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muriel_volestrangler

(105,660 posts)
4. I can give you another - Henry V's 'Grace Dieu', biggest in world,obsolete by the time it was finished, only sailed once
Mon Dec 29, 2025, 10:46 AM
Dec 29
Estimates of her weight range between 1,400 tons and 2,750 tons. Two smaller ships, Valentine and Falcon, were built to escort her. A dock was specially built for her construction near Town Quay in Southampton.

The remains of Grace Dieu suggest that she was built in a hurry, with some of the planks and ribs left only roughly finished. She was a vast ship requiring 2,735 oak, 1,145 beech, and 14 ash trees for her timbers.
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Grace Dieu was designed for use in battle against Genoa's formidable fleet of carracks, that city being at the time the ally of France and enemy of England. To this end she was built with high sides and a prow that rose more than 50 ft (15.24 m), so that her archers could shoot from above into the much lower carracks that she would run alongside. However, by the time she was completed England had firm control over the Channel and was at peace with France following the Treaty of Troyes.

Grace Dieu and her escorts appear to have only set sail once, in 1420, under the command of the Earl of Devon and with orders to make a cruise down the English Channel. The expedition suffered a mutiny even before leaving port, when the crew objected to the presence of a contingent of soldiers and archers brought aboard to guard the vessel. Grace Dieu's sailors attempted to prevent the soldiers from boarding by abusing the clerk who was registering their names and threatening to throw the register into the sea. When the ship finally left port, nine of the crew incited a further mutiny against the captain by refusing to take their stations and insisting that the cruise be abandoned. Grace Dieu was brought into the nearest port, St. Helen's on the Isle of Wight, and the crew departed. A clerk who questioned their loyalty as they departed was assaulted and had his clothing torn.

When Henry V died in 1422 his ships were treated as his private property rather than as part of the kingdom's navy. Many were sold off to pay his debts.
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Subsequently, Grace Dieu was laid-up in the River Hamble. Already dismasted and stripped of equipment, she was burnt to the waterline after being set ablaze by a bolt of lightning in 1439.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Dieu_%28ship%29

Southampton to St. Helens is about 20 miles.

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