278 THE OCEAN RIVER 



are common to all the people of Europe. To the South to the 

 riches of the equinoctial — not into the cold, frozen North." 

 People migrate and home governments are most interested 

 in the kind of a New World that is already familiar. Spain 

 looked for ''organized and animated creation/' and the quick 

 exaction of tribute. Basically the English looked for trade by 

 hook or crook and would go anywhere and do anything to 

 forward that end — and in so doing would give wider freedom 

 to individuals than would the more highly centralized Cath- 

 olic societies of France and the Iberian peninsula. 



In the previous chapter we spoke of the first colonizing of 

 the northern coast of the New World as seaborne off the 

 fishing Banks. This same image might well be extended — that 

 for the first two centuries of European knowledge of the New 

 World in the north, the whole development was largely sea- 

 borne and a true child of the Ocean River, for the cod built 

 the shipping and the shipping freed the colonies and built 

 the solid commercial foundation for the sudden continental 

 expansion and growth of capitalism. 



But let us keep to the sea and follow the ships. They began 

 to carry England's strength in the reign of Elizabeth, and 

 it is convenient to consider the seventeenth century as the 

 beginning of her Atlantic conquest. Before that we saw how 

 Henry VIII and after him Elizabeth were the first to recognize 

 the continuing need of naval and commercial fleets. They 

 helped organize navigation schools where the use of the 

 quadrant and telescope were taught, and maps were made 

 using Mercator's projection. The century after this beginning 

 gave no evidence of carefully planned or organized sea power; 

 but the privateers and adventurers in increasing numbers 

 raided the Caribbean. Cromwell in mid-century sent one fleet 

 against the Algerian pirates and with another took possession 

 of Jamaica. The commerce to the West Indies increased 

 rapidly as the spread of English sugar planting, particularly 



