Chapter IV: 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.