MARITIME HISTORY 



of 1512-13 was fought almost entirely by men-of-war, and although there were some twenty hired 

 ships in pay as tenders and victuallers none can be traced as belonging to Suffolk. It need hardly 

 be said that although impressment of ships had practically ceased, impressment of men continued, 

 and Aldeburgh, Southwold, and Ipswich helped to make up the crews of the king's ships. 1 

 Shipwrights and caulkers were pressed in Ipswich, Dunwich, Southwold, and Lowestoft, to come 

 to the new dockyard at Woolwich to help in the building of the Henry Grace de Dleu? 

 Ipswich and Dartmouth sent more shipwrights than any others of the ports and, so far as Ipswich 

 is concerned, the number available is a sign that the great shipbuilding industry which was so 

 striking a feature of its local history from the end of the sixteenth century was already estab- 

 lished. The famous Pett family, which provided master shipwrights in the royal dockyards for 

 upwards of a century, probably came from Harwich but some branches of the family lived at 

 Ipswich. 3 War with France and Scotland recommenced in 1522 and Ipswich sent some auxiliary 

 ships to join the fleet. The proposed, 'and possibly executed, erection of a blockhouse at 

 Lowestoft in 1528* is evidence of the importance of the roads as an anchorage. 



The Iceland fishery, which had flourished during the early part of the fifteenth century, 

 had almost died out in consequence of a statute of 1 430 (8 Hen. VI, cap. 2) forbidding Englishmen 

 to repair to Iceland or Denmark, but only to North Bergen ; this was enacted in fear of the king 

 of Denmark and in consequence of the riotous and piratical behaviour of English fishermen and 

 traders. In 1451, however, Walberswick was sending thirteen vessels and twenty-two Sperling 

 boats to Iceland, the Faroes, and the North Sea, 6 and in 1484 a proclamation prohibiting ships 

 to go to Iceland without convoy shows that the fishery was still carried on. The first Parlia- 

 ment of Henry VIII repealed the Act of 1430 (i Hen. VIII, cap. i), and for a time, at any rate, 

 the fishermen can have given little cause for complaint for in 1523 the king of Denmark wrote to 

 Henry encouraging a larger trade. 6 The extent to which it had been taken up along the east 

 coast may be judged from a passage in a letter written by the earl of Surrey to Wolsey, 7 in 

 the same year, where he reports that he had heard that the Scots were fitting out a squadron 

 to intercept the Iceland fleet in which, if they succeeded, Norfolk and Suffolk he said, would 

 be ruined and all England left without fish. In 1528 the Iceland fleet numbered 149 vessels ; 

 Ipswich is grouped with five Essex ports, and fourteen ships sailed from them; Woodbridge sent three, 

 Aldeburgh, Sizewell, and Thorpe, six, and Dunwich, Walberswick, Southwold, Easton, and 

 Covehithe, thirty-two. 8 The last five places followed the Iceland trade more vigorously than 

 that of the North Sea proper, in which only eight boats were employed; but Ipswich, with Harwich 

 and Manningtree, sent twenty, Aldeburgh four, and Lowestoft six. 9 More than half these boats 

 frequented Scotch waters. The temporary improvement in the conduct of the fishermen does not 

 appear to have endured, at any rate near home, for in 1535 James V wrote to Henry that 'the 

 English who go to Iceland for fishing take slaves and plunder in the Orkney Isles.' 10 But, 

 however irregular their conduct they also fished, and by 1526 the quantity brought home 

 was so great that it was found possible to remit a portion of that taken for the king under the 

 right of purveyance. 11 



There is a return of 1533 giving the number of vessels come back from the fishery that year, 

 from which we find that seven entered Lowestoft, twenty-two Dunwich, one Orford, and seven 

 Orwell Haven, which here probably stands chiefly for Ipswich. 12 The average tonnage was from 

 forty to sixty tons, except those at Orwell, which run from 60 to 150 tons. In 1536 Robert 

 Kingston of Dunwich, the master of an Aldeburgh vessel, was presented at an Admiralty Court for 

 leaving six sick men behind him in Iceland. 13 It would seem that at this period Dunwich, fallen 

 from its former estate as a commercial port, secured temporarily a new prosperity in the Iceland 

 traffic. From an action at law in 1535 relating to a Southwold ship we learn that she was hired 

 for 120 for an Iceland voyage ; in an illustrative case quoted in the depositions, it was said that 

 the profit earned by another boat was upwards of 700, and would have been more but for the 

 defaults of the master. 14 Occasionally persons of higher social standing than those who made the 

 trade their occupation were tempted by the large profits to join in it ; in 1545 there is an account 

 of the expenses of a vessel belonging to Sir Thomas Darcy which he sent to the fishery. 16 From a 

 national point of view it would be difficult to exaggerate the value of the Iceland, North Sea, 

 and Newfoundland fisheries. The Atlantic and North Sea were the breeding and training grounds 

 of the men who, in the reign of Elizabeth, destroyed the maritime pretensions of Spain. 



I Chap. Ho. Bks. ii, fols. 7-10. ' Ibid, v, 179. s See V.C.H. Essex, ii, 'Maritime Hist.' 

 4 L. and P. Hen. Vlll, iv (pt. 2), 4016. ' Gardner, op. cit. 145. 



6 L. and P. Hen. nil, iii, 2783. ' Ibid. 3071. 



8 Ibid, iv, 5101. 'Ibid. 10 Ibid, viii, 1153. 



II Ibid, iv, 2220 ; Add. MSS. 34729, fol. 63. " L. and P. Hen. Vlll, vi, 1380. 

 13 Admir. Ct. Misc. Bks. 831. " L. and P. Hen. Vlll, ix, 1020. 

 15 Hut. MSS. Com. Rep. vii, App. i, 603. She was manned from Dunwich. 



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