264- THE SEA. 



for attempting the conquest of England was on account of the vast supplies which his 

 Gaulish enemies received from us, in the way of trade. The exports were principally 

 cattle, hides, corn, dogs, and slaves, the latter an important item. Strabo observes that 

 "our internal parts at that time were on a level with the African slave coasts." "Britons 

 never shall be slaves " could not therefore have been said in those days. London, long 

 prior to the invasion of England by the Romans, was an existing city, and vessels paid 

 dues at Billingsgate long before the establishment of any custom-house. Pennant tells 

 us, in his famous work on London, "As early as 979, all the reign of Ethelred, a small 

 vessel was to pay ad Bilynggesyate one halfpenny as a toll; a greater, bearing sails, one 

 penny; a keel or hulk (ceol vel hulcus), fourpence; a ship laden with wood, one piece 

 for toll; and a boat with fish, one halfpenny; or a larger, one penny. We had even 

 now trade with France for its wines, for mention is made of ships from Rouen, who 

 came here and landed them, and freed them from toll i.e., paid their duties. What 

 they amounted to I cannot learn/'' 



The Danes, having once a foot-hold, were never thoroughly expelled till the Norman 

 conquest, and as a maritime race excelled all the nations of the north of Europe. They 

 had two principal classes of vessels, the Drakerx and Holkers, the former named from carrying 

 a dragon on the bows, and bearing the Danish flag of the raven. The holker was at h'rst 

 a small boat, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, but the word " hulk," evidently derived 

 from it, was used afterwards for vessels of larger dimensions. They had also another 

 vessel called a Snekkar (serpent), strangely so named, for it was rather a short, stumpy 

 kind of boat, not unlike the Dutch galliots of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

 Their piratical expeditions soon increased, and Wales and the island of Anglesey were 

 frequently pillaged by them, while in Ireland they possessed the ports of Dublin, 

 Waterford, and Cork, a Danish king reigning in the two first cities. But a king was 

 to arise who would change all this Alfred the Great and Good, the " Father of the British 

 Navy." 



On the accession of Alfred the Great to the throne, he found England so over-run by 

 the Danes, that he had, as every school-boy knows, to conceal himself with a few faithful 

 followers in the forests. In his retirement he busied himself in devising schemes for 

 ridding his country of the pirate marauders ; and without much deliberation he saw that he 

 must first have a maritime force of his own, and meet the enemies of England on the sea, 

 which they considered their own especial element. He set himself busily to study the 

 models of the Danish ships, and, aided by his hardy followers, stirred up a spirit of 

 maritime ambition, which had not existed to any great extent before. At the end of 

 four years of unremitting labour in the prosecution of his schemes, he possessed the nucleus 

 of a fleet in six galleys, which were double the length of any possessed by his adversaries, 

 and which carried sixty oars, and possessed ample space for the fighting men on board. 

 With this fleet he put to sea, taking the command in person, and routed a marauding 

 expedition of the Danes, then about to make a descent on the coast. The force was larger 

 than his own; but he succeeded in capturing one and in driving off the rest. In the 

 course of the next year or two he captured or sunk eighteen of the enemy's galleys, and 

 they found at last that they could not have it all their own way on the sea. About this 



