On the Wings of the Wind: Changes in English Shipbuilding, Navigation and Shipboard Life, 1485-1650 (III).
Chapter Four
Advances in Navigation
Like shipbuilding, the art of navigation and oceanic pilotage was relatively static in medieval England, only advancing as the rest of Europe advanced. But by the 1550s, interest in the study of mathematical navigation grew in England, largely fostered by the mathematician John Dee.
Dee, one of the founding fellows of Trinity College at Oxford, cultivated a number of learned friends throughout the continent. He collected geographical information from Gemma Frisius, the German globe maker whose creations featured a north-westerly passage from the Atlantic to the Orient, and also drew map projections based on the works of his friend Gerard Mercator. Dee's knowledge greatly excited men such as Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor who sailed for the newly founded Muscovy Company in 1553.
Originally called "The Merchants Adventurers of England for the Discovery of Lands, Territories, Isles, Dominions and Seignories Unknown," this joint-stock company called on Dee for advice — should they go to the northwest or northeast?
Dee recommended the northeast, partly because the northeastern passage seemed feasible, partly for economic reasons. Muscovy was a cold place and could greatly benefit from English wool. These northeastern voyages to Muscovy as well as southern voyages to Morocco and West Africa by Thomas Wyndham made clear the need for advanced navigational skills.
David Waters defines the two forms of navigation practiced by English sailors during the reign of Elizabeth as the empirical method of pilotage, which made use of "the observation of terrestrial objects," and the mathematical method of celestial navigation. In simpler terms, the pilot looked down while the navigator looked up. It was during the reign of Elizabeth that the English sailor began turning his gaze upward in earnest.
In 1563, Stephen Borough laid before Queen Elizabeth a plea for his appointment as Chief Pilot of England, a new position, based on the comparable one in Spain that was previously held by Sebastian Cabot, lured back to England in the 1540s. In the two papers that he submitted to the crown, he pointed to the need for well-trained mariners, in particular pilots and navigators, on board English ships.
While Elizabeth made no such appointment in 1563, interest in advanced navigational practices grew, as shown by the printing of various works of cosmography and navigation.
William Bourne, an inn-keeper and port-reeve of Gravesend, published An Almanack and Prognostication for Hi Yeres with Serten Rules of Navigation in 1567 and expanded it in 1574 under the title, A Regiment for the Sea . These manuals rendered into plain English the essentials of navigation found in Richard Eden's less readable translation of Martin Cortes's Arte de Navegar. However, Bourne admitted that the first qualification of a successful ship's master was that he must first be a good coaster, that is, a pilot. Only if he went into open waters would he have need of the knowledge of the navigational instruments that Bourne explained in his book.
Pilotage, therefore, was the most important of an Elizabethan mariner's skills. At the mariners disposal were several tools that would help him feel his way along a coastline or across an ocean. Like the sounding line, many dated back to ancient times. Its use is referred to in the works of Homer as well as the Bible. A good pilot would carry several sounding lines with him in the event of a mishap, such as happened on Martin Frobisher's first voyage to the northwest in 1576. "In hailing up the lead the line brake, and so we lost our lead," wrote the master of the Gabriel, but it is obvious that he had spares, for he "sownded again” the next day,5 The compass had likewise been used for hundreds of years and by 1218 was considered "most necessary for such as sail the sea." But other items, such as the log-and-line and the traverse board, did not gain widespread use until the last half of the sixteenth century.
William Bourne's Regiment was the first work to mention the log-and-line, or chip log. This device consisted of a board attached to a "line of a great length, which they make fast at one ende, and at the other ende, and middle, they have a piece of lyne which they make fast with a small thred to stande lyke unto a crowfoote." Tossing this off the taffrail of the vessel, the sailors measured time with "either a minute of an hour glass, or else a knowne parte of an houre by some number of woordes, or such other lyke."
When the sand in the glass ran out, "or the number of wordes [was] spoken," the sailors hauled in the log "and looke[d] how many fathomes the shippe hath gone in that time." The introduction of such a device, which occasionally had knots tied along the line to better count the fathoms, made calculating the ship's speed, or "way," an easier and more precise task.
In order to keep track of the speed as well as the compass course, the traverse board gained use during the latter part of the century. Bourne is also the first to mention Hthe board," although it had probably been in use before that time. Primarily designed to allow illiterate sailors to communicate complex information to the ship's pilot, the traverse board consisted of a depiction of a compass rose, with eight lines of holes drilled along each of the thirty-two compass points to indicate course, and eight horizontal lines of holes drilled at the foot of the board for indicating speed (probably not routinely found on traverse boards until around 1600. Every half hour during a helmsman's four-hour watch, the helmsman checked his compass course and indicated this course by plugging a peg into the corresponding compass point on the board. In this way he and the pilot could keep track of the traverses, or tacks upon which the ship had sailed. Wrote Morison, "
All ships of this era wanted the wind to be on the quarter, or dead aft, to make best speed and least leeway. If the wind came 'scant' i.e. dead ahead or less than four or five compass points from their course, they were forced, if the sea were very rough to lay to: or, in a moderate sea, to beat to windward, which they called 'traversing.' This meant zig-zagging with the wind first on one side and then on the other."9 Since sailors were unable at that time to calculate longitude, it therefore became necessary to keep an accurate accounting of every movement of the ship.
Information of the ship*s traverses, together with an accounting of the speed (indicated also with pegs in the rows of holes at the foot of the board) allowed the pilot to chart the ship's course without benefit of knowing latitude or longitude. Unfortunately, the mathematics involved were often beyond the average pilot, and it was not until the latter part of the seventeenth century that pilots were able to use the information on the traverse board with a consistent degree of accuracy.
Taken collectively, the calculations made by the Elizabethan ship's pilot formed the basis of a system of navigation known as dead reckoning. According to David Quinn, "The art of dead reckoning was developed by plotting direction run and distance travelled on a blank chart with dividers, later aided by parallel rulers, and so making up a picture of the course made good." Added to this were the more ancient skills of the pilot. These included careful observation of landmarks and weather patterns, an accounting of the composition of the ocean floor (obtained whenever the pilot cast the sounding line), the identification and observation of pelagic and non-pelagic birds, deep and shallow-water fish, seaweed, and debris. It is no wonder that sailors, ever the practical sort, referred to this mode of sailing as "By guess and by God."
While the pilot busied himself with empirical observations and earth-based phenomena, the navigator turned his sights to the celestial realm with the aid of recently developed navigational tools. Instruments such as the quadrant and the astrolabe had been available to English mariners since the beginning of the sixteenth century. By means of these instruments, the well-trained navigator could determine his latitude to within a half of a degree, given the right conditions, by observing the altitudes of the sun or the north star. Unfortunately, the right conditions rarely presented themselves. The quadrant's dangling plumb-bob limited shipboard sightings to the calmest of days, and even the heavy astrolabe required calmer seas than were generally found in the Atlantic for an accurate reading. In fact, Waters concluded that "astrolabes . . . were too inexact for stellar sights at sea," as were quadrants.
Nonetheless, they found their way onto many English ships in the sixteenth century. Martin Frobisher took with him on his first northwest voyage not only a mariners astrolabe but a planispheric one for use on land.
The wooden crosstaff, or balestila introduced to England by John Dee in the 1550s, developed from the Arabic kamal and provided the mariner with a more stable instrument. This instrument consisted of a long staff marked by degrees from zero to ninety on which a sliding transom was placed. By placing the staff on his cheekbone beneath his eye, the navigator could then line up the horizon with the bottom of the transom and the celestial object with the top to determine the altitude of that object by reading the degree marking from the staff. But the crosstaff could not be used in high latitudes for north star sightings, nor in low latitudes for sun sightings because of the limited viewing range of the human eye.
Even in acceptable latitudes, the human eye would still have difficulty focusing upon two widely-spaced objects, in this case the star and the horizon, not to mention problems with parallax created by the necessity of placing the crosstaff upon the cheekbone beneath one eye while sighting the objects with the other eye. Furthermore, since the crosstaff required the use of the horizon in conjunction with the star's position, "the opportunities for taking star sights were limited, as they are today, to the twilight hours of dawn and dusk. Only then are the stars and the horizon both clearly discernible.
The crosstaff was also painful to use, for unlike the quadrant and astrolabe, which could be used in sun sightings without looking directly at the sun by the use of shadows, the crosstaff required its user to line the top part of its transom-piece with the center of the sun. This could only be done by looking directly at the sun. By Bourne's time, however, the clever navigator either added a piece of smoked glass to his transom pieces, or covered "the sun with the end of the transversary and deducting 15' - the sun's semi-diameter -
from the observed altitude," according to Bourne. Despite its drawbacks, the crosstaff was the most accurate of the three instruments.
In 1581 on the Continent the crosstaff acquired three transom pieces of varying sizes and four different scales instead of a single transom and scale. This allowed the scales to be made much larger and made the observations more accurate. However, the problems inherent in the older, single-transom crosstaff were still present. It was not until 1595 that an instrument was invented that overcame these difficulties. In that year John Davis's The Seamans Secrets introduced his own adaptation of the crosstaff, which "eliminated the possibility of parallax and the handicap of glare in sun sights and the supreme difficulty of sighting simultaneously two widely separated objects, such as the sun and the horizon, by devising a back-staff of great simplicity." The observer stood with his back to the sun rather than facing it, and used shadows cast by a fixed vane lined up with a slitted horizon vane to determine the sun's altitude. In this manner, the navigator had only to look at the horizon through the slitted vane, rather than at both the horizon and the sun.
Innovations in the length of scale, made by Davis shortly after the introduction of his back-staff, allowed the navigator to take sun sightings even in equatorial waters, whereas he had previously been limited to the use of the unstable astrolabe or quadrant for sun sightings in those regions. Thus with the introduction of Davis's back- staff, English navigation, heretofore an inexact and mysterious art, became a science easily within reach of the average ship's officer.
William Bourne wrote in 1571, "Of all sciences that is used with us in England, Navigation is one of the principall and most necessary for the benefite of our Realme and native country and also most defencible against our enemies, because we lie environed rounde aboute with the sea.1'20 In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the mariners of England had seemingly awakened from a long sleep and began to take their place alongside the other maritime powers in Europe, not as apprentices but as equals.
Advances in and the interplay between pilotage and celestial observation, those two branches of navigation called la navigation comune and la navigation grande by the Flemish teacher Michiel Coignet in 1581, thus allowed the English mariner during the reign of Elizabeth I confidently to break away from his coastline and sail into open water.
Chapter Five
Shipboard Conditions
The crossing from England to North or South America or to the many Atlantic islands was a common bond between those who arrived in the New World. Whether sailor or passenger, male or female, adult or child, every person who came to the New World shared a common experience — the experience of life within the wooden walls of a sailing vessel.
There were also common problems which affected not only the integrity of the vessel but the lives of those on board. As the English began to venture across the Atlantic regularly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, they began to identify these problems and in most cases attempted to solve them. But many problems were not easily solved without a great deal of trial and error and empirical observation.
Narratives, ship's logs, and diaries provide a wealth of information about shipboard life during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. But to see the change (or continuity) in a particular area, one must look beyond these accounts to the popular works of men such as John Smith, Henry Manwayring, and Nathaniel Butler, whose dictionaries and dialogues concerning seafaring life were published throughout the seventeenth century. Manwayringfs The Seaman's Dictionary: or, an Exposition and Demonstration of all the Parts and Things belonging to a Shippe, etc. was available in manuscript form sometime between 1620 and 1623 but was not published until 1644. John Smith's A Sea Grammar appeared in the bookstalls of London in 1627, following the publication of a similar, less detailed work by Smith the previous year. Nathaniel Butler's Six Dialogues about Sea Services existed as a well-circulated manuscript as early as 1634, but was not published until 1685. That Smith borrowed heavily from Manwayring, and Butler from both, is evident from the nearly word-for-word duplication of many entries. Yet there is enough new material in both Smith and Butler to be useful for this study.
When each man, woman, or child climbed aboard the small, square-rigged sailing vessels that would bear them into and across the Atlantic, they entered into a community where each person's life might depend upon another's actions. This "ocean adventure left an indelible mark that irrevocably offset their experience from that of landsmenwho stayed at home." Within the confines of wooden walls, each problem and each action taken to counter it took on a greater significance to all on board, since inaction or inappropriate action could mean a watery death for the citizens of this floating community.
Not all of these inhabitants were human. Animals were often brought as breeding stock for colonial ventures. The Blessing , bound for Jamestown in 1609 carried "sixe Mares and two Horses" for use in the Virginia colony. Larger animals such as horses and cattle were kept closely confined in the cargo decks so that they might not harm themselves or create hazards for others. Smaller livestock lived in cages and sometimes even had free run of the ship. But more commonly, there were animals whose destiny it was to grace the sailor*s table.
The difficulties in preserving food for long crossings made temporary transportation of live animals for fresh meat an inviting prospect. On a voyage to Brazil in 1580, ship*s purser Thomas Grigs wrote that "we tooke into our ship a beefe alive, which served for the victualling of the ship, and the refreshing of our men, and to make us the merrier at Shrovetide." Large tortoises, which did not need much upkeep or space, could easily keep a ship in fresh meat. Likewise, the Edward Bonaventure in its aborted voyage to China in 1582 was home to "40 hens, ducks, turkies, and parrats” for a time.
Pets were not uncommon on English vessels of this period. Parrots and monkeys proved to be popular souvenirs among sailors and passengers who travelled in the tropics.
For those whose voyages took them into colder regions, however, wild foxes and dogs became the pets of choice.
Hunting dogs such as spaniels and greyhounds as well as the fierce battle mastiffs could also be found aboard many vessels. Richard Madox enjoyed the antics of a trick dog which his compatriots took from a Spanish prize in 1582.
The dog danced, sang from a score, and even mimicked plowing for the delighted crew.
While many of these creatures came aboard as pets, not every parrot ended up gracing an English sailor's shoulder, nor did every monkey make it back to England to delight young ladies with its antics. Any animal found on a ship could become a meal if times were desperate enough. "Rats, cats, mice and dogs" fed John Hawkins's beleaguered crew of the Jesus of Liibeck following the attack by the Spanish at San Juan de Ulua in 1568. In fact, "parrats and monkeyes that were had in great price, were thought there very profitable if they served the turn of one dinner," wrote one crew member.
Although rats might have proved a welcome repast in times of want, they were usually not wanted at all. But the damp and close environment of the hold provided a ready home for the black rat ( Rattus rattus rattus) which creeped aboard ships in port by crossing the mooring lines or hitched a ride in the cargo as it was loaded. With their own private stock of food appropriated from the huge casks stored below decks, a pair of rats could easily multiply to a dozen in just one month's time if no preventive measures were taken. Dogs seem to have served this purpose, based on skeletal remains found on the Mary Rose , but the best prevention available was the cat, and ships often carried several. Henry Hudson had a cat with him and Richard Hawkins carried several. Unfortunately, as was the case with Hawkins, the cats were often unable to control the rat population. "Though we had diverse catts and used other preventions,” related Hawkins, "in a small time [the rats] multiplied in such a manner as is incredible.” The rats were known to "consume of the best victuals, they eate the sayles; and neither packe nor chest is free from their surprises." Hawkins also tried poisoning the rats, but they proved to be too fruitful for his efforts to make a difference. While rats could easily destroy a ship's food supply on their own, there were other forces working at the same task.
Worms, mold, poor preparation, heat, and time all took their toll on the precious supplies of food and drink packed aboard these ships. Ferdinand Columbus did not exaggerate when he wrote of his father's fourth voyage in 1504 that "what with the heat and the dampness even the biscuit was so full of worms that, God help me, I saw many wait until nightfall to eat the porridge made of it so as not to see the worms; others were so used to eating them that they did not bother to pick them out, for they might lose their supper by being so fastidious." Conditions had not changed significantly by the time of Hawkins, Drake, or Davis, for biscuits were still alive with maggots.
In fact, the victualling of a ship was one area in which there were few improvements made during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in some cases the standards even slipped backward. When Richard Madox sailed across the Atlantic to Brazil in 1582, there were grumblings on board about the quality of goods provided by the merchant Richard Grafton, who "had profited much in the obtaining of provisions" at the expense of crew and passengers, who, "destitute of the necessary food and drink . . . would have almost perished to a man" had there not been ample time spent ashore, both in Africa and Brazil. The beef proved inedible "for no other reason...except that it was at first badly salted," and the crew feared "lest he had doen much hurt in our provision for he had bowght green billet, which sweating and working in the close hold did heat al the hold wonderfullye," thus speeding the decay of other supplies.
Things were no better by 1634. The captain in Butler's dialogue complained "that there had been found very ill dealing; and that not only in the provisions of flesh...but in the rottenness of the cheese, in the frowsiness and foul condition of the butter, and in the badness of the salted fish...”
Water and other liquids likewise proved problematic. Even in the best of conditions, water could remain potable only for a few weeks, and conditions were rarely ideal.
Water, as well as other victuals, needed to be stored in well-seasoned casks in order to remain fresh for as long as possible. Most important, however, water needed to be readily available for resupply, and if a ship was blown off course or at the mercy of contrary winds, even the best of barrels could afford passengers and crew little help if the casks were empty.
Returning from their voyage to the Azores in 1589, George, Earl of Cumberland, and his men were unable to raise the coasts of either Ireland or England because of contrary winds. Reduced from quarter-rations of water to "three or four spoones full of vinegar to drinke at a meale” the crew despaired. "When there fell any haile or raine,” wrote the chronicler, Edward Wright, "the haile-stones wee gathered up, and did eate them more pleasantly then if they had bene the sweetest Comfits in the worlde....” When it rained, the men hung out sheets to catch the water and sucked the water from wet clothes. But the situation soon so grew desperate that the men began drinking the dirty run-off from the deck, which they mixed with sugar, and licking "the boards under feete, the sides, railes, and Masts of the shippe" as it rained. Some even put "bullets of lead into their mouthes to slake their thirst."18 The crew of the Galleon Leicester, in less dire straits, also caught water from a "sodayn gust of rayn," but after four days the water stank.
John Hawkins didn’t help matters by commenting to the crew that he had "kept some sweet 3 moneths," to which Richard Madox wryly commented in his diary, "there was little to believe.
By 1593, the English (or at least Richard Hawkins) had the capability of distilling salt water for drinking, but it was not widely practiced. Even by 1634 distillation was still in the experimental stages at sea, but Butler's captain hoped that it would "prove perfect and accomplished; and so enlarged as may serve of very great use, in cases of extremity" and wished "that all ships that are designed abroad to long voyages over large seas should be furnished with utensils proper to this purpose."
Just as fresh water was important to crew and passengers, so was fresh food. Judging from narratives and ship's logs, it was obtained frequently. Fish and porpoises were the most abundant source of fresh food while at sea, although birds, seaweed, and even barnacles provided a break from the monotonous rounds of loblolly (seasoned oatmeal), salted meat, and biscuit. Richard Madox dined on dolphin, mullet, flying fish, porpoise, an albatross, and barnacles scraped from the ship's hull, which he said tasted like crayfish. John Davis likewise dined on porpoise during his first Northwest voyage in 1586, but his repast was much more interesting when he accompanied Thomas Cavendish to the straits of Magellan in 1591 Unable to sail through the straits, Davis*s ship the Dainty was forced to turn back twice. After the first attempt, his men lived off "muskles, water and weeds of the sea, with a small reliefe of the ships store in meale sometimes*' until they could resupply for a second attempt.
Sailing up the coast of South America, they found an island of penguins, and left there for Brazil with 14,000 birds, which they salted and dried before making a second attempt at the straits. That attempt proved no better, and the Dainty turned northward towards home. Unfortunately they did not have access to information gathered by John Chidley and Paul Wheele who had attempted the straits the year before. They, too, had gathered penguins and found that they "must be eaten with speed: for wee found them to be of no long continuance...." Davis's crew was to find this out first hand, for "after we came neere unto the sun," wrote the chronicler, John Jane, "our dried Penguins began to corrupt, and there bred in the[m] a most lothsome and ugly worm of an inch long. This worme did so mightily increase and devoure our victuals, that there was in reason no hope how we should avoide famine, but be devoured of these wicked creatures...." These maggots were voracious, and "there was nothing that they did not devoure, only yron excepted: our clothes,boots, shooes, hats, shirts, stockings and, for the ship,they did so eat the timbers as that we greatly feared they would undoe us by gnawing through the ships side."
Davis's men were also plagued by strange swellings which began in their ankles and spread rapidly to their chests, making it hard to breathe. Then the disease "fell into their cods: and their cods and yardes did swell most grievously and most dreadfully to behold, so that they could neither stand, lie nor goe." All but sixteen men died, and of those only five were able to stand and work what was left of the sails and so bring the Dainty home.
Davis's experience in 1591 was extreme, but extremities were part of seafaring life. Either all went well or all went to hell. Francis Drake's West Indian expedition of 1585 was struck with the plague and hundreds died, trapped together in their floating coffins. Drake himself died of a shipboard "fluxe" in 1595, following fellow captains John Hawkins and Master Yorke, who had both succumbed to illness in the preceding weeks. Diseases listed as fever, fluxes, plagues, and calentures all took their toll on many of those who crossed the Atlantic in the late sixteenth century.
But conditions were not always so dire. Robert Fotherby bragged in October 1614 that when William Baffin's ship arrived in Wapping after a Northwest voyage of six months, on board was "the whole number of men she carried forth (my selfe excepted, that was come before), being sixe and twentie, all in perfect health." Likewise, all passengers and crew bound for Jamestown in 1607 arrived alive, with the exception of one man whose "fat melted within him" while hunting wild boar in the Caribbean islands. There were, in fact, many voyages in which "nothing happened unto us."
The outcome of each voyage depended greatly on the cleanliness of the ship. As early as 1553, it was recognized that poor ship hygiene might be responsible for the poor health of passengers and crew. In his "Ordinances, instructions and advertisements of and for the direction of the intended voyage for Cathay" of 1553, Sebastian Cabot ordered that there should be no liquor "spilt on the balast, nor filthines to be left within boord" and that the cook room, and all other places should be kept clean "for the better health of the companie." Of course, it was difficult to keep ships clean when they held over a hundred people and often live animals as well. Nearly eighty years later, the captain of the Arbella in 1630 complained to John Winthrop that "our landmen were very nasty and slovenly, and that the gun deck where they lodged was so beastly and noisome with their victuals and beastliness as would much endanger the health of the ship."
Preventive measures such as rummaging, which involved removing soiled ballast and replacing it with fresh, and designating a ship's liar every Monday, whose punishment it was to clean the beakhead and the chainplates — those parts of the ship used for a toilet, may have alleviated some problems. Butler’s suggestion of washing the ship every day with vinegar and fumigating the tween-deck area with burning tar echoed Hawkins, but his notion of allowing the passengers on deck into the fresh air at all times during fair weather was radical. Unfortunately, the small size of many ships plying the Atlantic did not allow for the passenger free access to the weather deck.
Since the nature of disease was improperly understood throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, very little else could be done.
One disease common to the seafarer (as well as to the landsman, though it is less celebrated in literature) was understood properly enough, and although its coming could not always be prevented, it could easily be cured. The disease was scurvy, and its symptoms were well known to the seasoned sailor. "The signes to know this disease in the beginning are divers," wrote Richard Hawkins. "It bringeth with it a great desire to drinke, and causeth a general swelling of all parts of the body, especially the legs and gums, and many times the teeth fall out of the jawes without paine." It could also be identified "by denting of the flesh of the leggs with a mans finger, the pit remaining without filling up in a good space. Others show it in their lasinesse: others complaine of the cricke of the backe, etc., all which are, for the most part, certaine tokens of infection. Hawkins claimed that scurvy could be caused by an unclean ship and recommended a vinegar wash to remedy the situation. But he also recognized that scurvy came from an improper diet and that the addition of "sower orranges and lemons" to the diet along with other fresh foods "gave health to those that used it."By the first quarter of the seventeenth century, John Smith suggested that everyship's commander should carry with him "the juyce of Limons for the scurvy." Butler echoed this advice later and included oranges and limes as well in his list of necessities. While Captain Cook may have gotten credit for curing scurvy at sea in the eighteenth century, Elizabethan and Jacobean sailors were on the right track.
While scurvy was a common shipboard ailment, seasickness was the universal leveller. The pitching and tossing of the round-bottomed vessels sent many captains, sailors, and passengers running for the lee side of the ship. Then, as now, there was no completely effective cure.
Richard Madox, who suffered much from seasickness in 1582, had the experience of the sailors around him to draw from as he searched for relief. "I was tawght many medcynes to avoyd the sycknes of the sea as namely a safron paper on the stomak or to drink the juse of wormwod," he wrote. He also experimented with a broth, cooked in an earthen pipkin, consisting of "violet flowrs, borage flowrs, rosemary flowrs...caphers...and rosemary and tyme." But the only thing that seemed to work was "to keep very warme, to be sure of hote supping often, to use moderate motion and to bear yt with a good corage til by acqueyntance you become familiar with the heaving and setting of the ship and be able to brooke the seas...." No better advice exists even today.
Change in shipboard life was slow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Problems common to the early years still plagued ships, sailors and passengers in later years.
But there was progress. Conditions on board gradually improved and new methods of shipboard survival, often invented under extreme circumstances, were used along with the old. Pursers took greater care in lading victuals, captains turned a conscientious eye toward the quality of air in their holds, and the traditions of the sea guaranteed that at least the chainplates and beakhead would remain clean throughout the week.
Conclusion
Between 1560 and 1686, England*s merchant shipping increased from 50,000 tons to 340,000 tons.
Ships increased in both number and size, thanks to a growing sophistication in shipwrightry techniques. England's greatest maritime competitors during this period, the Iberians and the Dutch, fell behind the English in terms of safety and multi-purpose use. The English race-built ships with their lower centers of gravity proved swifter and safer than the Spanish ships that challenged the English in 1588, and English ships continued to surpass Spanish ships in the seventeenth century. The Dutch, whose ships were marvels of specialization, were unable to prevail at sea against multi-purpose English ships during three wars with England between 1652 and 1674, leaving England unmatched at sea. Why was England, a nation that had been so inferior in maritime affairs up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, suddenly the most sophisticated and successful maritime power in the Western world?
The religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth century led to an increase in maritime activity in England. Henry VIII1s break with the Catholic Church placed England in the unenviable position of championing the Protestant cause against the impressive continental powers of both France and Spain. Rumblings about a Spanish invasion fleet were heard far in advance of the year 1588, and French piratical raids on the southern English coast had occurred since earliest memory. It became increasingly obvious that England's best defense was a strong maritime presence.
Although England's naval fleet was on occasion quite impressive, her greatest advantage lay in her merchant fleet. Unlike the Dutch, who built highly specialized vessels that could not easily switch from one task to another, English shipwrights tended toward the generic, building vessels that could bear armaments as easily as they could carry cargo. The crown was very much the driving force behind this development, paying bounties to shipbuilders who agreed to construct merchant ships that could be called into military duty as needed. Government subsidies thus increased the number of vessels placed into production in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
The crown was also very much the moving force behind the privateering that arose as hostilities with Spain ensued in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Letters of marque issued by the crown for privateering expeditions against the Spanish paid £47 on every £1 invested. It was a lucrative business in times of war and far more attractive to sailors who earned an average of 10 shillings a month in the merchant service. The rewards of privateering during the Spanish wars, and later the Dutch wars brought many more ships into service.
Above all, English sailors* and shipwrights' empirical observations did the most to realize England's maritime potential during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
By the late sixteenth century, English mariners were "assured to have commodity of the current[s]" which they had encountered in their travels, based on years of observation. Knowledge of the winds, waters, and currents of the Atlantic, and later all the seas of the world, allowed the English not only to travel appropriate routes for the different seasons, but also to design their vessels to withstand the rigors of the seas.
Improvements in pilotage and navigational technique insured that those routes could be sailed repeatedly without fear of becoming lost. English innovations such as the backstaff allowed mariners to more accurately pinpoint their latitudes, and the introduction of the traverse board gave pilots a rudimentary way to figure longitude (in an era without accurate chronometers) without any extensive knowledge of astronomy. Experimentation with building and maintenance techniques increased the lifespan as well as the effectiveness of English vessels as experimentation with shipboard diet and hygiene increased the lifespan and effectiveness of the crews and passengers within. The capture and occasional purchase of foreign vessels also brought new construction techniques and ideas to English shipwrights who borrowed, modified and created technologies that increased the efficiency of England*s fleets. By the late seventeenth century, English ships, borne on the wings of the wind, had rendered the globe accessible to the people of England.
Appendix One
The winds of the Atlantic vary from season to season, but there is a discernible pattern at all times. With the benefit of modern technology as well as five hundred years of sailing experience in the Atlantic, it is possible to make a few general statements about the wind and current patterns of the Atlantic. This knowledge is essential for understanding why the explorers from Columbus onward chose the routes they did and built the types of vessels they did.
The rotation of winds and the flow of currents in the Atlantic occurs because of the rotation of the earth and the land masses that break up the oceans. If the ocean completely covered the globe, with no land masses to hinder the air flow, the winds would be symmetrical over both hemispheres.
But because the Earth rotates, the winds, which would otherwise blow from the pole to the equator and back, are deflected to the right, or west in the northern hemisphere and to the left, or east in the southern. This pattern, called the Coriolis Effect in the nineteenth century, applies to any moving object connected to a rotating body. Inertia deflects the object from its path.
In the North Atlantic, hot air rising from the equator travels northward to the pole, but is deflected by the earth's rotation and cools at about thirty degrees latitude.
At this point, the wind is travelling nearly perpendicular to its original northerly course and it begins its descent southward. Mariners refer to these winds as the westerlies because they seem to spring from that direction. Meanwhile, cooler air rushes to fill the gap at the equator, but it, too, is deflected from its course and heads to the west.
These winds become the "Trade Winds,” so-called because of their use by European ships in trade with the Caribbean.
Hence the circular pattern in the North Atlantic. The pattern drifts however, following the sun in its seasonal cycle, and the "equator of the winds" drifts north and south of the earth*s equator as well, bringing with it a band of calm known today as the doldrums, where the trades of the northern hemisphere meet with those of the southern, thus cancelling one another. Likewise, a band of calm exists between the trades and the westerlies known as the "Horse Latitudes."
The rotation of the Earth also shapes the pattern of the currents in the North Atlantic. While there are many differences in temperature and salinity in the Atlantic, which cause the waters to move at varying rates, the wind is the primary means of surface movement. Land masses, which stand in the way of these currents, deflect them so that they often flow perpendicular to the wind, causing leeway in a ship. These currents average around two knots, except for the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. The Gulf Stream originates from the meeting of a southern hemisphere current that is deflected northward by the huge headland of Brazil.
It joins the outflow from the Amazon, which in turn joins the current associated with the northern trades. It circles the Caribbean basin and shoots out of the narrow channel between Florida and the Bermuda bank. Heated from its stay in the tropics, the current heads northward at a speed of roughly four to five knots, separated from the coast of North America by a cooler, fresher current from the north.
At about forty to forty-five degrees latitude, it veers off to the east and meets the cold Labrador current heading south. The meeting of such wildly divergent water temperatures creates a massive fog bank off Newfoundland and the Grand Banks region, which early explorers remarked upon.
Reaching Northern Europe, the Gulf Stream slows to a drift, but retains enough warmth to keep northern European ports free from ice. Lesser currents abound in the polar regions, passing as the seasons allow around Greenland and Iceland and southward past Scandinavia.