895
Image: Odejea • Licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0
Statue of Alfred the Great in Winchester erected in 1899.
Alfred tried his hand at naval design. In 896 he ordered the construction of a small fleet of longships that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of Viking warships. This was not, as the Victorians asserted, the birth of the English Navy. King Athelstan of Kent and Ealdorman Ealhhere had defeated a Viking fleet in 851 capturing nine ships, and Alfred himself had conducted naval actions in 882.
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Alfred is regarded as marking an important development in naval power as his ships were not only larger, but swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than the Viking ships. Alfred utilised the design of Greek and Roman warships, with high sides, designed for fighting rather than for navigation.
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Alfred had seapower in mind—if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from being ravaged. Alfred's ships may have been superior in conception. In practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which a naval battle could occur!
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The warships of the time were not designed to be ship killers but rather troop carriers. It has been suggested that sea battles may have entailed a ship coming alongside an enemy vessel, lashing the two ships together and then boarding the enemy craft. The result was effectively a land battle involving hand-to-hand fighting on board the two lashed vessels.
Did King Alfred the Great create
the British Navy?
In the one recorded naval engagement in 896, Alfred's new fleet of nine ships intercepted six Viking ships in the mouth of a river along the south of England. The Danes had beached half their ships and gone inland, either to rest their rowers or to forage for food. Alfred's ships immediately moved to block their escape to the sea. The three Viking ships afloat attempted to break through the English lines. Only one made it; Alfred's ships intercepted the other two.
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Lashing the Viking boats to their own the English crew boarded the enemy's vessels and proceeded to kill everyone on board. The one ship that escaped managed to do so only because all of Alfred's heavy ships became grounded when the tide went out. What ensued was a land battle between the crews of the grounded ships. The Danes, heavily outnumbered, would have been wiped out if the tide had not risen. When that occurred the Danes rushed back to their boats which, being lighter with shallower drafts, were freed before Alfred's ships. Helplessly the English watched as the Vikings rowed past them. The pirates had suffered so many casualties (120 Danes dead against 62 Frisians and English) that they had difficulty putting out to sea. All were too damaged to row around Sussex and two were driven against the Sussex coast (possibly at Selsey Bill). The shipwrecked sailors were brought before Alfred at Winchester and hanged.
Source: Wikipedia.org
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