In the late fourteenth century, naval warfare with England was conducted largely by hired Scots, Flemish and French merchantmen and privateers.

King James I (1394–1437, r. 1406–1437) took a greater interest in naval power, establishing a shipbuilding yard at Leith and probably creating the office of Lord High Admiral.

Scottish ships had some success against privateers, accompanied the king on his expeditions in the islands and intervened in conflicts in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea, but were sold after the Flodden campaign.

After the Restoration Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment, but a fixed quota of conscripts for the English Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs.

[1] The key to the Viking success was the long-ship, a long, narrow, light, wooden boat with a shallow draft hull designed for speed.

This shallow draft allowed navigation in waters only 3 feet (1 m) deep and permitted beach landings, while its light weight enabled it to be carried over portages.

[2][3] The longship was gradually succeeded by (in ascending order of size) the birlinn, highland galley and lymphad,[4] which, were clinker-built ships, usually with a centrally-stepped mast, but also with oars that allowed them to be rowed.

[7][8] Viking naval power was disrupted by conflicts between the Scandinavian kingdoms, but entered a period of resurgence in the thirteenth century when Norwegian kings began to build some of the largest ships seen in Northern European waters.

[9] In 1263 Hakon responded to Alexander III's designs on the Hebrides by personally leading a major fleet of forty vessels, including Kristsúðin, to the islands, where they were swelled by local allies to as many as 200 ships.

[6] Defeat on land at the Battle of Largs and winter storms forced the Norwegian fleet to return home, leaving the Scottish crown as the major power in the region and leading to the ceding of the Western Isles to Alexander in 1266.

[11] English naval power was vital to King Edward I's successful campaigns in Scotland from 1296, using largely merchant ships from England, Ireland and his allies in the Islands to transport and supply his armies.

This was largely focused on the west coast, with the Exchequer Rolls of 1326 recording the feudal duties of his vassals in that region to aid him with their vessels and crews.

These letters would be repeated to his three sons John, Andrew and Robert, who would play a major part in the Scottish naval effort into the sixteenth century.

[16] James IV put the naval enterprise on a new footing, founding a harbour at Newhaven in May 1504, and two years later ordered Andrew Aytoun to construct a dockyard at the Pools of Airth.

Scottish naval efforts would again rely on privateering captains and hired merchantmen during the minority of James V.[18] In the Habsburg-Valois war of 1521–26, in which England and Scotland became involved on respective sides, the Scots had six men-of-war active attacking English and Imperial shipping and they blockaded the Humber in 1523.

In 1511 Andrew Barton headed south with Jennet Purwyn and another ship to continue the private war, and took prizes that he claimed were Portuguese, but contained English goods.

[25] James V built a new harbour at Burntisland in 1542, called 'Our Lady Port' or 'New Haven,' described in 1544 as having three blockhouses with guns and a pier for great ships to lie in a dock.

[27] Later in the year he sailed from Kirkcaldy with six ships including the 600 ton Mary Willoughby, and arrived at Dieppe to begin his courtship of his first wife Madeleine of Valois.

[32] When, as a result of the series of international treaties, Charles V declared war upon Scotland in 1544, the Scots were able to engage in a highly profitable campaign of privateering that lasted six years and the gains of which probably outweighed the losses in trade with the Habsburg Netherlands.

The English lost Pansy in an engagement with the galley fleet and their strategic situation began to deteriorate on land and sea, and the Treaty of Boulogne (1550) marked the end of the Rough Wooing and opened up a period of French dominance of Scottish affairs.

Private merchant ships were rigged at Leith, Aberdeen and Dundee as men-of-war, and the regent Mary of Guise claimed English prizes, one over 200 tons, for her fleet.

[41] The re-fitted Mary Willoughby sailed with 11 other ships against Scotland in August 1557, landing troops and six field guns on Orkney to attack Kirkwall Castle, St Magnus Cathedral and the Bishop's Palace.

These masters of Leith sailed to Berwick upon Tweed to meet and convoy the English ships carrying the guns to bombard Edinburgh Castle.

In the 1620s, Scotland became engaged in a naval conflict as England's ally, first against Spain and then also against France, while simultaneously embroiled in undeclared North Sea commitments in the Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War.

[39] In 1629 two squadrons of privateers led by Lochinvar and William Lord Alexander, sailed for Canada, taking part in the campaign that resulted in the capture of Quebec from the French, which was handed back after the subsequent peace.

[60] After the Covenanters allied with the English Parliament they established two patrol squadrons for the Atlantic and North Sea coasts, known collectively as the "Scotch Guard".

[62] Although Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment thanks to Charles II, a fixed quota of conscripts for the Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs during the second half of the seventeenth century.

[63] Royal Navy patrols were now found in Scottish waters even in peacetime, such as the small ship-of-the-line HMS Kingfisher, which bombarded Carrick Castle during the Earl of Argyll's rebellion in 1685.

[66] In the same period it was decided to establish a professional navy for the protection of commerce in home waters during the Nine Years' War (1688–97) with France, with three purpose-built warships bought from English shipbuilders in 1696.

Norman Macdougall, James IV (1989) is the standard life of the king most important to the history of the Royal Scots Navy, and does not stint on naval coverage.