History of Shipping

The Ocean Routes.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the art of shipbuilding made great strides. The carrying and sea-keeping capacity of the carrack, the speed and handiness of the caravel, gave an impetus to maritime enterprise, which was further stim ulated by a great advance in the science of navigation. The com pass had been introduced in the 12th century; the cross-staff and astrolabe enabled the latitude to be calculated. The discovery of Greenland by the Norsemen in the loth century was the chance result of an Icelandic voyager being blown out of his course; but the exploring voyages of the Portuguese caravels down the west African coast were the product of the scientific school for navi gation established by Henry the Navigator at Chagres.

There is real significance in the fact that the mother of Henry the Navigator was an Englishwoman, the daughter of John of Gaunt, for his activities foreshadowed the decline of the Medi terranean and the rise of the oceanic Powers. Yet down to the last decade of the 15th century England was of small consequence at sea. The Italians, who had already developed marine insurance on modern lines as an aid to oversea commerce, dominated both the internal and the external trade of the Mediterranean. Through their grip on the Levant, they controlled the commerce with India and the Far East. Genoese carracks and Venetian merchant pal liasses carried the trade with England and Flanders. In the north the Hansa had a strangle-hold on the Baltic trade, and carried its fish, grain, and timber as far west as Portugal. Hanseatic and Flemish merchants shared with the Merchant Adventurers the export of half-made cloth from England to Flanders. Oil and wine came to England from Spain mainly in Spanish bottoms. Portugal monopolized the traffic with Guinea and the Atlantic islands. To English ship-owners remained the Gascony trade, and a share in the North sea fisheries and the voyage to Iceland for stock fish.

Before the century was over the new era had begun. The greatness of Venice and Genoa rested on their control of the rich trade with the East. As shipping and navigation improved, the oceanic Powers turned their attention to the discovery of a sea route to India and Cathay. This was the real object of the Portu guese expeditions, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut, after doubling the Cape of Good Hope. Six years earlier, Colum bus, seeking a new route to Asia, discovered the West Indies. In 1497 John Cabot, with an English commission, landed in North America.

These discoveries, it must be remembered, represented voyages into uncharted seas, peopled, in the imagination of the time, with devils and monsters. The science of navigation was still in its

infancy, and an error of 600 miles in reckoning the longitude was nothing uncommon. Hygiene was yet more rudimentary, and crews died like flies from scurvy and fever. Yet the spirit of ad venture and the lure of trade triumphed over every obstacle. The early discoveries were followed up. In 1519-22 Magellan cir cumnavigated the globe. Colonization and regular trade followed hard on the heels of discovery.

The opening of a direct sea route to India, and the discovery of gold and silver in America had momentous consequences. Venice, hampered by continental wars and the advance of the Turks, steadily declined. The silks and spices of the East, the treasure of Mexico and Peru, poured into Spanish and Portuguese ports. The long Indian voyage, the colonial trade, and the slave traffic from Guinea to the colonies stimulated the building of large ships, and after the union of the two crowns in 1581, Spain stood out as incomparably the greatest of maritime Powers.

The Rise of England.

Meanwhile Henry VII. and Henry VIII. were nursing the development of English shipping by navi gation laws, strictly enforced in the vital Bordeaux trade, by wise commercial treaties, by laws for the encouragement of the fish eries, by the incorporation of the Trinity House in 1513, and by a bounty on the construction of large merchantmen. Henry VIII. created the first permanent navy of sailing warships.

Under Elizabeth the pent up national energies burst forth. Already Englishmen had traded, on sufferance and at peril, with Guinea and Brazil. The Spanish and Portuguese monopoly was now boldly challenged. Drake, at Cadiz, shattered the prestige of the galley. The Armada campaign revealed England as the pre dominant naval power. While English squadrons and privateers harried the Spanish trade, English merchantmen pushed into the Levant and along the Guinea coast. Drake's voyage of circum navigation (1577-8o), and his capture of a carrack in 1587, with the secret papers of the East India trade, opened the way to the East. Attempts to find a north-east or a north-west passage to Asia led to the opening up of trade with Russia, and to the first British settlements in North America. The grip of the Hansa was roughly thrown off. The adoption of the galleon as the English ship of war led to the development of merchantmen far superior to the clumsy Hanseatic and Flemish hulks, or the antiquated Portuguese carracks. A bounty of 5/– a ton, on the construction of ships over Ioo tons, stimulated shipbuilding. Insurance of English ships and cargoes passed from Italian to English hands.