Mention Portsmouth and people think of the navy, mention the navy and sailors everywhere think of Portsmouth, which has been home to the senior service since not long after Richard I granted the city its first royal charter.

And, although the part played in Portsmouth's history by the merchant navy should never be underestimated, it would be fair to say that, without the fighting arm of our seagoing stalwarts, Portsmouth almost certainly would not have developed into the influential city it has been for the last few hundred years.

We already know that Richard I sailed from Portsmouth with a huge army in 1194 and in 1200 his brother, by then King John, reaffirmed the rights and privileges that The Lionheart had granted the city and work began on proper dock facilities, as well as on the construction of St Nicholas' Hospital, which served as both almshouse and hospice for many years.

As we've said before, much of Portsmouth's early history - or the records of it, at least - was destroyed during the repeated French raids and for many years nothing was done to try to defend the city, even though its value as a "jumping off" point for English armies bound for France, or any other part of the continent, had long been recognised.

In 1221 Henry III assembled in Portsmouth one of the finest armies ever to leave the shores of England, but although the port facilities had been improved, due to Henry's father, King John's determination to invade and recapture large areas of France, - particularly Normandy - when the armies and the main fleet were away, the city was left pretty much unprotected.

The French, only too aware of the danger that Portsmouth represented to them, wasted few opportunities to take advantage of these times - even in peace time there were smaller raids along the south coast, but the Hundred Years War saw an increase in larger scale attacks.

The Hundred Years War actually lasted for 116 years (good pub quiz question, that!) and started in 1337. In 1338, a French fleet, under the command of Nicholas Béhuchet, mounted a full scale raid on Portsmouth, landing at several points and razing much of the town to the ground - only the church and hospital surviving.

Edward III granted Portsmouth exemption from national taxation to aid in the reconstruction, but gave little thought to improving the defences. Then, in 1348, the Black Death struck Portsmouth for the first time and it, like a lot of Europe, found the killer disease distracted attention from matters of war.

Not that hostilities halted, by any means, but still there was no move to prepare against future French raids and, sure enough, in 1369 they came again, determined to prevent the regrowth of the city. Once again Portsmouth burned and, not content with that, the French repeated the procedure in 1377 and again in 1380.

For more than three decades after this, the French had more than enough to occupy them on their home soil, and there was also a "third peace", which lasted from 1389 to 1415, but as the fourteenth century gave way to the fifteenth, it was obvious that Portsmouth still remained a prime target, the moment the French could assemble a suitable fleet again.

Henry V stationed a larger garrison outside the city, but he knew this would not be enough and was not a long term solution, so in 1418 he ordered the construction of a wooden Round Tower, which would guard the mouth of the harbour and which was finally completed in 1426, with a sister round tower on the Gosport side of the harbour.

Of course, wooden towers and sea water don't make for a particularly good mix - the average wooden warship had a fairly limited lifespan, after all, even with regular maintenance and its not exactly easy to pull a wooden tower out of the sea, in order to replace rotting timbers! - so, sixty years after the wooden round tower was completed, it was replaced by a stone version, which stands to this day.

The origins of the Square Tower, which stands alongside the Round Tower are less clear, although it is believed that the first version of it was probably built during the reign of Edward III, who first ordered that Portsmouth should be surrounded by a defensive wall.

However, much of this "wall" was nothing more than a raised earthworks and much more would almost certainly have only comprised a timber palisade, and its efficiency can be judged by the number of times the French managed to penetrate the perimeter and burn the town down!

And, as we've already said, these repeated sackings made sure that any documentation that would help us establish the true facts about much of early Portsmouth - Square Tower included - disappeared in a pall of smoke.

For any historian, not having definitive data, or even ruins, from which to draw an accurate picture of a time, or specific event, is more than just frustrating - it's possible that people will mail in, telling me that this date and that date are wrong, that such and such was here, or there - but the truth is, nobody knows for certain on so much of Portsmouth's pre-Tudor past and what we do have, hopefully fairly accurate, has been based on fragments of history from other towns, where Portsmouth gets the odd mention.

That's why, in my researches, I've found slightly differing accounts of some events and developments and dates that can vary by up to a quarter of a century, so it's a case of going with the majority a lot of the time.

It would appear likely, however, that the original Square Tower, like its round neighbour, was built from timber and that the stone edifice we see today was built in 1494, in the time of Henry VIII, or somewhere very close to that date - the Round Tower, as we know it today, was probably completed in 1426.

Apart from its defensive potential, the Square Tower was used as a residence for the Governor of Portsmouth and then as a meat store for the Royal Navy, eventually being used to house kegs of gunpowder - non-smokers only need apply for the job of night watchman!

By the time Henry VII came to the throne, there was already a significant naval presence at Portsmouth, but England's navy of the day was a hotch-potch of vessels, many privately owned and occasionally leased, or loaned to the crown, and with little hierarchical organisation.

However, after Henry VIII succeeded his father, all that was to change - Henry quickly realised that whoever controlled the English Channel could exert huge influence over the rest of Europe and he was especially keen to restrict the seafaring activities of France, England's traditional enemy, because now there was also the small matter of an entire new world across the Atlantic, just waiting to be exploited by the "civilised" Europeans.

Thus France's opportunities to gain a foothold in the Americas were kept to an absolute minimum, although it must be said that England did little better, almost as though Henry was content to mount a "spoiling" operation against the French, whilst having neither the desire - or more probably, the man- and seapower to organise more than probing and exploratory expeditions across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, of course, Spain and Portugal had a clear run at the new continents, especially Central and South America, where there were fortunes in gold to be had - gold that would eventually lead to trouble between Spain and England in particular, but more of that later.

In the meantime, the foe was still France and, despite continued outbreaks of peace, friction continued and fresh action was never far away. English monarchs may have effectively given up their claims over Normandy and certain other French territory, Calais remained in English hands* and even had representation in the English parliament of the day, so it was essential to strengthen the Navy Royal**, which, under Henry VIII, finally became a properly organised and professional service***.

Portsmouth, though, as ships became bigger, faster and more powerfully armed, would thrive so well under Henry VIII that things in the town would never be the same again ...

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(* Calais would finally fall to the French in January 1558, the last year of the reign of Henry's eldest daughter "Bloody" Mary Tudor.

** The English navy was known as the Navy Royal during the reign of Henry VIII and for about a century and a half after his death. Only after the Acts of Union, in 1707, when the Royal Scots Navy - numbering just three ships by then - merged with the English Navy Royal, was the name Royal Navy used to describe the then British navy.

*** Despite the importance of the Navy Royal under Henry VIII, there was still no full time, permanent English navy during periods of peace. Successive monarchs relied largely upon "privateers" and ships financed by traders and merchants to protect their merchants ships, to assemble fleets to defend the home shores and it was not until the time of Charles I, in the 1680s, that a truly full-time and permanent navy emerged, with the creation of the Admiralty to oversee its organisation and needs.)