Hi, my name is Kevin Hicks and welcome to my YouTube channel the History Squad.
Now the film today is about logistics. Now I’d already made a film about arrow supply
and that kind of thing and people found it very, very interesting and subscribers have been getting
in touch asking lots of questions about this particular subject, so we thought we'd give it
a try answering them. So this is a little bit of question answer session. Now the first question,
uh the biggie was well, how did they make the arrows? Now I have enough equipment here
to make two sheets of arrows, so what I’m going to do I’m going to make a separate film show
you how I make arrows and we'll incorporate into that the history of what we know about medieval
arrow making yeah? Now the next question was well, where were the arrows made? Yeah? And you've got
to understand we have so much information almost blew my mind it's the, the medieval
inventories of the tower armories of 1320 to 1410. It's all written down it's amazing yeah
so here we have just one table and there is a hub Bristol so it's around the Bristol area
all of the arrows being made and then brought into Bristol as a hub but the list of towns it
kind of reveals something for instance wells in somerset is not listed as making arrows it makes
120 bows which I find nice because Richard Head, a great bowyer, he's from that area
but now you go through Summerton, Bridgewater, Taunton, Sherbourne, Fleet bridge they're all
supplying sheaves of arrows. You take Taunton, 180 sheaves of arrows were delivered to Bristol.
Now they were carted to Bristol, they would then be signed for. Now it might just be a
wagon filled with sheaves of arrows but at Bristol they manufactured for themselves 153
sheaves of arrows and what happened at these hubs is they were packed correctly they were put
into tons, into barrels, empty barrels, coffers the chests and then an interesting one for me,
hutches and pipes. I can only assume that a hutch is some kind of box and a pipe is
literally a tube that the arrows were put in. If you know any different, please let me know,
but once they're secured they are then going to be transported all the way from Bristol
to the Tower of London. And it wasn't an ad hoc thing, it's quite interesting and I’ve got to
refer to another piece here because the um the way the arrows were assembled and transported
it's strictly governed. Uh, the goods being assembled and then packed it gives a table
of how much it cost to transport the arrows and it goes all over the country explaining how much
it cost. I’m going to precis it for you. Basically this is what happened, you had a clerk and he was
responsible once the arrows had been collected stored in boxes put onto wagons. He was there
ticking it all off. Once it was complete with the horses with the wagons he would go with the
supplies. Now they were paid up front to transport these arrows all the way to the Tower of London,
which could take weeks couldn't it with all these carts, and you have these tables listing
how many horses, how many carts, this that and the other. Now when the clerk arrives in London,
his shipment is checked and he then gets the clerk at the other end to actually sign off the arrows
or the supply of arrows and bows. He then, with his wagons, turns around and goes back.
What I find fascinating is, he is still paid for the return journey. It's not a case of he just
delivers the arrows and then has to go back. The case is, the whole journey there and back
is bought and paid for. This I find so fascinating. It is so organized.
So another question was how much do arrows cost?
Well we know exactly how much they cost at a particular time, around about the Crecy
time because William de Rothwell kept meticulous records and I’ve got the records here 1353 to 60.
Uh it's recorded how much the arrows cost. I’ll just go through the table it's, it's
quite incredible. 400 sheaves at two shillings and six pence a sheaf for the king's valets,
that's his men his close men. That's incredible two and six, two shillings and sixpence.
Whereas he had six thousand sheaves at 18 pennies as sheaf. Now I suppose I ought to explain
a shilling. When I was a kid the shilling was, well it's 12 pence. 12 pennies make a shilling
all right? I just thought I’d kind of put that one in there. So you have 6000 at 18 pennies a sheaf
then 5600 at 16 pennies then they go down to 13 all the way down to 10 pence a sheath. So
there were different standards of arrows for sure, but have a listen to this, because this
answers a little side question somebody asked me about, uh were there posh arrows. A special,
four sheaves of hunting arrows for the king at six shillings a sheaf, then two sheaves with
broadheads for the queen, fletched with peacock feathers at ten shillings a sheath. That's
incredible prices. Now it's interesting isn't it here is a war arrow one of Kevin’s homemade,
yeah with all the stuff it's just an arrow to me, a good head though. So let me show you this arrow.
I call this my golden arrow it is a top class arrow in fact it's my very first medieval arrow
and it's really well made, one of Richard Head jobs. So this is the top of this
the line yeah? This is your best arrow and it it's wonderful to think that the queen would have
these delicate beautiful arrows for hunting and the king's valets, his household men would have
the top line arrows. So now we know 18 pence a sheaf to 10p a sheaf, depending on how good they
are. Now I’m going to go into another question straight from this. Were the arrows spined?
They're making them by the hundreds of thousands, there's no records about
spinning arrows and think about it. You're at the battle of Crecy, Agincourt, Poitiers
and you're thinking “well I hope the next sheaf of arrows that is given to me is spined to my bow”.
Let's forget all of that let's just be medieval military. You have a baggage
train with tens of thousands of arrows they're not going to be spined. They are going to be
a particular length, which I love. It's an ell. There's only one medieval arrow in existence
the Westminster arrow and it's a length of ell, E-double L, and it then gets into this whole
business of a cloth yard. You measure it by the length of your arm so here is a medieval arrow
and would you believe it the 29 inches of an ell goes exactly to that length and I’ve been accused
of not drawing to the full 30 or 31 inches. Well if their arrows were only an ell long,
they didn't draw them that long, or am I creating questions? Another question was how did the arrows
actually get from the Tower of London over to France where they were needed, and it's,
it's all down to one man in uh 1346 for the Crecy campaign. Thomas Rolleston, who was the
king's pavilioner yeah? I think I said that right, excellent, because this is like take five because
I keep getting that name wrong. He would take the arrows from the armories in the Tower of London
get them ready for shipment everything signed and sealed and it reminds me of, of my time in the
British army. You wanted anything you had to sign for it. You signed for your rifle, you signed for
your bullets, you signed for your rations, even if you had a land rover for an hour you had to
sign it out and you had to sign it in yeah? So did it begin in the medieval times with all of
these arrows going across to France? Now we've actually got so many tables of what was shipped
out to France and this is the second shipment for the Crecy campaign. 1376 painted bows.
Now we're not 100 sure about painted bows, were they varnished, were they're heavily waxed?
But I have been digging and I’ve found that uh there were 734 white bows, and there's a kind
of a hint that they preferred white bows because you could see the standard of the wood underneath.
Interesting little point. Then there were thirteen thousand four hundred and forty bow strings and
three thousand eight hundred sheaves of arrows all transported across to France. They would have gone
to a central location, it could be a town near the coast and then distributed to the army which was
near the coast later on of course the hub would have been Calais and we've even got tables which
show you how many arrows and bows were sent for the siege of Calais. If you're interested in this,
seriously interested, then it is the tower armories they have the tables, but there's also
a decent book for logistics Arrowstorm. I’ve got a copy here and it's by Richard Wadge,
it's a great book have a read. So the final question I’ve got to answer is uh how did the
arrows get from the hub Calais or from the coast down to where they were needed where the army was,
ready for the battle. Well arrows were being made all of the time as well don't forget in these
enormous baggage trains you have fletchers who will be making arrows repairing arrows
you have the arrowsmith the guy who makes the arrowheads, they had mobile forges so it wasn't
a case of right we've got three thousand sheaves of arrows. Those arrows will be looked after,
they'll be repaired. But arrows, recovered arrows that are broken and then manufacture of arrows,
these carts literally loaded up with these sheaves of arrows. But when they arrive,
let's say for the battle of Crecy, you can't put the carts amongst the bowmen. The carts are
behind. So how do the arrows get from the cart to the bowman? So let's break it down into companies.
You have a company of bowmen, they will have their own supply of arrows on their carts and they will
be sorted on the carts. Let's grab a sheaf of arrows here you go, here's a sheaf. These will be
sorted by the women in the baggage, who will then hand them to the boys, these were mentioned by
Shakespeare, Henry V, the boys in the luggage, and the boys will run the arrows into their company
and supply the bowmen with the arrows as they're needed. And you can imagine can't you, the panic
in these baggage trains. They can hear the French cavalry charging, they can feel the battle,
they're giving the arrows out and they can see the dwindling supply of arrows. So the bowmen will
actually know because the boys in the luggage will be telling them “we've only got a handful left”,
so they will know that they're going to run out of arrows. So they can either get them
out of the dead or the ground or simply chuck their bows away, lay them down,
and draw their side arms. Right the way from Bristol, Taunton, these places. Staffordshire,
Yorkshire where these things are being made then they're transported to the Tower of London all
accounted for. Then across to France and then transported down to where the army needs them,
and then from the baggage train to the actual bowman himself. The whole system works.
So there we have it, my question answer session about the um arrow supply. Now if you enjoyed
the film please like, share, subscribe. If you're already a subscriber, hey thanks a
million. We're so enjoying the comments they are great, and uh we now have a Patreon account and
I’ve got to give a shout out I’m going to give a shout out to some of my new Patreon account
holders. We have Austin Post from Los Angeles then we have Jake Duber and the Modestbanana.
I think I got the last one right, okay but for now thank you very much. See you soon.