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In 1577, a new design of warship slid down the ways at Her Majesty’s Royal Dockyard at Chatham, England. The ship, the 400 ton REVENGE, carried 46 guns and was the first of the new race-built galleons. As ships go, she wasn't very big (hardly the size of a modern day fast torpedo boat) but she would revolutionize 16th century naval warfare.
Narrower than her predecessors, with the towering poop and foc'sle of the older galleons cut down, the ship was fast and highly maneuverable - in fact for her size she quickly outclassed the lumbering galleons that had come before. The ship's cost was a paltry £4,000 pounds - a fantastic sum in those far off days but hardly amounting to anything at all in today's dollars ( a mere $5,800 US ). The experiment proved so fast and weatherly, that all the following Royal Ships were built along her lines. And her builder, Master Shipright Matthew Baker, a man of uncommon ability who, unlike most of his contemporaries, was also a skilled draftsman - in an era when most ships were built by eye and the skill of the builder and drawings of ships were mostly fanciful or at best rudimentary.
In 1588, Revenge was Sir Francis Drake's flagship during the battles with the Spanish Armada but the ship's claim to fame rests with the action at the Azores in 1591. Part of a small English fleet lying in wait off the islands for the returning Spanish Treasure fleet from the New World, Revenge was separated from the remainder of the fleet when her commander, Sir Richard Grenville, paused to embark his fever-stricken men who were resting on shore. Even then, cut off as he was, he might have got away, but he chose instead to stand and fight.
One of Master Baker's drawings for a 700 ton galleon
from his book "Fragments of Ancient Shipwrightry "
published in the 16th century and now in the
Magdalene College library, Cambridge
So, Revenge became a Spanish ship and the surviving crew were taken off and well tended on the Spanish ships where Sir Richard died several days later. The ship, however, lived up to her name. For she never reached port. Instead she was cast up against a cliff in a vicious gale with only the 200 man Spanish prize crew on board, where she foundered with all hands.
Since that day Revenge has been one of the most celebrated ship's names in British Naval history and numerous Royal Navy ships bearing the famous name have followed in her wake. There was a Revenge with Admiral Nelson at Trafalger, in 1805. A new one in 1865, another in 1889 and a fine, new battleship with Lord Jellicoe's First Battle Squadron at Jutland. This latter battleship survived both World Wars before finally being scrapped with the end of the battleship era. The most recent ship to bear the name was an 8500 ton Polaris Submarine, launched in 1969 and retired several years ago with the introduction of the Royal Navy's new Trident subs.
This model of Revenge was specially constructed for a woman whose husband was particularly intrigued with the Elizabethan era. She wanted "a galleon; something special." So I suggested Revenge as it had a real story. She said, "Revenge, I like that name..." Oak was chosen as the stand since England's forests of oak were symbols of the might of the Royal Navy which depended on them to build their mighty wooden-walled ships.
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