Something better than gentlemen volunteers was needed if naval
enterprise was to come to anything in England. The long wars between
Francis I. and Charles V. brought the problem closer. On land the
fighting was between the regular armies. At sea privateers were let
loose out of French, Flemish, and Spanish ports. Enterprising
individuals took out letters of marque and went cruising to take the
chance of what they could catch. The Channel was the chief
hunting-ground, as being the highway between Spain and the Low
Countries. The interval was short between privateers and pirates.
Vessels of all sorts passed into the business. The Scilly Isles became a
pirate stronghold. The creeks and estuaries in Cork and Kerry furnished
hiding-places where the rovers could lie with security and share their
plunder with the Irish chiefs. The disorder grew wilder when the divorce
of Catherine of Aragon made Henry into the public enemy of Papal Europe.
English traders and fishing-smacks were plundered and sunk. Their crews
went armed to defend themselves, and from Thames mouth to Land's End the
Channel became the scene of desperate fights. The type of vessel altered
to suit the new conditions. Life depended on speed of sailing. The State
Papers describe squadrons of French or Spaniards flying about, dashing
into Dartmouth, Plymouth, or Falmouth, cutting out English coasters, or
fighting one another.

After Henry was excommunicated, and Ireland rebelled, and England itself
threatened disturbance, the King had to look to his security. He made
little noise about it. But the Spanish ambassador reported him as
silently building ships in the Thames and at Portsmouth. As invasion
seemed imminent, he began with sweeping the seas of the looser vermin. A
few swift well-armed cruisers pushed suddenly out of the Solent, caught
and destroyed a pirate fleet in Mount's Bay, sent to the bottom some