Chapter II: The Demand for Merchant Shipping

In our own age so many amazing developments have taken place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that we must not be misled. These are the exceptions and not the rule in history. Between the merchant ships of the late Roman Empire and of the next few centuries there is no evidence to cause us to think the ships materially altered. On the contrary, what little evidence we have goes to show that the cargo ship, with her mast, yard and square-sail, continued to be much the same in the thirteenth century as she was in the third, if we add a mizzen-mast and a lateen sail.

But all this time the Mediterranean trade had been developing, and collaterally there was developed a Mercantile Marine. As the years sped by, there came greater demands for the merchant ship. Thus in the epistles of Cassiodorus, who was prætorian prefect under Theodoric (A.D. 495-526), there is a dispatch to the tribunes of the “maritimi,” or men of the seaboard, bidding them provide for the transport of wine from Istria to Ravenna; and there is a reference to the frequent voyages over the “immense spaces of the sea.”[1] By the eighth century Venice was becoming a great trading port, and its merchants were realising what the sea meant to them in regard to wealth. Indeed, they even went so far as to sell Christian men as slaves to the Saracens in Africa, thus incurring the Pope’s censure.

To Constantinople Venetian merchant ships sailed with goods or passengers, as, for instance, in the year 968, carrying Bishop Luitprand thither. In fact, by the year 1000 the city of Venice was pre-eminent in commerce, and its princes were merchants. Overseas trading was at last recognised as a means to wealth, and so, inevitably, by about 1171 the Venetian Navy becomes organised. That was bound to come as soon as the Mercantile Marine became important; but it was arranged rather on the lines of our Naval Reserve. For all ordinary occasions it consisted of volunteers, for whose service there was payment, and these citizens were also entitled to prize money.

Indeed, throughout nautical history the navies of the world have always been based on the Merchant Service. In these early days of Venice, while Dalmatia, Istria and other communities supplied the men, Venice provided the ships and rigging, the rest of the inventory and the crew being forthcoming from the dependencies. Finally, in the time of emergency hired seamen were obtained from foreign countries with whom the Venetian commercial ships had traded.

He who visits Venice, or is familiar with Ruskin’s _Stones of Venice_, or at least has admired in some gallery the paintings of the great Venetian masters, must inevitably think of the sea. Those richly designed palaces, those luxuriant examples of architecture and art, were expressive of a city grown wealthy by reason of her sea trade. Her merchants amassed wealth because their ships enabled them to trade—the sea is, in fact, the greatest road to riches. And the history of Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Venice, Portugal, Spain, Holland, England in the past, and quite recently Germany, Japan and the United States, is the story of overseas trade by means of merchant shipping. Most important of all have always been the sea routes to the Orient, for Eastern produce has ever fetched high prices in European countries. As we look through the centuries of sea trade it was the fascination of the East which spurred men to build, fit out and sail ships. It was this which gave the incentive to make navigation a science; it was this which created the spirit to explore unknown seas; it was this which sent Columbus, later on, to the West in the hope of finding the East Indies. The whole story of the East India Company—indeed of our Indian Empire—is built up on the invaluable products which could be fetched thence by peaceable shipping.

It was in the seventh century that the twelve townships decided to elect one supreme magistrate, called the “doge.” Venice thus insisted on her own independence, and her geographical position enabled her to rise into a consummate commercial state. Not merely did she eventually dominate the Adriatic, but step by step she absorbed all the carrying trade of the world. Keen, enterprising men of vision and foresight, these Venetian merchants went far afield, in spite of the difficulties and dangers of travel. For centuries the Chinese had been sending merchant ships as far west as Ceylon, whence Indian ships carried the silk and other goods a stage further west to the Persian Gulf; and afterwards, as there was no Suez Canal, a land journey intervened until the Mediterranean was reached. Thus, by the early years of the Middle Ages, the Venetian ships of commerce brought across the Mediterranean and up the Adriatic the costly skins, the peacocks’ tails, the purple garments and other enviable articles which had come from India, the Caspian shores and elsewhere. In the end, Venice captured the great trade to India and China, and Constantinople was left behind in the competition.

But that was not all. Already by the seventh century the rise of Moslem power had become such that in southern Europe Arab dominion had obtained control of the Levant and Egypt. Presently the whole of the north African coast, from the Nile to the Atlantic, fell under this sway, and during the eighth century the Arabs overran Spain, southern and central France, until in the same century they were forced back across the Pyrenees. How does this affect the rise of the Mercantile Marine? The answer is this. The Arabs were excellent sailors who were also expert navigators, and incidentally the very word “admiral,” which still survives in the sea service of all civilised powers, is an Arabic word. The Arabs took to trading, and that meant the employment of ships in the Mediterranean; so they introduced the triangular lateen sail from east of Suez, and to this day the lateen has survived as the characteristic local sail of Mediterranean craft. Thus between Venice and Africa overseas trade was created, business made still further business, and that in turn created a demand for shipping and for men who would use the sea as a career. Later on it was the Arabs who were to teach the Spaniards and Portuguese so much about navigation that India and America were discovered.

In the early years of the Middle Ages, then, we have the Arabian and the Venetian ships trading about the Mediterranean, though frequently the former became corsairs and made havoc of the latter, even going to the length of raiding the Adriatic. But so far the peaceable Venetian craft were literally merchant ships: they existed for the purpose of carrying merchandise. There enters now another element—religion. The Catholic faith, trade, pilgrims, crusades and Arabs—all these influences had the greatest possible effect on the development of merchant shipping. It will be remembered that in the seventh century the Arabs had wrested the Holy Land from the Eastern Empire, but it was not until the latter part of the eleventh century that western Europe was really moved to action. Finally, in 1095, a holy war against the infidel was resolved, and there followed the first crusade; and in this expedition Venetian ships took part. The most famous crusade of all was that in which the English king Richard Cœur de Lion engaged, and this ended in a truce with Saladin by September 1192, on the understanding that pilgrims should be permitted to visit Jerusalem without being interfered with by the Moslems.

Thus, we have in the fact of the Holy Land a magnetic attraction for the ship. In order to carry armies and horses and pilgrims, whether from England or Venice, to the coast of Syria, you must needs have large numbers of ships, and of fair size and seaworthiness. This series of voyages created also a much larger body of seamen and amassed a tremendous amount of sea-knowledge from experience. In a word, then, it was a new and enormous impetus to the development of the world’s Mercantile Marine, as opposed to the purely warlike fast-moving naval galley. The demand now was for tonnage—to carry human beings as well as goods. Thus, notwithstanding that the crusades originated from a strictly religious motive, actually they exercised a most remarkable stimulus on trade, shipping and travel. Men who had never been previously outside their own city or village became acquainted with the sea, strange ships, new lands and novel ideas. They returned home with fresh aspirations, the desire to carry on extended commerce, and the realisation that shipping was the key to future riches.

To trace the fitting out of all the crusades would be to go outside the scope of our immediate subject, but it is enough if we look for a moment at the direct effect crusading had on the Venetian shipping industry. The gates, so to speak, whence middle Europe could gain access to the Holy Land were Venice, Genoa and Marseilles. Seven years after Richard Cœur de Lion had made the truce with Saladin and left Palestine, a new crusade was being prepared for; and inasmuch as Venice was so distinguished a seaport, envoys came to arrange for large quantities of shipping. Landsmen knew practically nothing about the sea and ships. They were no better informed than the farmer of to-day resident all his life in the middle of the United States; so they arrived asking for advice, information and generally to be put in the way of obtaining tonnage sufficient to carry 4500 knights, 9000 squires and 20,000 men-at-arms. This was no small order, even for Venice, quite apart from the further request for fifty armed galleys to accompany and protect the expedition. It meant, in fact, the creation of an immense Mercantile Marine at really quite short notice. Indeed it was comparatively a much bigger task than the sudden demand for tonnage in 1917 and 1918, when the thousands and thousands of soldiers had to be packed into steamships and brought from North America to Europe.

Venice rose to the occasion, for it was not merely a matter of business to provide the shipping, but a matter of religion. The Holy Sepulchre was in the hands of the infidels: that in itself was a sufficient inspiration. And so about Pentecost in the year 1202 we can see the hordes of pilgrims pouring down through the various passes of the Alps to Venice. It was a huge business, and action in those days was slow and, to our modern minds, dilatory. But the Venetians had got the ships ready for the knights and squires and men and horses, though it was autumn before they put to sea. Some of the cloth and provisions had arrived in Venice in French ships via the Straits of Gibraltar, and eventually, on October 9, the galleys and horseboats set forth from the Adriatic port, and a month later appeared before Zara.

During the Middle Ages the three great maritime powers were Venice, Genoa and Pisa, and between them there was the greatest rivalry, so that scarcely ever did two of the parties meet than there was conflict. But Venice, being the pre-eminent, incurred the greatest amount of jealousy. The part which Venice and Genoa played in maritime history is not confined to what they did in any particular century, but lies rather in the fact that they kept alive and developed the seaman’s art; until, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Venetians made a crude map which put into form the ideas that inspired the first Italian voyages in the Atlantic, and Genoa in the next century produced Columbus, who, after being wrecked in a sea-fight with some Venetian galleys off the Portuguese coast, settled down in Lisbon and eventually set forth on his historic voyage to the West.

Ever since the second Punic War Genoa had been a big and important seaport. Becoming a free city in 958, she had suffered much from the Saracen raids, but when these infidel corsairs seemed likely to establish themselves in Sardinia at the beginning of the eleventh century, the Genoese and Pisan seamen united together against a common foe, fitted out an expedition and hurled the Arab chief back to Africa. In 1087 the Genoese and Pisans were sent by the Pope to dislodge one Temim, a pirate chief who lived south of Tunis. The result was important to the shipping industry; for, having beaten him and captured his stronghold, the two cities stipulated for the free admission of their merchant ships to trade with the Tunisian coast. Thus, in clearing the seas of corsairs for a time, they also directly stimulated their own commerce.

Pisan merchant ships as far back as 1052 had been trading to Egypt and the Levant, and in 1063 Ingulf, Abbot of Croyland in England, had returned from a pilgrimage in a Genoese merchant ship he had found at Jaffa. But it was not until the year 1090 that the conquest of Sicily was effected from the Mussulman hands, and thus the Straits of Messina became safe for shipping, and the vessels from Genoa and Pisa could go ahead in safety with their Levantine trade. By the twelfth century, Genoese, Venetian and Pisan seamen and merchants used to meet at Acre, to their great financial benefit, though not without manifestations of commercial jealousy. But we must dismiss from our minds all thoughts of single ships sailing across from Italy to the Syrian coast when they liked. There was hardly a time when there were not some pirates or corsairs hovering about; so the seas might be rid of one chief, but rendered dangerous by the rovings of another. Thus it was that shipowners had to do exactly what British mercantile owners were compelled to resort to in the latter part of the Great War, when the enemy was attacking so many of our trading craft—the convoy system had to be employed.

Thus, from Venice, for instance, at regular intervals a convoy of merchant ships would sail for Acre, escorted by as many as thirty or forty galleys sometimes, as protection against piratical attack. If the Venice-Acre trade route were cut, it would mean that the French, the Germans, the Lombards, the Tuscans and other merchants would not receive the silks, sugar, pepper and other very valuable Oriental produce which the Venetians were bringing across in their ships. Thus the navy of Venice was charged with the duty of protecting its merchant fleet from the attacks of Genoese, Greek or Arab pirates. Just as during our recent war convoys used to collect at Falmouth and other ports prior to beginning their ocean voyage, so in the Middle Ages the convoy—called a _mudia_—would collect at Venice, bound for Syria or Egypt. There were only two convoys in the year, so the number of ships was large, and well needed the strong galley protection. One convoy left Venice in the spring and got back home in September; the other left in August, spent the winter abroad, and returned in the following May. In addition to these commercial convoys, there were also the pilgrim convoys to Palestine. Genoa sent one convoy a year to Syria and Egypt, but during the fourteenth century her ships were cruising in the Black Sea and harassing Venetian craft which had penetrated the Sea of Azov.

Sea-travel in those mediæval times was thus no pleasure cruise: it was comparable only to the anxious experiences of passengers at the height of the recent submarine campaign. Except for religion or trade, no one ever thought of going to sea. It was too dangerous an undertaking, so punctuated with storms, and in all respects so thoroughly uncomfortable, that it was to be avoided as far as possible. Consequently those who used it as a living expected to be paid very handsomely. It is difficult in these modern times, with all the safety and luxury which a steamship connotes, to realise the horror with which all seafaring was regarded. The result was that artists hesitated to depict marine subjects; and even when they did, it was usually to show a ship having a dreadful time in heavy weather. It is for that reason that illustrations of mediæval ships are so few, either in stained-glass windows, carvings, devotional books, or paintings. People had no wish to be reminded of what was to them a very unpleasant subject, except to those hardened few who preferred ship-life to agriculture or trade ashore. Unlike present-day conditions, the merchant himself was compelled to go to sea. There was no other means of his reaching his markets; but he was heartily thankful to get himself and his goods safe into port.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Early History of Venice_, by F. C. Hodgson. London, 1901. I wish also to acknowledge indebtedness to the same author’s _Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries_.