Chapter V: The Growth of the Mercantile Marine

Chaucer, who flourished in the fourteenth century, has left us a description of a merchant “shipman” of his time. He refers to him as being a West-countryman living, “for aught I woot,” at Dartmouth, who wore a gown of coarse cloth extending to the knee, and had a dagger hanging on a lanyard. The hot summer had tanned his face brown, and Chaucer describes him as a good fellow, who had drawn many a draught of wine while the “chapman” (or merchant) was asleep. No man had such skill in reckoning his tides, streams, dangers; and in his knowledge of harbours, the state of the moon and pilotage, there was no such man between Hull and Carthage.

“Hardy he was, and wys to undertake:
With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake.
He knew wel alle the havenes, as they were,
From Gootlond to the cape of Finistere,
And every cryke in Britayne and in Spayne:
His barge y-cleped was the Maudelayne.”

From the mere fact that Chaucer said as much as he did, it is clear enough that English merchant ships at this time were trading up and down Europe between Sweden and the Spanish coast, and that as a regular thing. And some of these seamen were now also navigators. Chaucer, who died in the year 1400, has left behind a treatise on the astrolabe by which a mariner could “knowe the altitude of the sonne, or of other celestial bodies.” An astrolabe was the ancestor of the sextant, an instrument which had been used by the Arabs for long years before it was used by the Christian seamen of the Mediterranean or the North. As far back as the eighth century a learned Rabbi named Messahala had written a treatise on the astrolabe, and it was chiefly from that author that Chaucer derived his knowledge on the subject. During the early Tudor period the cross-staff began to supersede the astrolabe.

The growth of the English Mercantile Marine in the fourteenth century, and the friction which occurred between these ships and the vessels belonging to Norway, Prussia, Flanders, Scotland, Spain and Genoa, led to the assertion by Edward III that his royal progenitors had been lords of the English sea “on every side,” and in 1344 he had coined a gold noble whereon he was represented standing in a ship crowned, with sword and shield, emblematic of his sovereignty of the seas. It was a statesmanlike attempt on behalf of the commercial ships to make the sea a peaceful highway, when for so long it had been such a dangerous thoroughfare. It had its counterpart in the Mediterranean; for the raids by the Saracens had caused the Pisans to exercise the rights of commercial and naval supremacy on the west coast of Italy; and in 1138 the Genoese had exercised a similar authority in the Gulf of Lyons. Similarly Venice had claimed sovereignty over the whole of the Adriatic in the thirteenth century, though prior to that it had exacted a toll from vessels passing through that sea.

England, too, had her pilgrim trade to Santiago de Compostela, thirty-three miles south of Corunna, where the shrine of St. James caused these travellers to cross the Bay of Biscay to Spain. By the fifteenth century this transportation of pilgrims had become a regular trade, and in 1434 Henry VI granted a licence to carry no fewer than 2433 such enthusiasts. Indeed the earliest English sea song is that which describes the life on board one of these pilgrim ships. The manuscript is in the Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and it begins by saying that “men may leve all gamys, that saylen to Seynt Jamys,” for when these people have joined the ship at Sandwich, Winchelsea, Bristol or wherever it may be, their hearts soon begin to fail, “for som ar lyke to cowgh and grone, or hit be full mydnyght.” The cook is ordered to get food ready, but the pilgrims have “no lust” for eating, but lie “with they bowlys fast them by” and complaining that their heads would “cleave in three”—“splitting,” as the modern martyr to sea-sickness expresses it. Then the carpenter comes along and with his gear makes small cabins for the unhappy passengers to sleep in. A sack of straw formed the mattress, and in some cases the pilgrims found they had to sleep near the pump and bilge-water in the reeking hold. “A man were as good to be dede, as smell thereof the stynk.” For there are few odours more objectionable than the bilge-stench of an aged ship, and in those days, when refuse was thrown into the hold and there was little idea of sanitation, a pilgrim’s voyage from England to Spain, across the boisterous Bay, could not have been more pleasant than from Venice to the Syrian shore.

In this poem just quoted it is interesting to notice, also, the life on board the merchant ship as regards the mariners. We see the master at once ordering his “shyp-men” to stand by the mast and handle their tackle. Then, with the old expression of the sea (still surviving in sailing merchant vessels to-day), “Ho! Hissa,” they hoist away, whilst one man reprimands another for standing too close to his neighbour to allow him room to haul. Then one or two boys go up aloft, out on the yard, and unfurl the square-sail, while the rest of the crew haul aft the sheets. The captain then orders the boatswain to stow the ship’s boat, and next “haul the bowline,” the ship being now on a wind; but presently “veers the sheet” to allow her to run before the breeze. The steersman is sent to the helm and told to sail no nearer to the wind, after which the master calls the steward to bring him a pot of beer, which is promised “with good chere.” It is now time to haul in the brails of the yard, and one of the crew is admonished for not hauling; and then see “howe well owre good shyp sayles.” The steward is told to get food ready “and tary not so long,” whilst the ship’s pessimist comes and prophesies a storm or squall. He is promptly told to hold his “pese” and not to interfere.

“Then commeth oure owner lyke a lorde,
And speketh many a royall worde,
And dresseth hym to the hygh borde
To see all thyng be well.”

Thus, with the demand for shipping to carry cargo and pilgrims across the open sea, there was every chance given to the Mercantile Marine, and by the fifteenth century the single-masted ship had begun to be displaced by the three-master, for the reason that the merchantman was becoming bigger, and it was necessary to split the sails up for ease in handling. Thus the big cargo ship now has a small square foresail on her foremast, a big square mainsail on her mainmast, and a triangular lateen sail on the mizzen-mast. The mere fact that the last-mentioned, characteristic, Mediterranean sail was added to northern ships during the fifteenth century, is evidence of the influence which the Portuguese and Spanish ships were having on our distant-voyaging vessels. Sea transportation was becoming the rule, and no longer the exception; trade overseas was increasing; merchants and seamen were fast becoming imbued with new ideas seen in strange lands, and in fact the world was beginning to awake.

The biggest of the ships carried a main topsail, and by this time the rudder had been shifted from the quarter to aft, as it is to-day. The hull is in a transition state, still feeling the influence of the Viking type, but not yet a wholesome creature. The forecastle, sterncastle and main topmast castle are still there, but they have become amalgamated with the general design of the hull rather than being mere additional platforms. There is a contemporary manuscript which shows such craft under way, at anchor, and even being towed out of harbour by the ship’s boat against a head wind, past a flaming beacon which marks a promontory. And even at this time there were such things as pilots’ guides for the coasts of England and Wales, as well as sailing directions for the Bay of Biscay.

But we must turn our attention south to watch what was going on in the Mediterranean. Briefly this is what had happened. Already in the thirteenth century merchant ships had become more enterprising, for about the year 1270 Malocello had reached the Canary Isles, and in 1281, Vivaldi had set forth from Genoa to find the East Indies via the west coast of Africa, but failed. For you must remember that during the latter part of the twelfth century the compass, crude and inaccurate, yet of immense utility, had been introduced into Europe from the East. Then comes into our story that great man Prince Henry the Navigator, son of the King of Portugal, and nephew of Henry IV of England. Henry devoted his life to developing the science and art of navigation, creating an observatory and nautical school at Sagres, near Cape St. Vincent, and doing all he possibly could to encourage maritime discovery. The result of this was that the Portuguese became great sea-travellers, big shipowners and expanded in commerce and colonies. Henry the Navigator was born in 1394 and died in 1460, and to his foresight, organisation and enthusiastic intellect can be traced the rapid and marvellous Portuguese achievements which followed at sea. Thus in 1442 Madeira and the Azores had been discovered in the Atlantic, trade with Africa materially increased, especially on the west coast, and the traffic in black slaves become very profitable. Then in 1486 the Cape of Good Hope was rounded and the sea route at last opened to the East Indies, instead of the long and perilous overland route to the Levant which had been used always up till now. In 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Calicut, and two years later the Portuguese had landed in Brazil. Thus by the dawn of the sixteenth century Portugal had reached a wonderful height of prosperity. The great Eastern trade was in her hands; Ceylon, the Sunda Islands, Malacca and Ormuz in the Persian Gulf were hers; and all this pre-eminence had been won by studying the problems of the sea and then applying that knowledge in ships manned by practical navigators and sailors.

Portugal had risen up by the twelfth century as a separate kingdom, and Spain had been passing through a period of complete anarchy, but on the death of the Spanish Henry IV, Isabel and Ferdinand had ascended the throne of Castile, and then law and order were restored, the last Moorish stronghold was captured in 1492, and a few months later the Genoese sailor Columbus, under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, was allowed to set forth on his historic voyage which discovered the West Indies. He returned home, went across the Atlantic again in 1493 and discovered Dominica; then made his third voyage, in which he discovered the mainland of South America in 1498, and finally, on his last voyage, explored the southern shore of the Mexican Gulf.

With the discovery of a sea-route both to the East and West Indies, the whole future of the Mercantile Marine was altered. Instead of carrying merchandise and pilgrims across Europe, there came the demand for great ocean-going vessels that could carry home large quantities of rich produce, that would make the European markets surprised when they beheld these goods. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards, like the Venetians and Genoese, began to amass great wealth from their merchant ships. Noble caracks were built, more and more men embarked on a seafaring career, the art of navigation received much more careful study, and mercantile maritime supremacy passed to the Iberian peninsula. Thus the work of great shipbuilders and sea-carriers, discoverers, colonisers and traders had for a time passed into other hands.

But success in one party always breeds jealousy in another: indeed, if you examine the causes of all the great wars in history, or look into the reasons for most private quarrels, you will find usually that they come under the heading either of commercial jealousy or religious intolerance. And when, as was the case in the sixteenth century, you have both these factors united, you have the maximum of intense feeling. The English seamen, perfectly naturally, began to be jealous and envious of the lectureships and instruction which were being given to these southern seamen. At Seville Charles V had founded a lectureship on navigation in the sixteenth century. In England Henry VIII founded three guilds, at Deptford-on-Thames, Kingston-on-Hull and Newcastle-on-Tyne, for the same purpose, and Edward VI selected Sebastian Cabot to be Grand Pilot of England. Henry VII encouraged his shipbuilders by giving them a bounty on the tonnage built, and in Henry VIII’s reign dockyards were established at Woolwich, Erith and Deptford, in addition to Portsmouth. Books on the sea arts began to be written in English, so that by the time the full force of the commercial and religious hatred of the Spanish and Portuguese was let loose, the English mercantile mariners were something more than mere coastal seamen. From their fishing they had gradually become cross-Channel carriers; from this they had risen to the ability to trade regularly with Spain, with an occasional voyage even to the Mediterranean; but now they were qualified by their ambition and their greater knowledge to go wherever the sea existed. And thus we get Drake going all the way round the world; the many voyages across the Atlantic to the West Indies; the fights with the Spanish treasure ships; the capture of the _Madre de Dios_ and _San Felipe_, thus discovering the long-kept secrets of the sea-route to India. From the captured caracks and galleons which had been built in the Iberian peninsula, the English shipwright was able to enlarge his ideas and to learn how to build real ocean-going craft bigger than most of the Elizabethan ships. The introduction of cannon had been an additional reason for making the ship a much stouter, loftier and more formidable creature. Thus length, and beam, and draught increased; larger crews and more officers were needed, and as each expedition came home with strange products, merchant adventurers combined to fit out other expeditions to inaugurate trade even in such remote spots as had not yet seen a white man.

And never a ship came home from her voyage without adding some valuable information in regard to trade or geography or navigation or pilotage. You have only to read the travels in Hakluyt, Purchase and elsewhere to see how keen these Elizabethans were not to omit a single piece of knowledge that would be useful for future voyages. They had been able, almost suddenly, to realise that, given pluck, determination, enterprise and endurance, the treasures of the world were theirs. They could follow the sea for a few long voyages and then return to build themselves comfortable mansions in Devonshire. And inasmuch as nothing succeeds like success, every time the crew came home and spread the wonderful tales of their experiences and showed the valuables they had managed to obtain, other men were anxious to go forth and do likewise. Nobles and gentlemen and city magnates invested heavily in these trading voyages, selected the ablest seamen, and thus, incidentally, were helping to build up the Mercantile Marine on a grand scale.

Before Hawkins engaged in his trans-Atlantic voyages he was a Plymouth shipowner accustomed to sail to the ports of Spain and the Canary Islands with trade. At the Canaries he learns a good deal about the West Indies, then goes further south to the west coast of Africa, begins transporting niggers thence to America, returns to England with plenty of money, and sets every one in the west of England talking and anxious to have a share in this great new game. His relative, Francis Drake, owner of a small brigantine in which coastal trading has been carried on, is fired by Hawkins’ success, and accompanies him on one of his expeditions. Young Francis has learnt his seamanship in a rough school, having made friends with a shipmaster trading to the Channel ports and gone to sea with him, and thus acquired his knowledge, until finally the shipmaster dies and leaves him the brigantine in his will. Several years of coastal work had followed, Drake had acquired both money and reputation, and in the end could not resist selling the coaster and buying the brigantine _Judith_, fifty tons, and going with his relative across the Atlantic.

What followed? Every time the English seamen came back with terrible yarns concerning the treachery of the Portuguese and Spaniards, every time the stories of the gallant fights were told, every time the jewels and plate and pearls were seen and handled, the West countrymen were stirred to their very souls. Religious and commercial jealousy, racial hatred and the love of adventure, combined with the possibility of becoming rich—all this created such a fire of enthusiasm that the English Mercantile Marine was bound to increase in numbers and aspirations. The moderate ambitions of the Middle Ages had passed away for ever: the dawn of a new order of things had now already come.