THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE NORTH
We can desire hardly any better evidence of the existence of a
Mercantile Marine than the fact that a body of laws had to be created
in order to regulate that industry. We have seen that from quite early
times there was in the Mediterranean a sea-law which in course of time
was available for any set of circumstances that might arise in regard
to trading ships.
In like manner there came into being a code of maritime laws for
western Europe, and this was known as the Laws of Oleron. The code was
adopted by Alfonso X in the thirteenth century for the settlement of
disputes in maritime affairs. It was based on the sea-law of Rhodes
already referred to. Now, one effect of the crusade which Richard Cœur
de Lion undertook was that he came into contact with a number of ships
and seamen who had been sent from the island of Oleron to take part in
the crusade. And among the officers who had come with the fleet from
Oleron was one of the justiciaries of the navy.
The nett result was that Richard brought home a roll of these laws,
and ordered them to be observed in English waters. They had been
framed for the benefit of the Merchant Service, and they were drastic.
Thus if a pilot lost the ship and the merchants sustained damage, the
pilot was to make full satisfaction, if he had the means; if he had
no means he was to lose his head. Now, based on these laws of Oleron,
came into being what was known as the “Black Book of the Admiralty,”
which contained the “ancient statutes of the Admiralty, to be observed
both upon ports and havens, the high seas and beyond the seas, which
are engrossed upon vellum in the said book and written in an ancient
hand in the ancient French language,” as a High Court Judge of the
seventeenth century described them.
This so-called “Black Book” contains the most ancient laws of the sea
in force in this country, and continued to be the standard authority
in the Admiralty Court until the end of the eighteenth century, when
it suddenly disappeared, but in 1874 it was accidentally discovered at
the bottom of a chest belonging to a former Registrar of the Admiralty
Court. To-day this book is kept in a glass-topped, locked table in the
room of the President of the Admiralty Court. It was probably called
black to distinguish it from other books of reference, but the late
Sir Douglas Owen, who had examined it about the year 1911, said that
the cover was now very much the colour of a worn-out leather strap. It
measures 9½ inches high and 6¼ inches wide, the leaves being either
thin parchment or a stout tough paper. The first part of the book is
written in archaic French, but it was not all written at one time nor
by one person. In other words, as the Merchant Marine of England grew
in numbers and importance, as the trade with the continent got bigger,
so the English maritime law kept up with the progress. The first part
of the “Black Book” belongs to the time of Edward III or Richard II,
the latter part to the time between Henry IV and Henry VI. Thus, part
of the book shows that the English Mercantile Marine was of sufficient
size and importance in the period between 1327 and 1351 to necessitate
a body of laws.
In character the ships of Northern waters were based on those of the
Norsemen—that is to say, they were double-ended, long, and propelled by
one large square-sail, or with oars when necessary. As time went on,
these craft became beamier, and approximated to the cargo ships of the
Mediterranean, the twofold objects aimed at being seaworthiness and
capacity for carrying as much as possible in their holds. But there
is this important fact to bear in mind, and its value can hardly be
exaggerated, as we shall presently find. The North Sea has from the
earliest records until the present day been the home of the herring,
and on the herring the nations of the North have prospered, built their
Mercantile Marines, grown rich, created their navies and expanded
commercially. The fishing fleets have only to put to sea and they can
extract silver fortunes—it is, so to speak, money for nothing, or for
very little. That is the broad, general statement, though in practice
it is modified by the migrations of the herring, which did actually
alter the trend of history.
As far back as the third century the inhabitants of the Hebrides were
living on fish and milk, but ignorant of the cultivation of grain, and
even in the ninth century the Dutch came to Scotland to buy salted
fish. In the tenth century the Norwegians were fishing with their
herring-nets near Christiania, and off the East Anglian coast our own
fishermen were pursuing the industry on a large scale. Before William
the Conqueror arrived, Beccles, then a fishing town (but now inland
on the banks of a river), paid as rent to St. Edmund’s Abbey as
much as 30,000 herrings. In France by 1030 the herring-fishing was a
well-established occupation, and there were salt works near Dieppe for
preserving the catches. During the twelfth century our fishermen found
herrings very plentiful off the Tyne. Further north the English, Scotch
and Belgic fishermen were getting the herring near May Island off the
Firth of Forth, and in this same period the herring was being first
fished for in the Meuse. The Dutch were sending out small vessels to
use their nets in the North Sea, then later on packing the fish into
barrels, preserving them by cleaning their insides and thus beginning
to acquire wealth from the harvest of the sea.
Thus the North Sea fisheries were to build up the Mercantile Marines of
the North. We were exporting herrings, wool, butter, cheese and cattle
to the continent via the Rhine, and already during the thirteenth
century a big Lorraine fleet, carrying cargoes of wine, used to arrive
annually in England; but it was the impetus given by the herring that
caused the north European countries to develop the sea instinct. The
fishing industry developed shipbuilding, created a great seamanhood,
spread the fascination of the sea as a career, and thus handed down
from century to century a great and wonderful school, from which in
Tudor times were to be obtained the crews who ventured forth with Drake
and others. You cannot suddenly bring into being this seafaring body,
as you can collect armies. And had it not been that for hundreds of
years the Englishmen had been out fishing, there would have been no
expansion of England either commercially or politically. The history of
the world would, indeed, have to be rewritten.
By the time of Edward III the fishing had become so important to this
country that a law was passed forbidding any fisherman to give up his
trade; but, in return for this, fishermen and mariners were exempt from
serving in any capacity other than that to which they had been bred.
By the fourteenth century there were literally thousands of vessels,
each having at least six persons on board, fishing for herrings between
Denmark and Norway, and more than 300,000 people were in one way or
another engaged in the industry. In five days no fewer than sixty
foreign ships during one week came into Great Yarmouth for these fish.
Thus, side by side with our fishermen there was growing up a carrying
trade, herrings and woollen cloth being regularly exported to the
continent. By the fifteenth century ships from the British Isles,
France, Flanders, Zeeland, Holland and Germany with Scottish herrings
used to sail to the Mediterranean to sell the fish for the faithful
during Lent.
Throughout the Middle Ages the herring-fishing of the North Sea was far
and away the most important of western Europe, especially off Scotland,
Sweden and Norfolk, whither the Dutchmen came both to use their nets
and to buy. The trade in salted and smoked herrings helped to make the
wealth of the Hanseatic and Dutch towns. And it is here that we find,
in the Hanseatic League, a force which corresponds to that of Venice,
Pisa and Genoa in the south; for in developing overseas trade it
encouraged the ship and seafaring.
The word “hansa” signifies a guild or association, and the Hanseatic
League was an association of towns for the purposes of trade, Bergen,
London and Bruges being its principal foreign markets in the North Sea.
From the twelfth to the sixteenth century this trading league existed,
and, like Venice, had its rise to pre-eminence and then gradually
lost its supremacy. And, like Venice, too, the Hanseatic League kept
a tight hand over its merchant ships. Thus as far back as 1391 there
was an ordinance by the Diet that no merchant should sail from a North
Sea to a Baltic port, or vice versa, between Martinmas and Candlemas,
and the only exceptions were that ships carrying beer and herrings
might sail as late as St. Nicholas Day, December 6. For centuries a
merchant had signified a townsman, but when, from the beginning of the
twelfth century, the herring suddenly arrived in great shoals in the
Baltic, the inland dwellers of Germany came down to the sea, ousted
the Slav and thus began to get rich. The movements and migrations of
the herring are little more understood nowadays than they were then,
but it was sufficient for the Hanseatics that this silvery wealth had
arrived. Thus Kolberg became a famous emporium for salted herrings, and
this fishing industry was responsible for the Hansa towns obtaining so
much of their riches and power. And so it went on until, in 1425, the
erratic herring decided to forsake the Baltic and spawn in the waters
of the North Sea. This at once took away from the Hanseatics a large
portion of their means to wealth, though they were still busy with
their carrying trade. But what is one country’s loss may be another’s
gain, and it was so with the herring.
For from the Baltic the herring had moved down to the Dutch coast, and
so the Netherlands found themselves with the good fortune of a silver
mine outside their own doors. Riches were there for the asking, and
they wisely availed themselves of the opportunity. They built more
ships, and the whole waterside went forth in clumsy, seaworthy craft,
and thus gradually the fishermen laid the foundation-stone of the Dutch
nation. It is an old saying that Amsterdam was built upon herrings; and
as the Venetian palaces were built on Eastern pepper and silks, so the
Northern capital arose out of the efforts on sea. It is impossible to
appreciate all that the herring-fishery has meant to Holland until one
has been through all the picture galleries in the Low Countries and
explored its harbours. In the former you find the herring busses riding
to their nets as the subject of any number of paintings, for the reason
that it was the most important aspect of Dutch livelihood; and around
the quays to-day you have only to notice the fine architecture in order
to see the relics of a wealth that came and passed away by means of the
sea high-road.
There is nothing like trade for the encouragement of shipping, but it
was not until the end of the thirteenth century that the inland towns
of the continent required for their trade the highway of the ocean, and
thus the ports became important and the demand for shipping increased.
One of the most important of the Hanseatic sea trade routes was from
Bruges to northern Russia, whither hundreds of craft sailed every year,
owned by the Baltic merchants. And it was not until the fifteenth
century that the Dutchmen, Zeelanders and Frisians seriously competed
with the Hanseatics, for the latter was a very close corporation, whose
organisation was kept secret, and its ban was regal in its effect.
By its decree no German merchant was allowed to go into partnership
with an Englishman, Fleming or Russian, and the result was that for
centuries our shipping was kept out of the Baltic. All this time the
Hanseatic trade was doing a great deal to encourage its own shipping,
for there were needed many craft and seamen to carry eastwards from
Germany to Russia the produce of the looms and the breweries, returning
with furs, wax, skins, tallow and fat. Similarly the shipping went
across to Sweden to fetch the copper and iron, while to Bruges and
London this Russian and Swedish produce was brought for distribution.
As in the cargo ships of the Mediterranean, so here in the north, the
merchants accompanied their wares “over sea and sand.” Some of them
would mutually arrange to charter a ship, and in order to encourage the
captain to get the goods safely across the sea, they would give him an
interest in the sales. Otherwise, as soon as pirates hove into sight he
might feel inclined to hurl the goods overboard, and a similar desire
was thus checked in the case of the ship labouring in bad weather.
Piracy in the English Channel, Irish Sea, North Sea and the Baltic went
on merrily during the Middle Ages, and played havoc with the merchant
ship, though, as in the south, this kind of activity was less a crime
than a specialised form of seafaring. In the Cinque Ports dwelt a class
of seamen commissioned, according to Matthew of Paris, to plunder all
merchant ships of any nationality other than English as they passed up
and down the Channel; so in the thirteenth century we find the Scotch,
Irish, Welsh and French all fitting out vessels to cruise about in
readiness for a cargo ship full of valuable goods.
The English Channel and the North Sea thus became full of dangers, and
no merchant ship could put to sea without grave risk of capture. One
nationality was as bad as another, and a kind of international vendetta
went on in revenge for the losses by piracy. It became, indeed, a
matter of high politics, far too serious to be ignored, so that the
kings of England at various dates had to enter into negotiations with
the foreign authorities. Thus at the beginning of the fifteenth century
the Chancellor of England demanded from the Master-General of Prussia
full restitution and recompense for “sundry piracies and molestations
offered of late upon the sea.” During the next reign Henry IV, writing
to the same personage, admitted that both English and Prussian
merchants had suffered by these pirates “roving up and downe the sea.”
It was finally agreed that English merchant ships should be allowed
to enter Prussian ports unmolested, and that if Prussian cargoes were
captured in the North Sea by English pirates, and this merchandise
was brought into an English port, the “governour” of the port, if he
suspected piracy, was to have such goods taken out and put ashore in
safe keeping. And between this same Henry and the Hanseatic towns a
similar agreement was made which bound the cities of Lubeck, Bremen,
Hamburg and others to recompense the injured parties “for all injuries,
damages, grievances, and drownings or manslaughters” done and committed
by the pirates.
The following incidents well illustrate the risks which these
merchantmen ran whilst pursuing their calling. About Eastertide in the
year 1394 the merchant ship _Godezere_, owned by four Englishmen, set
out from the Tyne for Prussia, loaded with a cargo of woollen cloth
and red wine. She was a 200-ton ship, her value with that of her sails
and tackle amounting to £400; her cargo, plus certain sums of money
on board, aggregating 200 marks. In the North Sea she encountered a
Hanseatic ship who gave the English craft such a hot time that the
_Godezere_ was captured, two of her crew slain, and the rest of them
were imprisoned for three years. In the same year the Hanseatic pirates
also attacked the Hull ship named the _Shipper Berline of Prussia_,
belonging to a Richard Horuse, and from her they took away goods to the
value of 160 nobles. Next year, off the coast of Norway, they molested
a ship called the _John Tutteburie_, and relieved her of 476 nobles
worth of cargo. A year later still, these Hanseatic pirates captured
the Hull ship _Cogge_, belonging to one William Terry, and took £200
worth of woollen cloth as well. The pirates were no respecters of ships
so long as valuable goods were being taken across the North Sea, for
Dutch, Zeeland and English merchantmen and fishing craft were all made
to suffer. If the merchants and crew were not killed, they were thrown
into prison and not allowed their liberty until ransom was paid, so
altogether the trading ship had quite as exciting a time in the north
as in the southern sea.
But it was just as bad in the Baltic, where the pirates found it such a
profitable business that they formed themselves into a corporation, and
became such a serious and powerful force that in 1392 they were able
to burn down Bergen and take the bishop prisoner. This much is to be
said for them: they had a sense of chivalry, and on occasions actually
gave back the empty ships to merchants after removing the cargoes,
and wished them a happy return with fresh and fuller freights. But so
mighty a scourge did these sea-raiders become that for a time they put
a stop to all fishing. In the spring of 1394 these lawless Hanseatics
sailed with quite a large fleet to the town of Norbern in Norway, took
the place by assault, captured all the merchants, together with their
goods, burnt their houses and put their persons up to ransom.
Matters had now reached a crisis. For three years all fishing had been
stopped and these rovers had made maritime life impossible, so in
1394, by means of a tax, the Hanseatic League got together a fleet of
thirty-five large ships and 3000 men, and by this means broke the power
of this pirate confederation—for a time; for the scourge continued for
years after. It was a fine life for those who had run through their
money and desired adventure, and it attracted men of noble birth who
had gambled and drunk away their fortunes. Of these none was more
notorious than Stertebeker, who took part in almost every instance of
North Sea piracy at this time. Hamburg having denied to this reprobate
his knightly armour and forbidden him the city precincts, he threw in
his lot with the notorious pirates known as the Victual Brothers, whose
leader was Godeke Michelson.
There was no limit to the depredations of this band. On one occasion
they attacked a ship in the North Sea named the _Dogger_, which was
lying at anchor while the crew were fishing. These Hanseatics took
away their fish, beat and wounded both master and crew, and owing to
the damage done lost the _Dogger_ a whole year’s fishing. Nor did the
daring of the pirates confine itself to the Baltic and North Sea:
they even raided the coast of Spain. Stertebeker was one of those
heavy-drinking Germans who had a curious method of dealing with his
prisoners; for if among them he found a poor, strong man he would test
the latter’s powers by resort to drinking. Stertebeker, whose own mark
consisted of two reversed goblets in a cathedral church, would cause
his own goblet to be filled with wine and handed to the prisoner. If
the latter could empty it at one gulp, he was a man after Stertebeker’s
heart, and was accepted as a comrade, otherwise he was dismissed.
But there came a time when this terror to the merchant ships of all
nations had reached the limit. In the year 1422 the Hanseatic League
sent a fleet under Simon of Utrecht to fall upon the pirates, and
having come out from Hamburg, Simon found the enemy one evening lying
off Heligoland. So near did the Hamburg fleet get to them that one
daring fisherman was able to pour molten lead on the rudders of certain
of the pirate ships, and this loosened the rudders and rendered the
ships uncontrollable. On the following day the battle began, and went
on for three days and nights, but in the end Stertebeker was beaten.
He and seventy of his comrades were captured and carried in triumph to
Hamburg, where they were all condemned to death and executed, to the
great relief of the mercantile mariners. The rest of the pirates had
fled, or been killed or thrown into the sea, and in the captured ships
were found much linen and wax and cloth, which had been ill gotten from
unfortunate craft. But when the Hamburgers rummaged the ships all the
valuable metals they could find were a few goblets: until a carpenter
broke the mainmast, which was then found to be hollow, and full of
molten gold. However, this conveniently indemnified the merchants, and
a golden crown was made and placed on the spire of St. Nicholas church,
Hamburg. Stertebeker’s friend and accomplice, Michelson, was still at
large, but Simon went after him, got him, and eighty pirates lost their
heads.