Lowestoft in olden times

by Francis Davy Longe

Piracy at Lowestoft.

The decay in the fishing trade, as regards the employment of English ships and sailors, was not confined to Lowestoft. It was felt in every English port in the West as well as on the East Coast. Protestantism in the main meant progress and commercial activity, but it did not mean this with our fishermen. If eating fish on Fridays and Saturdays was still inculcated as a duty by Elizabeth’s Government and Elizabeth’s Church, the mass of the people were too strongly Protestant to pay much respect to a rule which was an essential feature in the old religion, if their antipathy to Papism did not even cause an antipathy to fish eating at any time, particularly salt cod. At all events, there was such a diminution in the demand for salt fish as to throw a large number of sailors previously engaged in fishing voyages out of employment, and to leave this occupation almost entirely in the hands of the French and Dutch. The English sailors, at least a great many, found employment of a more exciting and remunerative character, as privateers—in other words, buccaneers, pirates, or sea robbers. Our Protestant sailors in Elizabeth’s time considered themselves as doing God’s work in robbing and scuttling any merchant ship belonging either to France or Spain which they could come across on the high seas; nor were they always very particular as to either the nature or the religion of their victims.

You will not think that this reference to the piratical practises of our seamen in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign is foreign to our subject—when I tell you that Mr. Froude has given a story of piracy at Lowestoft in 1561, as an illustration of its prevalence. He thus tells the story:

“A Flemish trader has sailed from Antwerp to Cadiz. Something happens to her on the way, and she never reaches her destination. At midnight carts and horses run down to the sea over the sand at Lowestoft. The black hull and spars of a vessel are seen outside the breakers, dimly riding in the gloom, and a boat shoots through the surf, loaded to the gunwale. The bales and tubs are swiftly shot into the carts. The horses drag back their loads, which before daybreak are safe in the cellars of some quiet manor-house. The boat sweeps off, the sails drop from the mysterious vessel’s yards, and she glides away in the darkness to look for a fresh victim”—MSS. Elizth. Vol. XVI.

He gives his authority for this story, and there must have been some foundation for it. I am afraid that some of the mariners whose names appear in our register must have been on board this black ship; but I refrain from offering any conjecture as to which of the quiet manor-houses in our neighbourhood was the depository of the spoil.

Piracy by British seamen was at this time sufficiently common to call for the interference of Parliament. It exercised much the mind of our then Prime Minister Sir William Cecil—who held the same great office under Queen Elizabeth that his descendant, our present Prime Minister, holds under Queen Victoria. From his private memoranda on this matter we may notice the following as directly bearing on our subject. He writes—

“Instead of the Iceland fleet of Englishmen, which used to supply Normandy and Brittany, as well as England, 500 French vessels, with 30 to 40 men in each of them, go annually to Newfoundland, and even the home fisheries have fallen equally into the hands of strangers. The Yarmouth waters (which certainly included the Lowestoft) were occupied by Flemish and Frenchmen. As remedies for this evil he mentions—(1) Merchandise, (2) Fishing, (3) The exercise of Piracy, which was detestable, and could not last.”

Sufficient evidence this of the extent to which our seamen had taken to piracy at this time. However detestable our Prime Minister thought it, he did not, or could not, stop it. It went on more or less throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Our sea-warriors who defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, were most of them the crews of these “pirate” ships, who for once at least, indulged their fighting propensities in the best service of their country.

The only remedy at the time that Cecil could think of was an Act of Parliament to compel people to eat fish. In 1562, Mr. Froude tells us, he brought a bill into the House of Commons to make the eating of flesh on Fridays and Saturdays a misdemeanour, punishable by a fine of £3, or three months’ imprisonment, and, as if this was not enough, adding Wednesday as a subsidiary or half-fish day, on which one dish of flesh might be allowed, provided there were served at the same table and the same meal three full competent usual dishes of sea fish of sundry kinds, fresh and salt! The House of Commons, Cecil admitted, was very much against him. He carried his measure only by arguing that, if the Bill was passed, it would be almost inoperative:—labourers and poor householders could not observe it, and the rest by license or without license would do as they would; while to satisfy the Puritans he was obliged to add the ludicrous provision that—

“Because no person should misjudge the intent of the statute which was politicly meant only for the increase of fishermen and mariners, and not for any superstition in the choice of meats, whoever should preach or teach that eating of fish or forbearing of flesh was for the saving of the soul of man, or for the service of God, should be punished as the spreader of false news.”