In Edward IV. (1475) the Cinque Ports Navy attended in the Downs for transporting the King and his army into France, embarking at Sandwich, and in 1491 (Henry VII.) found them engaged in a similar service, and brought the army back in the following year.
In Henry VIII. (15 1 3) the Ports Navy carried the King's army from Sandwich and Dover into France, and again in 1542 and 1544
In Elizabeth (1588) the Ports at her command set out five serviceable ships and a pinnace for her Majesty's service for two months, but they served four months at their own costs. These ships were of 160 tons each, and were engaged against the Spanish Armada. It will be seen the ships were larger in this reign, and great strides had been made in their construction and in naval enterprise. The Portuguese had succeeded in rounding the Cape of Good Hope and the passage to the East Indies, and Columbus had discovered America. However, it must be borne in mind that previously to the reign of Henry VII. there was no state navy, the ships of the Cinque Ports constituted the principal one, and these together with others from different ports were in those early times found sufficient for the defence of the Kingdom. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Royal Navy consisted of about fourteen large ships, measuring from 150 to 180 tons each. Queen Elizabeth so increased her navy that she deservedly acquired the title of "Restorer of Naval Power and Sovereign of the Northern Seas." The use of cannon, too, was now introduced, supplied probably from the Sussex and Kentish iron foundries.
It does not appear that any war ship was fitted out by the Ports after the reign of Charles I. (1626), for when Jeake in his diary tells us "that on July 4th, 1690, the English fleet passed by Rye in sight of the town moving towards the Downs before the French who were not yet come in sight/' he makes no mention of any ships coming from these Ports. The last sea service performed by the Ports, by virtue of their charters, wT as during the last war some time between 1793 and 1 8 14, when there was a draught made cf seamen to serve in the navy" (Holloway's Rye, p. 63). On a careful survey being made of the different sea services enumerated by writers on the History of the Cinque Ports it will be found that their ships and navies were engaged in the most important events of our history, and up to the period when the advance in the building of larger ships and in naval construction, when their services began to decline. - What changes in the construction of war ships the present generation have seen in a century is aptly described in a "Word Picture," by W. H. Fitchitt, LL.D., in writing a description of the Naval Review of King George's Coronation at Spithead, -- June 24th, 1911. "And here are the Dreadnoughts ships of new type in war. Any one of them, as far as fighting power is concerned, could have 'taken on' both the fleets that contended at Trafalgar, have sailed through them without suffering harm, and overtaken and sunk every ship in the two fleets at pleasure."
