First Year: (1) The sphere of Sacrobosco. (2) The four rules of Arithmetic: Rule of three, extraction of square root, cube root, and fractions. (3) The theory of Purbach, or planets and eclipses. (4) The spherical trigonometry of Regiomontanus. (5) The Almagest of Ptolemy.
Second Year: (1) The first six books of Euclid. (2) Arcs and chords, right sines, tangents and secants. (3) To complete Regiomontanus and Ptolemy.
Third Year: (1) Cosmography and navigation. (2) Use of astrolabe. (3) The methods of observing the movements of heavenly bodies. (4) The use of the globe and of mathematical instruments. (5) The construction of a watch.
It must not be forgotten that the life on board a Tudor ship was, even for rough, rude, untutored seamen, full of hardships, even if full of adventure. Anyone who cares to look through the records of the voyages can see this for himself. We are accustomed to regard that as a romantic age; but the romance is only visible through the avenue of distance which now separates us from those times. The victualling was disgracefully mismanaged at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The crews of ships were actually allowed to fight in the English Channel for their country in a condition that was almost sheer starvation. Actually the commissariat department was so bad that ships had to return home from the region of battle to fetch supplies. There was nothing very romantic, either, in having to serve on ships which exuded a terrible stench from their holds. A horrible mixture of bilge-water and decayed food, coupled with the heat of the galley, helped to make the health of the Tudor sailorman anything but good.
Henry VII had done his best to encourage enterprising shipbuilders by giving them a bounty on the tonnage built, and there is a record of at least one ship’s smith being given an annuity for his services to the king’s ships. This, like many other customs, had been derived from Spain. Still, for all that, the warships put to sea with so many leaks that “the water cam in as it wer in a seve.” And there was no dry dock until Henry VII built the first at Portsmouth with timber gates and “one ingyn to draw water owte of the seid dokke.” When they went forth to the naval wars of this period they fought with bows, arrows, spears and demi-lances, morris-pikes, halberds, bills, guns (including falcons and harquebuses). There were rammers and powder for the guns, and shot of iron, stone, and lead, artillery having been recently introduced. Portholes had also been introduced in the reign of Henry VII, and the passing of the Viking type of ship to that of a bigger, more seaworthy type, with high-charged stern and bow, was the beginning of a new order of things. Gradually the merchantman became separated from the pure warship, and cannon took the place of the hand-to-hand encounter. But these changes came only by slow stages.