By Edward III’s coronation a small royal navy already existed in England. The new king inherited Edward II’s king’s ships more or less intact. The king’s ships were permanently available to fourteenth-century kings, and were used for a number of purposes, including war, transportation and trade. Unlike the Royal Navy of later years, the king’s ships were collected for his personal use and were used at the monarch’s discretion. They were too few to transport an army, and this and many other tasks were undertaken using ‘impressed’ merchant ships, those commandeered for royal use. The king’s ships were not considered a war-winning force, and historically this had never been their function.

Exactly how many ships were in the king’s fleet in Edward III’s reign is a question that has caused confusion amongst historians, with some suggesting that the fleet had shrunk to just three vessels by the early 1330s. Edward III is thought to have had to re-build the force from this point after years of neglect under Edward II, followed by the sale of vessels like the powerful warships Cog Johan and La Despensere by Roger Mortimer’s regime. In fact Edward had a larger number of ships available to him at the beginning of his reign and at least 100 vessels would be called ‘king’s ships’ at one time or another between 1327 and 1377.

The king was never able to use this many ships at any one time. Instead a fleet of around twenty-five ships was made available to the king annually, perhaps on the anniversary of his coronation. The figure of twenty-five vessels was not concrete and Edward III – like other English kings – sometimes used more or fewer, depending on his requirement and budgetary constraints. Records from other reigns suggest that this was consistent with the number of king’s ships used by other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century monarchs. Edward II allocated twenty-seven king’s ships to his personal fleet in 1314, and more than twenty in 1326. Richard II used twenty-five in 1385, and Henry V fielded twenty-seven king’s ships in 1417. Twenty-five to thirty was probably a number settled on by tradition, having been found appropriate in earlier reigns. The requisite ships were probably found by the king’s clerks.