[39] In 1707, when, at the time of the completed union under Queen Anne, the whole navy of the Scots was transferred to the navy of Great Britain, it consisted of only "three small ships." [Illustration: 13. SCOTCH "TALLE SHIPPE," 16TH CENTURY. (From a painting by Vandyck.)] Sir Andrew Wood, of Leith, who for a long time pillaged the English ships and set the navy of Henry VII. at defiance, was another doughty champion of the St. Andrew's cross. Growing bolder in his defiance, he challenged the English Royal Navy to a contest. The challenge was accepted, and three chosen ships were sent to meet him. These he overmastered, and carried off his prizes and their crews to Dundee, from where, after the wounded had been cared for, and the damages of the vessels repaired, James IV. of Scotland returned the ships and their men to Henry, saying, "_the contest had been for honour, not for booty_."[40] [40] Pinkerton: "History of Scotland." But the greatest hero of them all, the one whose deeds have woven themselves into the folklore of the Scottish race, was Sir Andrew Barton, who in the time of Henry VIII. not only plundered his English neighbours, but also took toll of the ships of all other nations without regard to their flag, making himself the terror of the North Seas. An old ballad tells in quaint style what an English merchant of Newcastle, whose ships had fallen into the hands of Barton, is said to have reported to the English Admiral, who was in charge of the "Narrow Seas": "Hast thou not herde, Lord Howard bold, As thou hast sailed by day and by night, Of a Scottish rover on the seas? Men call hym Sir Andrewe Barton, Knyte? "He is brasse within and steel withoute, With bemes on his toppe-castle strong, And eighteen piece of ordnaunce He carries on each side along. "And he hath a pinnace derely dight, St. Andrew's cross yat is his guide; His pinnace bereth nine score men And fifteen cannons on each side. "Were ye twenty ships and he but one, I swear by kirk, and bower and hall, He would overcome them every one If once his bemes they do down fall." Sir Andrew was the last of the freebooters, as the rise of the navy of Henry VIII., and the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland by James I. under one crown, put an end to these reprisals by the subjects of the one nation on the other; yet, as we shall see, it was the remnants of these very rivalries thus engendered between the single cross flags of St. Andrew and St. George which led to these national Jacks of the two nations being afterwards joined together to form one flag.