Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

Anxious as he naturally was concerning a thousand matters, the life of the captain at sea was many degrees happier than that of his crew. At least he had a decent cabin and bed in which to sleep and take his meals and sip his punch, otherwise known as “Rosa Solis,” consisting of brandy, spices, and hot water. But the seamen’s comforts were disgracefully neglected, with the result that they died in dozens. Some more humane captains such as John Smith did their best for the men; but this was exceptional. And yet it was a thoroughly unsanitary age. Davis himself admits that many of his crew were “eaten with lice” as big as beans. Monson includes among the causes of the discouraging of seamen the inexperienced commanders who were put over them, the bad victuals which they had to endure, the dishonesty in serving them—the beef, for instance, given so that five men had to partake of four men’s allowance—and the delay which was made in paying their wages. Especially were these abuses noticeable during the early years of the seventeenth century. Men were impressed into the service even in those days, though there were volunteers as well. At the time of the Armada our sailors received as wages fourpence a day, but this was paid quarterly. In addition, of course, there was sometimes prize money in the proportions already mentioned. In Monson’s time complaint was made of the kind of foremast men who were pressed into the service “to pleasure friends.” Such men as “taylors, porters, and others of that rank, unworthy of the hatches to lie on,” were brought aboard and given no less than £1 11s. a month. And yet, when opportunity allowed, the captain used to send his crew ashore in the ship’s boats “to walk in the fields ... to take the air.” But among the officers there was too much “excessive banqueting on board” and a great waste of powder, as, for instance, when guns were fired at the drinking of a man’s health.

And the same authority has something very interesting to tell us concerning the ceremonial wearing of the flag on board ship. I have no intention of confusing our chronological sequence, but I must ask the reader for a moment to recall that incident which was one of the indirect if not the real causes of the first Anglo-Dutch wars. It will be remembered—which English schoolboy does not remember it well?—that when Captain Young, one May Day in 1652, was bound down Channel and met a convoy of Dutchmen coming up, he was angered to find the foreigner declined to salute, and an engagement immediately followed. Now, writing long before that incident had ever occurred, Monson definitely states that if a foreign fleet should pass on our seas and meet our admiral’s ship, the former were expected to acknowledge our sovereignty by coming under the lee of the admiral, by striking their topsails and taking in their flag. “And this hath never been questioned,” he adds, except out of ignorance, as in the case of Philip II, when he met the Lord Admiral of England when the former was sailing to England in order to marry Queen Mary. The custom was that if any foreign ship were to arrive in one of our ports or to pass a fort or castle, she must, as she entered, and before coming to anchor, take in her flag three times “and advance it again.” But should the English admiral be in the harbour, the foreigner was not to display his flag at all.

Prior to the reign of James I, all admirals wore the St. George’s flag at the topmast head. But when the Union of Scotland had been effected there was added the cross of St. Andrew. An admiral at anchor took in his flag in the evening and fired a gun and set the watch. “The flag carried under the poop of a ship,” he remarks, “shews a disgrace,” and is never used except when it is won or taken from an enemy.

Jealousy of Spain and greed of gold had as much to do with the impetus given to English seamanship and navigation during Elizabethan times as any inherent love of the sea. To meet this new zeal various writers, some of whom we have already mentioned, set to work to write treatises that would turn raw agricultural labourers and tavern-haunters into fighting sailors and navigators. William Bourne, from whom we have already quoted, in his “Regiment for the Sea” was the first to give a book on navigation written by an Englishman. This was in the year 1573, and a rare example of this little work is still preserved in the British Museum. In it he pointed out the various ways for finding the variation of the compass, exposed the errors of the plane charts, and advised mariners in sailing towards high latitudes to keep their reckoning by the globe, as in those regions the plane chart was most likely to land them into trouble.

In 1594 John Davis, the Arctic explorer, published his “The Seaman’s Secrets.” This book became very popular, and took the place of the Spanish Martin Cortes’ handbook, which had been used in the English translation. There is a vast amount of matter in Davis’ “Secrets” which is worth perusing even by the modern navigator. He speaks of “great Circle navigation,” and gives a whole host of valuable practical hints. “The Instruments necessarie for a skilfull seaman,” he explains, “are a Sea Compasse, a Cross staffe, a Quadrant, an Astrolabe, a Chart, an instrument magneticall[49] for the finding of the variation of the Compasse, an Horizontall plaine Sphere, a Globe, and a paradoxall Compasse”[50] ... “but the Sea Compasse, Chart and Crosse staffe are instruments sufficient for the seaman’s use, the astrolabie and quadrant being ... very uncertaine.” In this book he gives instruction as to tides, stars, and how to use the astrolabe. And it is worth noting that he speaks of the English Channel after the fashion of our Gallic neighbours, who still refer to “La manche.” “Our Channell,” he explains, “commonly called the Sleue” (sleeve).

Chart of A.D. 1589.

Showing the dividing line between the Old World and the New.

It will be recollected that the Pope had drawn an imaginary line North and South, a hundred leagues west of the Azores, leaving all that lay east thereof to the Portuguese, and all that lay west to the Spanish.

Everyone knows that longitude is the distance east or west of a given meridian. In those days Greenwich did not enter into the matter: the observatory there had still to be founded. When Davis wrote in the year 1594 there was no variation at St. Michael’s in the Azores, and so the longitude was reckoned from there. “Longitude,” he defines, “is that portion of the Equator contained betweene the Meridian of S. Michel’s, one of the Assores, and the Meridian of the place whose longitude is desired: the reason why the accompt of longitude doth begin at this Ile is, because that there the compasse hath no variety.”