. Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance. antiquity. The decorations of ships varied according to the caprice of owners andthe fashion of the times. The Saracen dromon boarded and taken byRichard Cceur-de-Lion had one side coloured green and the other Genoese at first painted their ships green; but in 1242, when they wereat war with the Pisans, they coloured them white spotted with vermilioncrosses, that is, red crosses on a silver ground, which resembled thearms of Monsieur Saint-Georges. Red was the colour generally adoptedfor ships hul
. Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance. antiquity. The decorations of ships varied according to the caprice of owners andthe fashion of the times. The Saracen dromon boarded and taken byRichard Cceur-de-Lion had one side coloured green and the other Genoese at first painted their ships green; but in 1242, when they wereat war with the Pisans, they coloured them white spotted with vermilioncrosses, that is, red crosses on a silver ground, which resembled thearms of Monsieur Saint-Georges. Red was the colour generally adoptedfor ships hulls in the sixteenth century, though a pattern in black andwhite was sometimes added, and sometimes the ground was painted blackand the pattern only vermilion. In 1525, when Francis I., made prisoner at the battle of Pavia, was taken o NAVAL MATTERS. 98 to Barcelona, the six galleys which, carried the captive sovereign and his suitewere painted entirely black from the top of the masts to the water-line. Thiswas not, however, the first time that ships had been known to put on mourn-. Fig. 93.—Pontifical Galley with Sails and Oars, and provided with heavy Artillery—Drawn byBreugel the Elder, and engraved by Fr. Huys (1550). ing : for instance, the Knights of St. Stephen, in the fifteenth century, hidthe brilliant hues of their Capitam* and painted its sails, pennants, awnings,oars, and hull with black, and swore never to alter the sombre hue till their * The principal galley of the squadron. NAVAL MATTERS. 99 order had recaptured from the Turks a galley lost by the Pisansin an engage-ment which, however, had not been altogether inglorious for the vanquished. Vessels in the Middle Ages, as in ancient times, had frequently gold-coloured and purple sails. The sails of seigniorial ships were generallybrilliantly emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of the seignior (Fig. 94); thesails of merchant vessels and of fishing boats with the image of a saint, thepatron figure of the Virgin, a
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