Chapter VI: 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.