English Merchant Shipping 1460-1540: 1460-1540 9781442632745

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
Illustrations
List of Abbreviations Used in Footnotes
Introduction
CHAPTER I. The Science and Practice of Navigation
CHAPTER II. Wages and Conditions of Work for the Common Seaman
CHAPTER III. The Size and Build of English Ships
CHAPTER IV. The Various Types of English Ships
CHAPTER V. A Statistical Survey of English Shipping
Conclusion
Appendices
APPENDIX I. The Text of the Laws of Oleron
APPENDIX II. Tables Showing Sizes and Types of Ships and Volume of Trade
bibliography
Index

Citation preview

English Merchant Shipping 1460-1540 DOROTHY BURWASH Between 1460 and 1540 the development of merchant shipping was of vital importance to the growth of England as a European power. In this work Miss Burwash offers a complete history of the English merchant marine in the late middle ages and early renaissance period. Her account includes a description of the size and design of the ships, the trades in which they engaged, the business arrangements under which they sailed and the codes of maritime law which governed them, the wages and conditions of work of the common seaman and the degree of navigational skill of the shipmasters and pilots. This was the time when seamen and merchants of northern Europe were beginning to venture out of the familiar home waters and undertake voyages of discovery such as the Bristol expeditions 1501-1504 which in all probability reached Labrador and possibly Greenland. The author concludes that, although English shipping faced stiff competition from traders and seamen of other countries in northern Europe - most particularly the Dutch - the period was one of healthy growth which laid a good foundation for the more brilliant and better known exploits of the Elizabethan age. Based on extensive and detailed research in manuscript sources preserved in the Public Record Office, British libraries and the British Museum, this study is an essential one for serious students of English history. was born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territories. After attending schools in Canada and Britain she received her B.A. from Oxford University, her M.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and her PH.D. from Bryn Mawr College. She entered the Department of External Affairs in 1943 and served in Canadian embassies in Oslo, Paris and London. Since September 1966 she has been Counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. DOROTHY BURWASH

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English tJtâerchant Shipping 1460-154.0

For water it is walled and guarded with the Ocean most commodious for traffick to all parts of the world . . . and furnished with shipping and sailors, that it may rightly be termed the Lady of the Sea. Camden, Remaines concerning Britain

This study, in its original form, was presented to the Faculty of Bryn Mawr College in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Snglish ¿Merchant Shipping 1460-1540 BY

DOROTHY BURWASH

UNIVERSITY

OF TORONTO PRESS

Copyright, Canada, 1947, by University of Toronto Press Reprinted 1969. Printed in Great Britain SEN 8020 5001 8

Preface CT9 HE following study was suggested to me by the late Dr. •*• H. L. Gray of Bryn Mawr College, and owes much to his generous help and advice. I acknowledge a debt also to those who have helped me in the specialized fields into which I have ventured: to Professor Farnsworth of Mount Holyoke College, to Mr. Edward Lynam of the British Museum Department of Maps, to Professor Neilson and Professor Putnam, both Emeritus of Mount Holyoke College. I wish too to thank Professor F. C. Lane of Johns Hopkins University and Professor Bertie Wilkinson of the University of Toronto, both of whom were good enough to read the manuscript before publication. If, in spite of the friendly assistance of the above, any faults still remain, they are attributable entirely to the author. My acknowledgements are due to the Borough of Yarmouth, to the City of Chester, and to Sir Sidney Kimber of the Civic Centre, Southampton, for kindly permitting me to examine the local archives and giving me much assistance. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to Professor George W. Brown of the University of Toronto, who kindly assisted in making the business arrangements and has acted as editorial adviser, and to the Social Science Research Council of Canada, whose grant-in-aid has made possible the publication of this book.

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Contents PREFACE

v

ILLUSTRATIONS

ix

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FOOTNOTES

x

INTRODUCTION

xi

CHAPTER I

The Science and Practice of Navigation

3

CHAPTER II

Wages and Conditions of Work for the Common Seaman

35

CHAPTER III

The Size and Build of English Ships

82

CHAPTER IV

The Various Types of English Ships

101

CHAPTER V

A Statistical Survey of English Shipping

145

CONCLUSION

165

APPENDIX I

The Text of the Laws of Oler on

APPENDIX II

Tables Showing Sizes and Types of Ships and Volume of Trade 177

171

BIBLIOGRAPHY

237

INDEX

251

vii

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Illustrations I. II.

DIAGRAM FOR TELLING THE TIME BY THE POLE STAR

between pages 6 and 7

PROFILES OF HEADLANDS

between pages 26 and 27

III. ENGLISH SHIPS OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

between pages 86 and 87

IV.

AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE LATE FIFTEENTH OR THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY

opposite page 103

V.

MAP OF CUSTOMS PORTS AND CREEKS

ix

opposite page 146

jÇist of ^Abbreviations Used in footnotes Add. Ms. Cal. Fr. Rolls C.C.R. C.P.R. Chanc. Miscel. E.G.P. E.H.R. H.C.A. Hist. Mss. Com. Miscel. Inquis. N.E.D. Rot. Parí. V.C.H.

Additional Manuscript, British Museum Calendar of the French Rolls Calendar of the Close Rolls Calendar of the Patent Rolls Chancery Miscellanea Early Chancery Proceedings English Historical Review High Court of Admiralty Historical Manuscripts Commission Miscellaneous Inquisitions New English Dictionary Rotuli Parliamentorum Victoria History of the Counties of England Special note : The three studies of E. Carus Wilson are referred to as follows: Bristol The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Later Middle Ages (Thesis). "The Overseas Trade of Bristol," Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Power and Postan

Article in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, edited by E. Power and M. M. Postan. This is not the thesis in published form, but a different work,

The Overseas Trade of Bristol, edited by E. Carus Wilson, Bristol Record Society

Publications of the Bristol Record Society, vol. VII, 1937. This contains the available customs accounts for the port of Bristol, edited with an introduction and footnotes.

X

Introduction CT"7 HE period chosen as the subject of the following investiga"*• tion is in some ways the most interesting in the history of the English merchant marine. Though English seamen and merchants were not in the forefront of exploring activity, these years nevertheless witnessed the notable voyages of the Cabots, the Bristol expeditions to reach the "island of Brasil," and the first opening of the English trade to the Levant. The voyages themselves have been the subject of detailed study, but much remains to be discovered about the ships and crews which sailed on them. In the other maritime nations of Europe the great discoveries took place against a background of changes affecting almost every department of seafaring life. Ships grew larger and sail-plans more complex, navigation became more scientific, the business management and the financing of voyages responded to contemporary developments. Though in England the full impact of these changes was doubtless delayed until the latter half of the sixteenth century, a knowledge of earlier conditions is nevertheless an essential preliminary to a true understanding of Elizabethan enterprise. A thorough investigation of all aspects of maritime activity, even for a limited period, might well be the task of a lifetime ; above all in a country like England, "the worschippe and floure... of the costes of the see,"1 where seafaring ways coloured so much of the national life. In particular, a study of maritime contracts, of the place which the owning, freighting, and operation of ships occupied in the country's economic structure, and of the manner in which shipping enterprise was financed at home and abroad, would carry one far afield and necessitate prolonged research in those local archives, both English and European, now unhappily closed to investigators. 1 R. Higden, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis, ed. C. Babington and J. R. Lumby, II, 19.

xi

xii

Introduction

Shipbuilding too, and the personnel of the seafaring and shipowning classes, are subjects worthy of a detailed examination, the greater part of the material for which lies scattered through the records of boroughs, gilds, and local courts. Certain other questions, however, are of even greater interest when we attempt to estimate the contribution of these early years to the achievements and triumphs of Elizabethan seamen and to measure England's preparedness for the coming struggle with Spain and the Netherlands to dominate the newly-opened Atlantic highways to West and East. It then becomes pertinent to ask how far English seamen were abreast of the current developments in scientific navigation, and how far the need for specialized training and the growth of capitalistic business methods had broken down the old medieval concept of the ship's crew as a company of equals. We must then attempt to investigate the changes in ship design, tracing the extent to which English ships were influenced by foreign models or grew in size and seaworthiness. And, finally, we must measure the growth and vigour of English maritime enterprise in home waters.

English cherchant Shipping 14.60-154.0

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CHAPTER

ONE

The Science and ^Practice of U^avigation . . . this sweet skill of saylyng" JOHN DAVIS—The Seaman's Secrets.

TN the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the problems •*• of navigation were of vital interest and importance both to the merchants and mariners whose livelihood was gained upon the water and to scholars versed in the sciences of astronomy and cosmography. With the opening up of trade routes in remote and dangerous seas, the conditions of navigation rapidly changed and new methods had to be devised to meet new difficulties. How to determine latitude at sea by observing the elevation of the sun; how to plot a course though one was forced to tack; how to find one's longitude at sea; how best to represent the earth upon a plane surface ; these were only a few of the questions which challenged the scholars and navigators of the age of discovery. Before enquiring how they answered them and before attempting to find how far English seamen made use of the new knowledge at their disposal, it is necessary to survey, as briefly as possible, the reserves of learning and experience built up by earlier generations. Even though much medieval research was primarily astrological in purpose, the scientific knowledge common to scholars before the fifteenth century had developed practical instruments and a general theory which were potentially of great value to the navigator. Nor did the Ptolemaic assumption concerning a geocentric universe destroy their usefulness, for the navigator is interested in the .positions of the sun, moon, and stars only as they help him to measure his position on the earth's surface. 1 iSee F. Johnson (Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of English Scientific Writings from 1500 to 1640, pp. 52-53, 111) where he suggests that the mathematical part of the Ptolemaic theory (excluding Aristotle's physical conception of the universe) offered a perfectly sound explanation of the celestial phenomena so far observed. 3

4

English Merchant Shipping

The first impulse to scientific study had come chiefly from the Arabs and the Iberian Jews, whose works on astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and medicine were eagerly sought and translated by the scholars of Italy and France, Germany and England.2 Their researches sprang originally from a desire to rediscover and if possible to amplify the learning of the ancients, but they were accompanied from an early period by observation and practical experiment. The influence of the moon upon tides was investigated and tables of tides in important harbours like London were drawn up.3 Scholars developed the system of measuring off the earth's surface in lines of latitude and longitude and were accustomed to determine their position by observation. In 1292-1295 Robert the Englishman, at Montpellier, compiled tables which gave the daily declination of the sun from the celestial equator, thus facilitating more accurate observations for latitude.4 Several scientific instruments which were later modified to suit the needs of seamen existed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries or even before. Of these, the astrolabe, the quadrant, and the cross-staff were all used, first by scholars and subsequently by seamen, to measure the elevation of the heavenly bodies above the horizon.5 Other aids to navigation, such as the mariner's compass, the sailing chart, and the portolan or rutter, owed their first devel2 C. H. Haskins, G. Sarton, L. Thorndike, and R. W. T. Gunther have contributed much to our knowledge of the scientific learning of the middle ages, and their various works should be consulted for further details. 3 Giraldus Cambrensis, "Topographia Hibernica," Opera, vol. V, ed. J. F. Dimock, pp. 77-80; Roger Bacon, Opus Majus, ed. J. H. Bridges, I, 139-142; G. H. T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages, pp. 166-167. 4 J. Bensaude, L'astronomie nautique au-Portugal à Vépoque des grandes découvertes, pp. 28-29. 5 R. W. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, I, part 4, 351-353, II, 154-181, V, passim; A. Fontoura da Costa, La science nautique des Portugais à l'époque des découvertes, p. 6; Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages, pp. 223-224. It should be noted, however, that S. E. Morison (Admiral of the Ocean Sea, I, 258) remarks that there is no evidence to show that Columbus or his peninsular contemporaries knew or used the cross staff, which does not appear in the 1519 inventory of Magellan's navigating instruments.

The Science and Practice of Navigation

5 6

opment, not to scholars, but to the seamen themselves. The discovery of the magnetic compass was of paramount importance because it ultimately enabled seafarers to break away from coastwise sailing and to embark upon open sea voyages in regions where the pole star, the Stella Náutica, no longer appeared in the sky to give them a rough indication of their course. Its history is controversial, but whether the discovery of the properties of the magnetized needle was made by Catalan or Italian sailors, or by Viking sea-rovers, or whether we owe it to the Chinese, there is no doubt that compasses were in use by the middle of the twelfth century. One of the earliest descriptions of them was by an Englishman, Alexander of Neckam, who told how mariners "cum caligine nocturnarum tenebrarum mundus obvolvitur, et ignorant in quern mundi cardinem prora tendat, acum super magnetem ponunt, quae circulariter circumvolvitur usque dum, e jus motu cessante, cuspis ipsius septentrionalem plagam respiciat." In another of his works Neckam described a compass needle pivoted in the modern way, but there is evidence from other sources that the earliest compasses consisted merely of a lodestone or magnetized needle fastened to a bit of wood or straw and floated in a bowl of water.7 By the close of the fourteenth century, the needle of the Mediterranean compass was placed over, or fastened to, a "windrose" ; a card, often very decorative, which indicated thirty-two points of 11%° each. It has sometimes been claimed that the true pivoted compass, with a proper windrose, did not come into use in northern Europe until the latter half of the fifteenth century.8 The evidence adduced, however, applies 6 Portolan is the Italian word for pilot book. The English name "rutter" is similar to, and perhaps a corruption of, the French "routier," which in turn resembles the Portuguese "roteiro." 7 Alexander of Neckam, "De Naturis Rerum, éd. T. Wright, pp. xxxvxxxix, 183; Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages, pp. 222-223; H. Winter, u Who Invented the Compass?," The Mariner's Mirror, XXIII, 95-102 (1937). 8 E. Carus Wilson, "The Iceland Trade," Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, edited by E. Power and M. M. Postan, p. 160.

6

English Merchant Shipping

chiefly to the Baltic, and there is other material which points to an earlier use, at least in England. In the first place, Chaucer, describing the "24 partiez" of the world, says that "shipmen rikne thilke partiez in 32," a system surely impossible without a permanent, properly marked out, compass card.9 Secondly, the importation of compasses into England in 1400 is proved by an entry in a Yarmouth customs account noting a dozen "compas" brought in by a Netherlands ship.10 Charts as well as compasses were used as early as the thirteenth century. The earliest surviving example of a dated sailing chart, as distinct from a formal "mappemonde," is probably the Vesconte chart of 1311,11 but Guillaume de Nangis in describing the second crusade of Saint Louis says that when the king wanted to know where they lay the pilots brought their charts and showed him that they were not far from land. Nordenskiold believes that the earliest medieval marine charts were probably Catalan, Kretschmer that they were Italian. At least there is no doubt that they were from the Mediterranean,12 and that it was long before the peoples of northern Europe, English, French, and German, outgrew their dependence upon the southern sailing charts. These were entirely different from the medieval scholars' maps, which were either copied from Miss Carus Wilson argues that when the author of the Libelle of Englyshe Policye says men have "practised" to Iceland "by nedle and by stone," he is describing the primitive compass, a needle floated in water. The words, which are a common literary form, hardly bear this interpretation, especially when we remember that it was the custom on long voyages to carry a lodestone with which to remagnetize one's needle (The Cely Papers, éd. H. E. Maiden, p. 177; H.C.A. 24, File 5, large bundle, John Aborough contra John Andrews). 9 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. W. Skeat, p. 411. From a comparison with the corresponding passage in Messahalla (Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, V, 176-177) it appears that the observation originates with Chaucer. 10 Customs, E 122/150/3 m. 7d. 1:l Nordenskiôld inclines to think that the Carte pisane and a chart of Giovanni de Carignano may be older, but neither of these is dated (Periplus: An Essay on the early History of Charts and Sailing Directions, p. 16, n. 2). 12 K. Kretschmer, Die ùalienischen Portolane des MittelaUers: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kartographie und Nautik, pp. 35, 65-66.

i axvid

DIAGRAM FOR TELLING THE TIME BY THE POLE STAR The diagram opposite might really be called a sky compass divided into twenty-four points. It will be noticed that the positions of east and west are reversed, showing that, like a modern star map, it was meant to be used by an observer facing south and holding it over his head with the north point of the compass directed toward the pole star. Thus employed, it enabled a seaman to identify the quarter of the heavens in which the Guards of the Pole Star (the stars/3 and Y in the constellation of Ursa Minor) stood at any given time. A table accompanying the diagram informed him what time of night the position indicated. If sidereal and solar time coincided, the same position of the Guards would always correspond to the same time, but since there is a discrepancy of four minutes in the twenty-four hours, the stars gain an hour every fifteen days. The table accordingly gives the position of the Guards in relation to solar time for each half month throughout the year: "En lamy Janvier, gardes a lest minuict gardes au nort aube de iour a la fin de Janvier, gardes a lest quart de Nordest minuict, gardes au Nort quart de Nordest aube de iour." (Reproduced from Le Grant Routier by Pierre Garcie diet Ferrande, Aii-Aiii. The exemplar in the Widener Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which this is taken, is a Rouen edition of 1557 based on the edition of 1542.)

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