MARITIME HISTORY 



completely driven off the seas. 1 Nor, when came the call for men, were the western counties 

 unequal to the demand. Besides the normal fisheries and ordinary sea voyages, there had been 

 during the sixteenth century one growing maritime trade the Newfoundland on which, and not 

 on the ephemeral profits of privateering, their prosperity was based. The especial benefit of this 

 new trade was that it not only employed trained seamen, but necessarily required a certain 

 number of ' green hands,' of whom a proportion became sailors by profession. There are no 

 statistics for the early years, but there are references which indicate the increasing importance of the 

 commerce. In 1497, a f ter Cabot's return, an Italian resident in England wrote that the discovery 

 of the fishing grounds would kill the Iceland trade, and his prophecy was not long in showing signs 

 of fulfilment. In 1517 there were 300 English fishing vessels at Iceland, but by the end of the 

 century the number had fallen to less than one-third, and was confined to the east coast. By 1542 

 the Newfoundland fishery had become of sufficient importance to require a clause in an Act of 

 Parliament (33 Hen. VIII, c. n), and in 1548 there was a 'great' Newfoundland fishing fleet 

 causing anxiety for its safety. 2 Again, the statute of 2 & 3 Edw. VI, c. 6, forbids exactions 

 by officials in the Newfoundland as well as in other fisheries. In 1578 we have the first statement 

 of the actual number of English fishing ships at Newfoundland, when we read that they had 

 increased from thirty to fifty ships within the last four years, but the writer adds that there were 

 more in some years than in others. 3 At this time there were more Spanish, French, and Portuguese 

 than English, but the war nearly ended the French and quite ended the Peninsular trade, which 

 a contemporary Spanish writer thought meant a loss of ,600,000 a year in the purchase of fish 

 from abroad, a great part of which was supplied directly or indirectly by Englishmen. In 1585 a 

 warning was sent to the fishermen on the Banks that the Spaniards had seized English ships in 

 Spain, and in 1594 we have another statement telling us that 100 sail were due home in August, 4 

 which indicates the increase following the destruction of the Spanish and Portuguese fisheries. In 

 1615 there were 250 fishing ships of 15,000 tons, with 5,000 men, of whom one-fifth were 

 'green hands' ; 5 in 1620 there is an estimate of 300 ships, 6 and this last corresponds with a complaint 

 from Poole in 1628 concerning the loss of trade, in which it was stated that the ports from 

 Southampton to Bristol used to send 300 sail and 6,000 men. 7 A little later we have the names 

 of the towns chiefly interested : those in Cornwall are Saltash, Looe, Fowey, Mevagissey, St. Austell, 

 Falmouth, St. Mawes, St. Keverne, Penzance, St. Ives, and Padstow, 8 but Looe and Fowey ranked 

 with the leading towns in the trade in i6i6. 9 Probably most of the other places mentioned 

 were principally concerned in the supply of men. A paper assigned to 1634 gives the recent 

 yearly average from the western ports at 26,700 tons of shipping and 10,680 men ; this was the 

 high-water mark of prosperity in the trade for the time. 10 



For many of the counties war only commenced with the formal rupture with Spain in 1585, 

 but the west country cannot be said to have been ever at peace during the reign of Elizabeth. The 

 enmity with France which culminated in the attempt to hold Havre in 1563 gave employment to 

 western men and ships, and on the south coast there was never any real cessation of maritime 

 activity. From the reign of John it had been customary to require periodical returns of the number 

 of ships and men available ; most of the earlier returns have perished, but an unusually long series, 

 complete or fragmentary, survives for the Elizabethan period. Besides thus gauging the increase 

 of shipping the council were kept informed what levies were available for war squadrons. The 

 differentiation of the man-of-war from the merchantman had so far altered the character of warfare 

 that only vessels of 100 tons and upwards were now considered suitable for fighting purposes, and 

 an especial return of those was generally required ; it was not yet realized in official circles that the 

 age of the fighting merchantman was over, although the seamen tried to impress the politicians with 

 the fact that the armed merchantman was, as they put it, ' only fit to make a show.' However, 

 customs alter but slowly, and numbers give confidence, therefore the bulk of every fleet consisted of 

 such ships, although all the real work was effected by the men-of-war. The first return was of 

 1560," when Saltash and Fowey each possessed one vessel of upwards of 100 tons, and the county 

 had 1,703 seafaring men available. In 1570 twenty-six ships and 1,097 masters and men were 

 embargoed ; 12 what numbers of either were at sea is unknown. Between 1571 and 1576 Looe had 



1 It must not, however, be supposed that successful privateering has ever decided a naval war in former 

 times. The policy of Elizabeth, both in general and particular, was bad, but that of Philip II was much 

 worse. The naval history of this period is treated in detail in The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, 

 edited by M. Oppenheim, Navy Records Society, 1902. 



8 In 1536 Wm. Butler of Polperro was sailing a Newfoundland ship. 



3 Halduyt, Voyages (ed. 1888), xii, 300. 4 Hist. MSS. Com. (Cecil MSS.) 20 July, 1594. 



5 R. Whitbourne, A Discovery of N ewfoundland, 1620. 



6 Mason, Brief Discourse of Newfoundland. ' S. P. Dom. Chas. I, ciii, 43. 



8 S. P. Col. x, 78. 9 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 271. 



10 S. P. Dom. Chas. I, cclxxix, 70, 73. " S. P. Dom. Eliz. xi, 27. 12 Ibid. Ixxi, 48. 



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