THE MERCANTILE MARINE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
By the middle of the fourteenth century the merchant ships had begun to
outgrow mediævalism; by the sixteenth they were able to go to windward
and to keep the sea for months on end. Thus, vessels had at last
begun to enjoy the freedom of the seas and to be independent of the
shore. It was a great achievement, considering how limited in size and
seaworthiness ships had been, and how limited in knowledge mariners had
remained until they had passed through the Middle Ages and emerged into
the clear, bright light of science.
Men were getting away from convention and thinking for themselves,
but some of the old habits were dying very slowly. One very antique
custom was that of waits attending seafaring men. As late as 1466,
and probably even after, at the Cinque Ports musicians with fifes
and trumpets paraded the town and announced which way the wind was
blowing, so that merchant ships could put to sea if the wind was fair
for them. The use of the ship’s bell had been introduced into Tudor
ships before the end of the fifteenth century, for Henry VII’s famous
_Grâce Dieu_ in 1485 included this in her inventory, and the _Regent_
in 1495 had two “wache belles.” In a volume printed at the beginning
of the sixteenth century, showing a typical merchant ship of the time,
with mast, square-sails, and castles from which to attack pirates and
other enemies, the artist has actually shown, in a rather conventional,
but none the less interesting, manner the skipper at the helm and the
merchants with their bales of goods in the vessel; but the pictorial
information of these early craft is so slight, and landsmen artists
dealing with technical marine subjects were so very inaccurate, that it
is only by most diligent and careful research that a nautical student
who understands the ways of a ship can follow the development of the
merchant craft through to the seventeenth century.
Seamen have very rarely been good authors, until we come to
modern times; and writers have usually been unacquainted with the
technicalities of seafaring. The difficulty, therefore, has been great.
The only solution is to regard the efforts of ancient artists and
authors critically with the eyes of a seaman, and to make allowances.
With this concession, realising what a ship can do and what she never
could be asked to do; realising also that the artist’s intention was
not so much to bequeath to posterity an accurately rigged ship as to
depict an idea—as, for instance, the progress of a saint, in which
a ship appeared incidentally—we can find all these quaint artistic
efforts worth examining, and yielding up information. So it is with the
writers. Even that fifteenth century French humorist Rabelais helps
us if we allow for his ignorance of seafaring matters. So long as a
man writes of what he actually saw with his own eyes, and not what
he imagined, we have valuable and illuminative truth. Rabelais was
no seaman, but his description of the handling of the ship in a gale
is worth preserving. At the approach of bad weather we see the pilot
shortening sail. The terrified Panurge exclaims with horror that the
bitts are broken, the tackle is in pieces, the timbers are splitting,
the mast dipping into the sea up to the truck. His is the attitude
of the “all-is-lost” landsman who exists through all the ages of the
merchant ship. Thus he goes on: “Alas! alas! where are our topsails?
All is lost, by God! Our topmast is under water. Alas! to whom will
this wreck belong? Friends, put me here behind one of these bulkheads.
Lads, your top-crane has fallen.” He hears the rudder-pintle creaking.
“Is it broken?” Eventually the pilot heaves-to under her main-course,
but later the weather moderates so that the ship can resume her voyage.
“To the main topsail,” rings out an order. “Hoist! hoist! To the
main-mizzen topsail. The rope to the capstan. Heave! heave! heave!
Hands to the halyards. Hoist! hoist! Clear away the tacks. Clear away
the sheets. Clear away the bowlines. Port tack. Down helm. Haul taut
starboard sheet. Luff. Full and by. Up helm. (“Up, it is,” replied
the sailors.) Keep her going. Head for the harbour-mouth.” Thus, with
the steering tackles manned, and the ship sailing close-hauled on the
port tack, the pilot makes the helmsman keep her out of the wind and
straight for their haven.[3]
But those who know their Hakluyt well, and take the trouble to read
those wondrous voyages with imagination, are richly rewarded by the
interesting side-lights thrown on the sixteenth-century seamanship
in the merchant craft. Among the instructions “for the direction of
the intended voyage for Cathay,” issued by Sebastian Cabot in 1553,
the “captain-general,” “pilot major,” masters, merchants and other
officers are first exhorted to be “knit and accorded in unitie, love,
conformitie and obedience.” Every mariner and passenger took an oath to
be obedient to the captain-general, and to every captain and master of
his ship. But even as late as the reign of Edward VI, the old custom
of the sea, which we have seen in the Mediterranean, prevailed. The
communal idea was not yet extinct.
“Item,” runs the fifth instruction, “all courses in Navigation to be
set and kept, by the advice of the Captaine, Pilot Major, masters,
& masters’ mates, with the assents of the counsailers and the most
number of them, and in voyces uniformely agreeing in one to prevaile,
and take place, so that the Captaine generall, shall in all counsailes
and assemblies have a double voyce.” The fleet was ordered to keep
together, the merchants “and other skilful persons in writing, shal
daily write, describe, and put in memorie the Navigation of every
day and night, with the points, and observation of the lands, tides,
elements, altitude of the sunne, course of the moon and starres, and
the same so noted by the order of the Master and pilot of every ship
to be put in writing, the captaine generall assembling the masters
together once every weeke (if winde and weather shal serve) to conferre
all the observations, and notes of the said ships, to the intent it may
appeare wherein the notes do agree, and wherein they dissent, and upon
good debatement, deliberation, and conclusion determined, to put the
same into a common leger, to remain of record for the company: the like
order to be kept in proportioning of the Cardes, Astrolabes, and other
instruments prepared for the voyage, at the charge of the companie.”
Thus the merchants, having financed the voyage, still had a
considerable say in the matter. The steward and cook of every ship
had to render a weekly account of the flesh, fish, biscuit, meat,
bread, beer, wine, oil and vinegar consumed. If an officer or seaman
were found inefficient, he could be put ashore anywhere “within the
king’s Majesties realme & dominion.” In order to keep discipline over
the crew—many of them the “bad hats” of the port from which the ships
had sailed—they were forbidden blasphemy, “ribaldrie, filthy tales or
ungodly talke, neither dicing, carding, tabling, nor other divelish
games to be frequented, whereby ensueth not onely povertie to the
players, but also strife, variance, brauling, fighting, and oftentimes
murther.” Every morning and evening, service was to be read in the
flagship by “the minister,” and in the other ships by the merchant or
some other learned person. “No liquor to be spilt on the balast, nor
filthines to be left within boord; the cook room, and all other places
to be kept cleane, for the better health of the companie.”
The merchants were to look after the “liveries in apparel” given to the
mariners, which were not to be worn except by order of the captain. And
there was also a “slop-chest,” taken care of by the merchants, from
which a seaman could obtain “any necessarie furniture of apparel for
his body, and conservation of his health at such reasonable price as
the same cost, without any game to be exacted by the marchants.” Nor
could the merchants exhibit for sale any of their goods to foreigners
without consent of the captains and other officers.
In this expedition for the purpose of trading there were three ships,
and from these details we have a fair idea of the way the pick of the
Mercantile Marine was being conducted on a grand scale, as contrasted
with the usual small voyages around the British Isles, or across the
North Sea, English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Such an expedition
as the one we are considering aimed at big things: the opening up of
a new trade route and fresh markets. Thus there were three ships in
this venture, the 120-ton _Bona Esperanza_, which was the flagship;
the 160-ton _Edward Bonaventure_; and the 90-ton _Bona Confidentia_.
In the first was Sir Hugh Willoughby, captain-general of the squadron,
or, as they called it, the fleet. In that same ship were the master,
his mate and six merchants, together with the master gunner, boatswain,
boatswain’s mate, four quartermasters and their four mates, two
carpenters, a purser, a cook and his mate, two surgeons and others.
Two men were landed at Harwich for sickness, and one other was ducked
at the yard-arm “for pickerie,” and then discharged. The _Edward
Bonaventure_ carried Richard Chancellor as captain and pilot major of
the fleet, a master, his mate, two merchants, a minister, officers and
mariners. The little _Bona Confidentia_ carried only a master, his
mate, three merchants, as well as the usual officers and mariners. Each
of these three ships had a pinnace and a boat. We know that these ships
could never lie nearer than seven points from the wind by the statement
that “the wind veared to the West, so that we could lie but North and
by West.” Not having charts of the strange unexplored harbours and
havens, the ship, on approaching the land, used to send her pinnace
ahead to find an anchorage, and then the big craft could follow in.
They used their lead for sounding, and consulted the globe, which was
the only knowledge of geography of distant countries possessed in many
cases. But it was no unusual thing to find in these exploratory voyages
that “the land lay not as the Globe made mention.” In this particular
expedition, whereon, by the way, Sir Hugh Willoughby and the company of
two of his ships perished in the bitter Lapland regions, there were all
sorts of anxieties through gales of winds, leaky ships, shoals, unknown
coasts, cold and general discomfort inseparable from crudely built
vessels. We can but admire the courageous enterprise which sent them
forth, and thus helped to lay the foundations of our Mercantile Marine
and seek a north-east passage to China.
But, as we know from writers of the sixteenth century, the fact was
that the commodities and wares of England were in small request with
the neighbouring countries. Those goods which, within the memory
of the oldest inhabitants, had been in demand, were now neglected,
notwithstanding that English ships carried the wares into the harbours
of the foreigners. Contrariwise, there was a brisk demand for foreign
goods, and at a high price. Therefore certain “grave citizens of
London ... began to thinke with themselves howe this mischiefe might
bee remedied.” And observing that the Spaniards and Portuguese had
wonderfully increased their wealth by the search and discovery of new
countries and trades; and having taken the advice of Sebastian Cabot,
who was then in London, these wise merchants formed themselves into
a company, and each member put up £25, so that before long the three
ships already mentioned were bought and fitted out with the total £6000
thus obtained, and victualled too. These shrewd Edwardians were doing
exactly what modern merchants do in a period of trade depression
and slump—they went out to look for business in new markets. But the
difference was that the former had first to get the ships and then fit
them out, instead of merely going to the office of a tourist-agency and
purchasing a ticket, and then voyaging in safety, comfort and with the
certainty of being in a particular place on a fixed day.
In this north-east expedition, as soon as the money was obtained the
merchants bought exceptionally strong and well-seasoned planks, and
then the shipwrights set to work with the construction, caulking and
pitching them and covering the bottom with lead sheathing. That was
all comparatively straight-going, but the difficulty was to victual
the ships with food for eighteen months. Indeed, after setting out
from the Thames, some of the food by the time they reached Harwich
was already putrid and the hogsheads of wine leaking. Ships were
ballasted with stones, and before the wind these cumbrous craft would
sail well, but on a wind they made a good deal of leeway. But all
the time these sixteenth-century mariners were learning, and setting
down their records for others to learn. Thus one finds these pioneers
entering such remarks as “a south moone makes a full sea,” “Friday I
went on shoare and observed the variation of the Compasse, which was
three degrees and a halfe from the North to the West; the latitude
this day was sixtie nine degrees ten minutes.” And in 1557, among the
instructions given to masters and mariners of an expedition, it is
ordered that notes and entries be daily made of the navigations, and
that the young mariners and apprentices be taught and made to learn the
same.
Thus, with every voyage north, south, east or west, with every slump
or boom in trade, the English Mercantile Marine was becoming more
efficient, less unscientific, and the love of seafaring became greater.
Those were the great days when, though the ships were of wood, the
men’s hearts were of gold, and nothing daunted them. Their gear was
none too good, their ships were roughly built, and yet no adversity
ever overcame their fine spirits. They were ready to struggle with any
difficulty. Take the case of the Elizabethan ship which got caught
in heavy weather one September. She hove-to, but was washed down by
almost every sea, and then the rudder was found to be broken and almost
falling off. Next day, as soon as the weather eased, a dozen of the
crew leapt overboard, remained under water as long as possible, worked
at the rudder-planking, bound it with ropes, and finally made such a
good job of it that it was again serviceable; but by the time they were
got aboard once more they were more than half dead. These ships were
always losing anchors, cables, boats and pinnaces; and even when they
had charts and globes, they were finding them full of errors; yet they
“kept on keeping on” and bringing their seafaring profession out of the
dark recesses of ignorance into the light of knowledge.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] _Mariner’s Mirror_, Vol. V. p. 81.