I just put up another Renaissance English History Podcast on Friday (I’ve been sticking to my schedule of putting out two a month – proud of that) on Henry VIII’s Navy. I’ve been wanting to podcast on this for a while, mostly because I wanted to learn about it for myself. Henry VIII is remembered as the founder of the Tudor Navy, but it really got started with his father, Henry VII, who built up the defenses at Portsmouth harbor, including England’s first dry dock. He built 2 war ships – the Sovereign and the Regent.
Ships at the time were becoming specialized for the first time in history. Before, if you wanted to have a ship to go to war, you would take over a merchant ship, and use that. But with the invention of watertight gunports, and heavy artillery going on to ships, things became a lot more specific, and ships needed to be purpose built. They also had huge crews, which needed feeding and paying, as they also started sailing year round rather than just during warfare. All of this required a huge administrative network to get supplies for the sailors, take care of paying and feeding everyone involved with the care and repair of the ships, and maintaining the docks. Enter Thomas Cromwell with his prodigious project management skills.
The Royal Navy wasn’t founded until Cromwell’s head was well and truly separated from his body, but the work he did in the years leading up to his execution through diverting money from the dissolution of the monasteries to the navy, and appointing people specifically in charge of procuring supplies at competitive prices laid the way for the Royal Navy in 1546.
Listen below, and let me know what you think about Henry’s Navy!
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
