THE BEGINNING OF TRADE 



long before this, for German merchants were certainly well known in 

 London before the Conquest and soon after they had quite an 

 appreciable proportion of the wine trade. London was their earliest 

 foreign settlement and in return for their wine, beer and Baltic products 

 the merchants took away wool, skins, lead and tin so that it is only 

 natural that when the League was openly formed Thames side should 

 be their first headquarters. Owing to the habit of the German merchant- 

 men of settling down for the winter wherever they happened to be on 

 St. Martin's Day, November 11th, the trading centres soon became little 

 German colonies and they were not slow in putting themselves into a 

 position in which they could not be assailed. 



Lenten Cargoes. 



It must be remembered that in the early days quite a considerable 

 proportion of England's overseas trade was connected with religious 

 observances and for this reason the Hanseatic authorities granted 

 exceptional permission for a ship to sail on St. Nicholas Day if it were 

 laden with herrings or dried cod, which was the principal Lenten fare, 

 or with German beer which did not travel very well in the summer. It 

 was this single winter cargo that contributed very considerably towards 

 the improvement in the seaworthiness of the ships. One of the first 

 German trading colonies to be founded in this way was Winetha at the 

 mouth of the Oder, a name whose resemblance to Venice cannot be 

 overlooked and was not accidental. According to legend this city was 

 overwhelmed by the sea on account of the sins arising out of its 

 prosperity, and for centuries it was believed that every Good Friday 

 it was allowed to rise from the water in all its glory to sink again on 

 Easter Day. 



Wisby. 



After the disappearance of Winetha the principal trading mart of 

 the League was the town of Wisby on the Island of Gothland, which 

 formed a very fine centre both for the herring fleets and also for the 

 distribution of German goods throughout the Slavonic territories and 

 the Eastern Baltic. All common money was deposited here and the 

 dues of the Hanseatic cities were paid at the town. In the fourteenth 

 century the League quarrelled with Waldemar of Denmark and although 

 until then they were purely merchants with a rigid and sometimes very 

 cruel code of discipline for their members, the cities then gathered their 

 forces and a war ensued. The first honours were with the Danes, who 

 sacked Wisby and carried off colossal booty, but when the League came 

 to fight for its existence it defeated King Waldemar and eventually 

 sacked Copenhagen. Meanwhile what was left of Wisby was totally 

 destroyed by a disastrous fire and the town, once the Queen of the 

 Baltic, was never rebuilt. Its site and harbour, however, proved so 

 tempting to local pirates that they used it for many years as their head- 

 quarters, preying principally on Hanseatic ships. 



229 



