But it is time we turned our attention to the men who manned them. The changes in this respect were quite as important as those we have noted in the ships themselves. To begin with, the nobles and gentry of the kingdom were beginning to wake up to the fact that war afloat offered them at least equal opportunities of distinction to those they had hitherto looked for in land warfare. Besides, they had now little or no chance of that at home, and there was no longer any land frontier over in France across which they could ride and raid and harry and fight as their fathers and grandfathers had so often done. Naval strategy was still confined to cross raiding, but ships were now better fighting-machines and were not merely used as platforms for hand-to-hand fighting and as transports; so that men of the class which had hitherto looked down on ships and sailors began to turn their eyes towards the sea. [Illustration: Ships of the Time of Henry VIII (_From a Drawing of 1545_) Looking at the lofty hulls, the immense mainsails, and the nearness of the ports to the water-line, we can easily understand how a want of care wrecked the _Mary Rose_. The ship in the background on the right is apparently trying to reduce sail, and has had to lower her main-yard. Her mainsail is almost in the water, to the apparent danger of the ship.] This does not mean that they became seamen. No, they still remained and considered themselves soldiers, and did not trouble to learn any seamanship. That was still the special job of the master or skipper. But they recognized that the command of a fighting-ship was worth having. I may instance the Carew family.[18] At least three of them were serving in command of ships in the battle at Spithead in 1545. Sir George Carew lost his life when his ship, the _Mary Rose_, went down; his brother, Peter Carew, who had been a year or two before in command of a company of infantry in the English army in France, commanded a Venetian ship--probably hired--the _Francisco Bardado_; while their uncle, Sir Gawen Carew, commanded a third. As for the men, the seamen, thanks to more seaworthy vessels, had probably improved in their seamanship, while the navy was formed into a regularly-organized force consisting of "mariners, soldiers"--or, as we should call them now, marines--"and gunners". Every ship had her proper complement of each. Thus the _Henri Grace à Dieu_ carried 260 seamen, 400 soldiers, and 40 gunners; the _Mary Rose_ 180 seamen, 200 soldiers, and 20 gunners; the _Peter Pomgranate_ 130 seamen, 150 soldiers, and 20 gunners; and so forth, according to size. [Illustration: A SEA FIGHT IN TUDOR TIMES _Facsimile woodcut from "Holinshed's Chronicles"_