In another equally delightful volume entitled “Inventions or Devises,” the same author tells his reader how to “arme” (i.e. protect) a “ship of warre.” You are to keep your men as close as you may, and have the bonnet off the sail or other canvas stretched along the waist and decks, as I have shown on an earlier page. The forecastle and poop, Bourne says, you may “arm” with “manlets or gownes” “to shaddow your men”; so also the tops, “but now in these daies,” he adds, “the topfight is unto little effect, since the use of Calivers or Muskets in Ships,” for the latter could do so much damage. He therefore advises against having many men in the tops. After alluding to the netting, which I explained just now, Bourne suggests that the captain must send the carpenter “into the holde of the Ship” “to stop any leake if any chance. And also to send downe the Surgion into his Cabin, which ought and must be in the holde of the ship.” The supreme head of the ship was the captain, who was not necessarily a navigator nor even a seaman; but he was the wielder of authority and discipline. He it was who had to keep under control a crew that was prone to swearing, blasphemy, violence, mutiny, and other sins. Sir William Monson has left behind in his most interesting “Naval Tracts” many an entertaining detail of sea life during the Elizabethan period, and tells that a captain might punish a man by putting him in the “billbows during pleasure,” ducking him at the yard-arm, hauling him from yard-arm to yard-arm under the ship’s keel (otherwise known as keel-hauling), fastening him to the capstan and flogging him there, or else fastening him at the capstan or mainmast with weights hanging about his neck till his poor heart and back were ready to break. Another brutal punishment was to “gagg or scrape their tongues for blasphemy or swearing.” Elizabethan captains, says Monson, “were gentlemen of worth and means, maintaining their diet at their own charge.” In a fight the lieutenant had charge of the forecastle. It was not till the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign that the rank of lieutenant was created for the training of young gentlemen destined ultimately for command. He came aboard quite “green” in order to learn what seamanship he could, and to assist the captain in the discipline of the ship; but he was not allowed to interfere with the navigation, which was entirely the work of the master. Not unnaturally there was a good deal of friction between the lieutenant and the master. Even the common seaman had an ineradicable contempt for this landlubber, more especially in the seventeenth century during the Anglo-Dutch wars. [Illustration: RIDING BITTS ON THE GUN DECK OF THE “REVENGE.” (Elizabethan period.)]