CHAPTER II
GREAT BRITAIN
England has never granted general ship-construction or navigation bounties except in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Under Elizabeth Parliament offered a bounty of five shillings per ton to every ship above one hundred tons burden; and under James I that law was revived, with the bounty applying only to vessels of two hundred tons or over.[[A]]
A policy of Government favoritism to shipping, however, began far back in the dim ninth century with Alfred the Great. Under the inspiration of this Saxon of many virtues, his people increased the number of English merchant vessels and laid the foundation for the creation and maintenance of a royal navy.[[B]] The Saxon Athelstan, Alfred's grandson, whose attention to commerce was also marked, first made it a way to honor, one of his laws enacting that a merchant or mariner successfully accomplishing three voyages on the high seas with a ship and a cargo of his own should be advanced to the dignity of a thane (baron).[[C]]
The first navigation law was enacted in the year 1381, fifth of Richard II. This act, introduced "to awaken industry and increase the wealth of the inhabitants and extend their influence,"[[D]] ordained that "none of the King's liege people should from henceforth ship any merchandise in going out or coming within the realm of England but only in the ships of the King's liegeance, on penalty of forfeiture of vessel and cargo."[[E]]
This act of Richard II was the forerunner of the code of Cromwell, which came to be called the "Great Maritime Charter of England," and the fundamental principles of which held up to the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
Under Charles I was enacted (1646) the first restrictive act with relation to the commerce of the colonies, which ordained "That none in any of the ports of the plantations of Virginia, Bermuda, Barbados, and other places of America, shall suffer any ship or vessel to lade any goods of the growth of the plantations and carry them to foreign ports except in English bottoms," under forfeiture of certain exemptions from customs.[[F]] It was followed up four years later (1650) under the Commonwealth, by an act prohibiting "all foreign vessels whatever from lading with the plantations of America without having obtained a license."[[G]]
Cromwell's code, of which the act of 1381 was the germ, was established the next year, 1651. Its primary object was to check the maritime supremacy of Holland, then attaining dominance of the sea; and to strike a decisive blow at her naval power. The ultimate aim was to secure to England the whole carrying trade of the world, Europe only excepted.[[H]] These were its chief provisions: that no goods or commodities whatever of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America should be imported either into England or Ireland, or any of the plantations, except in English-built ships, owned by English subjects, navigated by English masters, and of which three-fourths of the crew were Englishmen; or in such ships as were the real property of the people of the country or place in which the goods were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually were, exported.[[I]] This last clause was the blow direct to Holland, for the Dutch had little native products to export, and their ships were mainly employed in carrying the produce of other countries to all foreign markets. It was answered with war, the fierce naval war of 1652-1654, in which was exhibited that famous spectacle of the at first victorious Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, sweeping the English Channel with a broom at his masthead.
With the final defeat of the Dutch after hard fighting on both sides, their virtual submission to the English Navigation Act, and their admission of the English "sovereignty of the seas,"[[J]] by their consent to "strike their flag to the shipping of the Commonwealth," England, in her turn, became the chief sea power of the world.[[K]] During the ten years of peace that followed, however, the Dutch despite the English Navigation Act, succeeded in increasing their shipping, and regained much of the carrying trade if not their lost leadership.[[L]]