Royal Scots Navy
The Royal Scots Navy was the navy of the Kingdom of Scotland from its origins in the Middle Ages until its merger with the Kingdom of England's Royal Navy per the Acts of Union 1707. There are mentions in Medieval records of fleets commanded by Scottish kings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. King Robert I developed naval power to counter the English in the Wars of Independence. The build-up of naval capacity continued after the establishment of Scottish independence. In the late fourteenth century, naval warfare with England was conducted largely by hired Scots, Flemish and French merchantmen and privateers. King James I took a greater interest in naval power, establishing a shipbuilding yard at Leith and probably creating the office of Lord High Admiral.
King James IV put the enterprise on a new footing, founding a harbour at Newhaven, near Edinburgh, and a dockyard at the Pools of Airth. He acquired a total of 38 ships including Great Michael, at that time, the largest ship in Europe. Scottish ships had some success against privateers, accompanied the king on his expeditions in the islands and intervened in conflicts in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea, but were sold after the Flodden campaign. Thereafter Scottish naval efforts would rely on privateering captains and hired merchantmen. Despite truces between England and Scotland, there were periodic outbreaks of a guerre de course. James V built a new harbour at Burntisland in 1542. The chief use of naval power in his reign was a series of expeditions to the Isles and France.
The Union of Crowns in 1603 ended Scottish conflict with England, but Scotland's involvement in England's foreign policy opened up Scottish merchantmen to attack from privateers. In 1626, a squadron of three ships were bought and equipped for protection and there were several marque fleets of privateers. In 1627, the Royal Scots Navy and privateers participated in the Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Re with a major expedition to the Bay of Biscay. The Scots also returned to the West Indies and in 1629 took part in the capture of Quebec. After the Bishop's Wars and the alliance with Parliament in the English Civil War, a "Scotch Guard" was established on the coast of Scotland of largely English ships, but with Scottish revenues and men, gradually becoming a more Scottish force. The Scottish naval forces were defeated by Oliver Cromwell's navy and when Scotland became part of the Commonwealth in 1653, they were absorbed into the Commonwealth navy. After the Restoration Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment, but a fixed quota of conscripts for the English Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs. Royal Navy patrols started to extend their routes into Scottish waters, and in the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, between 80 and 120 captains took Scottish letters of marque and privateers played a major part in the naval conflicts. In the 1690s, a small fleet of five ships was established by merchants for the Darien scheme, and a professional navy of three warships was established to protect local shipping in 1696. After the Act of Union in 1707, these vessels and their crews were transferred to the British Royal Navy.
Origins
By the late Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Scotland participated in two related maritime traditions. In the West was the tradition of galley warfare that had its origins in the Viking thalassocracies of the Highlands and Islands and which stretched back before that to the sea power of Dál Riata that had spanned the Irish Sea. In the east, it participated in the common northern European sail-driven naval tradition. The key to the Viking success was the long-ship, a long, narrow, light, wooden boat with a shallow draft hull designed for speed. This shallow draft allowed navigation in waters only deep and permitted beach landings, while its light weight enabled it to be carried over portages. Longships were also double-ended, the symmetrical bow and stern allowing the ship to reverse direction quickly without having to turn around. The longship was gradually succeeded by the birlinn, highland galley and lymphad, which, were clinker-built ships, usually with a centrally-stepped mast, but also with oars that allowed them to be rowed. Like the longship, they had a high stem and stern and were still small and light enough to be dragged across portages, but they replaced the steering board with a stern rudder from the late twelfth century. The major naval power in the Highlands and Islands was the MacDonald Lord of the Isles, who acted as largely independent kings and could raise large fleets for use even against their nominal overlord the King of Scots. They succeeded in playing off the king of Scotland against the kings of Norway and, after 1266, the king of England.There are mentions in Medieval records of fleets commanded by Scottish kings including William the Lion and Alexander II. The latter took personal command of a large naval force which sailed from the Firth of Clyde and anchored off the island of Kerrera in 1249, intended to transport his army in a campaign against the Kingdom of the Isles, but he died before the campaign could begin. Viking naval power was disrupted by conflicts between the Scandinavian kingdoms, but entered a period of resurgence in the thirteenth century when Norwegian kings began to build some of the largest ships seen in Northern European waters. These included King Hakon Hakonsson's Kristsúðin, built at Bergen from 1262-3, which was long, of 37 rooms. In 1263 Hakon responded to Alexander III's designs on the Hebrides by personally leading a major fleet of forty vessels, including Kristsúðin, to the islands, where they were swelled by local allies to as many as 200 ships. Records indicate that Alexander had several large oared ships built at Ayr, but he avoided a sea battle. Defeat on land at the Battle of Largs and winter storms forced the Norwegian fleet to return home, leaving the Scottish crown as the major power in the region and leading to the ceding of the Western Isles to Alexander in 1266.
English naval power was vital to King Edward I's successful campaigns in Scotland from 1296, using largely merchant ships from England, Ireland and his allies in the Islands to transport and supply his armies. Part of the reason for Robert I's success was his ability to call on naval forces from the Islands. As a result of the expulsion of the Flemings from England in 1303, he gained the support of a major naval power in the North Sea. The development of naval power allowed Robert to successfully defeat English attempts to capture him in the Highlands and Islands and to blockade major English controlled fortresses at Perth and Stirling, the last forcing King Edward II to attempt the relief that resulted at English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314. Scottish naval forces allowed invasions of the Isle of Man in 1313 and 1317 and Ireland in 1315. They were also crucial in the siege of Berwick, which led to its fall in 1318.
After the establishment of Scottish independence, King Robert I turned his attention to building up a Scottish naval capacity. This was largely focused on the west coast, with the Exchequer Rolls of 1326 recording the feudal duties of his vassals in that region to aid him with their vessels and crews. Towards the end of his reign, he supervised the building of at least one royal man-of-war near his palace at Cardross on the River Clyde. In the late fourteenth century naval warfare with England was conducted largely by hired Scots, Flemish and French merchantmen and privateers. King James I of Scotland, took a greater interest in naval power. After his return to Scotland in 1424, he established a shipbuilding yard at Leith, a house for marine stores, and a workshop. King's ships were built and equipped there to be used for trade as well as war, one of which accompanied him on his expedition to the Islands in 1429. The office of Lord High Admiral was probably founded in this period. It would soon become a hereditary office, in the control of the Earls of Bothwell in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the Earls of Lennox in the seventeenth century.
King James II is known to have purchased a caravel by 1449. Around 1476 the Scottish merchant John Barton received letters of marque that allowed him to gain compensation for the capture of his vessels by the Portuguese by capturing ships under their colours. These letters would be repeated to his three sons John, Andrew and Robert, who would play a major part in the Scottish naval effort into the sixteenth century. In his struggles with his nobles in 1488 James III received assistance from his two warships Flower and King's Carvel also known as Yellow Carvel, commanded by Andrew Wood of Largo. After the king's death Wood served his son James IV, defeating an English incursion into the Forth by five English ships in 1489 and three more heavily armed English ships off the mouth of the River Tay the next year.
Sixteenth century
James IV
James IV put the naval enterprise on a new footing, founding a harbour at Newhaven in May 1504, and two years later ordered Andrew Aytoun to construct a dockyard at the Pools of Airth. The upper reaches of the Forth were protected by new fortifications on Inchgarvie. Scottish ships had some success against privateers, accompanied the king in his expeditions in the islands and intervened in conflicts in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea. Expeditions to the Highlands to Islands to curb the power of the MacDonald Lord of the Isles were largely ineffective until in 1504 the king accompanied a squadron under Wood heavily armed with artillery, which battered the MacDonald strongholds into submission. Since some of these island fortresses could only be attacked from seaward, naval historian N. A. M. Rodger has suggested this may have marked the end of medieval naval warfare in the British Isles, ushering in a new tradition of artillery warfare.In 1509, timber was cut in the forest of Darnaway for the king's ships. James IV acquired a total of 38 ships for the Royal Scots Navy, including Margaret, and the carrack Michael or Great Michael, the largest warship of its time. The latter, built at great expense at Newhaven and launched in 1511, was in length, weighed 1,000 tons, had 24 cannon, and was, at that time, the largest ship in Europe. It marked a shift in design as it was designed specifically to carry a main armament of heavy artillery.
In the Flodden campaign the fleet consisted of 16 large and 10 smaller craft. After a raid on Carrickfergus in Ireland, it joined up with the French and had little impact on the war. After the disaster at Flodden the Great Michael, and perhaps other ships, were sold to the French and the king's ships disappeared from royal records after 1516. Scottish naval efforts would again rely on privateering captains and hired merchantmen during the minority of James V. In the Habsburg-Valois war of 1521–26, in which England and Scotland became involved on respective sides, the Scots had six men-of-war active attacking English and Imperial shipping and they blockaded the Humber in 1523. Although prizes were taken by Robert Barton and other captains, the naval campaign was sporadic and indecisive.