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''Grace Dieu'' was launched in 1418 as the flagship of Henry V of England and was one of the largest ships of her time. She sailed on only one voyage, and spent most of her life laid up in the River Hamble, where in 1439 she was struck by a bolt of lightning and burnt. ==Design and construction== She was built to a three-layered〔''Time Team''〕 clinker-built design by William Soper, a burgess of Southampton and Clerk of the King's Ships. A dock was specially built for her construction near Town Quay in Southampton.〔Southampton an Illustrated History. Adrian Rance. 1986. ISBN 0-903852-95-0〕 The remains of ''Grace Dieu'' suggest that it was built in a hurry. It was certainly not made to look good: some of the planks and ribs are roughly finished. It was a vast ship built with 2735 oak, 1145 beech, and fourteen ash trees, and mounted twelve cannon. The prow rose 50 feet above the waterline, providing a large and high platform for archers to rain death on smaller ships. It was 218 feet long and 50 feet wide, making it comparable in size to ''HMS Victory'' and twice the size of ''Mary Rose''. ''Grace Dieu'' retained the clinker technique. The ship was triple clinker – three planks were nailed together with long iron rivets to provide a thick, reinforced hull waterproofed with tar and moss sandwiched between the planks. The shipwrights and carpenters who worked on her between 1416 and 1418 were experimenting in ship design, taking a Genoese ship and applying northern principles to the construction. It must have been a work of trial and error which explains the crudeness of its timbers.〔Ben Wilson, Empire of the Deep; The Rise and Fall of the British Navy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2013. ISBN 0297864084〕 Ordered in 1416 to fight Genoan carracks,〔 ''Grace Dieu'' was completed in 1418 and was one of the largest wooden ships of its time, measuring in length. Estimates of her weight range between 1,400 tons〔 and 2,750 tons.〔 Two other ships, ''Valentine'' and ''Falcon'' were built to escort her.〔 The problem with ''Grace Dieu'' was that by the time she was operational in 1420 the aims that had given birth to her were no longer relevant. England had control of the Channel and Castile was no longer in France’s service. The Treaty of Troyes of that year provided that Henry’s heirs should succeed Charles IV as king of France. ''Grace Dieu'' served as a useful reminder to foreign visitors that England possessed the technology and political will to claim sovereignty over the seas.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Grace Dieu (ship)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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