}

There were at least twenty-four steps, or postures, before discharging a harquebus, caliver or musket (other scholars and commentators have counted both more and fewer depending on how they interpreted the moves). In their procedures the English followed the Dutch. The first illustrations of the postures in their proper order were by Jacob de Gheyn in his Wapenhandlingen van Roers, musquetten ende spiessen. For their technical accuracy and convincing sense of three-dimensional movement, they are often cited as fine examples of late sixteenth/early seventeenth century engraved art.

Firearms Training

^{Musketeer doffing his hat. Note the apostles hanging from his chest, the priming flask over the hip and the smouldering match between his fingers.}

Since contemporary times, it has often been said that one of the main advantages of the firearm over the longbow was that the former required very little training. Anybody, almost irrespective of age and health, could pull a trigger bar; however, the bow demanded many years of practise to produce a good archer that could rain unaimed arrows down on a massed enemy 300 yards distant, or a murderously accurate aimed arrow at a small target 100 yards away. Although there is much truth in all this, it would, none the less, be wrong to assume that little or no training was necessary for firearms, for it took instruction and practice to turn a mere shooter into a passable marksman who could reload, prime and fire in a reasonable period of time.

Powder flasks

Three types of powder flask have been found on the wreck. The first was the small, conical, sheet-metal canister, that was hung from a bandoleer across the chest and which contained the precise amount of powder for one discharge. These are often known as apostles and have been given their own section. The second (of which three examples have been found) was the large, nozzled, concaved-sided, flat-bottomed, wooden-bodied flask which, like the apostles, held coarse-grain propellant for the barrel. The third (of which three examples have so far been found), was a smaller version of the last, but was used to contain fine-grained priming powder for the flash-pan. This was the powder which conveyed ignition, via the touch-hole, to the main charge within the breech. In John Derricke’s well known, 1581 woodcut of ‘English Troops on the March’, we can see the larger flask slung over the right hip, and the smaller one, on the same shoulder strap, midway down the back. As an aside, it is worth noting that this woodcut and its distinctive powder flasks, have been taken by specialists at the Royal Armouries, as further evidence that the Alderney wreck is of English origin.