A HISTORY OF DORSET 



sailors, but necessarily required a certain number of ' green ' hands, or lands- 

 men, of whom a proportion became seamen by profession. There are no 

 statistics for the early years of the fishery, but there are occasional indications 

 of its increasing importance. During the first half of the sixteenth century it 

 grew at the expense of the Iceland trade, and by 1542 was of sufficient size 

 to be the subject of a section in an Act of Parliament ; in 1548 there was a 

 ' great ' Newfoundland fishing fleet causing anxiety for its safety, and the statute 

 2 and 3 Edward VI, cap. 6, forbids exactions from owners in the Newfound- 

 land as well as in other fisheries. In i 578 there is for the first time a state- 

 ment of the number of vessels actually present in Newfoundland waters, and 

 a note of their increase ; the municipal archives of Poole show that in 1583 

 there were ten or twelve Newfoundland ships sailing thence. ^^' The Eliza- 

 bethan war put an end to the Spanish and Portuguese fishery, and greatly 

 diminished that from France ; the indirect result was to the advantage of 

 English merchants from whom neutrals had to buy to supply the Catholic 

 powers. The fishing fleet of 1585 was large enough to make it worth while 

 to send out a warning that Philip had seized all the English ships in Spanish 

 ports, and by 1592 Englishmen enjoyed so much reputation as experts that 

 the Dutch were offisring high pay for their services. The business had grown 

 big enough to have rules and regulations drawn up for its management ; in 

 1583 a Poole owner was fined for sailing without the consent of the mayor 

 and burgesses.'^" In 1588 the Primrose, 120 tons, of Poole, sailed notwith- 

 standing the embargo of 3 i March ; the Council ordered the imprisonment 

 of Peter Cox, a part owner, and promised to deal with the master and others 

 when the vessel returned.'" In 1594 there were 100 sail due home in 

 August ; to join this fleet six Poole and five Weymouth ships had been 

 released from embargo earlier in the year."" 



In the reign of James I Lyme is included among the ports interested in 

 the trade,"' but under that king England soon lost the unstable maritime 

 superiority won under Elizabeth, and the western fishery was one branch of 

 sea traffic which felt the effiscts. In 1622 the mayor of Weymouth wrote to 

 the Council that in that year only 1 1 ships had been sent to the fishery instead 

 of 39 as before.'" If 39 was the high-water mark of one year, and the 

 average was much less, it still shows of what vast importance to the prosperity 

 of the Dorset ports the trade had become. Again, in 1627, the Poole men 

 wrote that two years previously they had had 22 Newfoundland ships work- 

 ing, but that the number had fallen to four ; "^ a year later they stated that 

 their average had been 20 ships each season."^ Dorset was by no means 

 the leading county in the Newfoundland trade ; allowing a crew of only 

 25 men to a ship we may get some idea of the supreme influence the fishery 

 must have had in the evolution of a new sea-faring population in the 

 crucial years when the future of England depended on its success at sea. No 

 other towns in Dorset than the four here mentioned seem ever to have sent 

 out fishing ships, but no doubt men came, as in Devon and Cornwall, not 

 only from along the coast but from inland. A paper, assigned to 1634, gives 



'" Svdenham, Hist. ofPcok, 395-6. "■•" Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset (3rd cd.), i, +0. 



'" ActsofP.C. 12 May, 15S8. '"-' S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccxlviii, No. i. 



'" Hist. MSS Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 271. '" S.P. Dom. Jas. I, c.xxx, No. 22. 



'" S.P. Dom. Ch.is. I, li, No. 56. "' Ibid, ciii, No. 43. 



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