Left, a ‘gonne’-shield said to be part of the gift of arms sent by King Henry VIII to the Order in 1530, but now suspected by various historians to be simply an Italian target. The ‘gonne’shield would have been used as shown in the illustration above. The gun, however, is missing from the example shown here, as is the vision grill found on some of the examples in the Royal Armouries, Leeds, suggesting that this shield may have equipping 500 men, ‘un armeria grande fornita, per armare cinquecento never have had a gun at all huomini, d’ogni sorte d’armi offensive, e difensive’,7 apart from its fifty (Palace Armoury Museum).
artillery pieces and an ‘infinito numero’ of smaller guns (esmeragli etc). This ship was a veritable floating fortress and arsenal; it is even possible that it served to house most of the Order’s equipment whilst the Knights were temporarily lodged at Viterbo. The quantity of weapons brought over by the knights, if the size of the armoury on the Sant’ Anna is anything to go by, would have undoubtedly created considerable storage difficulties inside the old castle for the Castrum Maris was not a large stronghold by contemporary standards. Its normal garrison was about 150 men. By comparison, Crac Des Chevaliers had around a 1,000; by Rhodian measures, the sea-castle was roughly equivalent to the stronghold of Paleo Pyli in Kos, one of the lesser outposts. The forty odd dwellings within the Casrum Maris are said to have been quickly occupied and more structures had to be built simply to accommodate the knights and their belongings. No wonder that by the early months of 1531, Fort St Angelo, as the castle came to be called by the knights, appeared to be overflowing with ‘arme, d’artiglieria, di munitione e di vettovaglie.’8 So haphazard were the storage arrangements that a number of slaves quartered within the castle acquired access to these supplies and even tried to take over the castle, albeit unsuccessfully. 9
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