Division of Prize Money.

In the seventeenth century Monson noticed that, notwithstanding the destruction they brought on Spanish commerce nationally, the majority of the Elizabethan adventurers not only made no fortunes but ruined themselves by their enterprises. So far as pecuniary receipts were concerned there were only two really great captures during the Queen’s reign. Her share of the St Philip, taken by Drake in 1587, was £46,672; Drake’s own, £18,235; the Lord Admiral’s, £4338; and private adventurers, £44,787.[757] A still richer haul was made in the Madre de Dios, taken in 1592, which, by the account of her purser, carried 8500 quintals of pepper, 900 of cloves, 700 of cinnamon, 500 of cochineal, and 450 of other merchandise, besides amber, musk, and precious stones to the value of 400,000 crusados, and some especially fine diamonds.[758] In this case there was only one Queen’s ship among the ten entitled to share, and the services rendered by that one were questioned, but Her Majesty demanded the lion’s share of the proceeds. If the men were not paid wages the usual arrangement for the division of prize money was that if ships were cruising, and ‘thirds’ were agreed upon, the spoil was to be divided into three parts, viz., tonnage (i.e., owners), one part, the victuallers the second part, and the men the remaining third. But if ships joined in ‘consortship,’ their takings were to be first divided ton for ton, and man for man, then each vessel’s proportion was to be joined and divided into shares as before.[759] By the second mode ships belonging to the squadron, but absent from a particular capture, would still share the pillage. The captain took ten shares, the master seven or eight, and most of the remaining officers three to five each; if the cruiser was a privateer the Lord Admiral received a tenth from each of the thirds. For the twelve years 1587-98 Nottingham’s tenths amounted to upwards of £18,000.[760] The following computation shows the proportions due on this system of division assuming the value of the carrack’s cargo to have been £140,000.[761]

Foresight
(Queen’s Ship)		Tonnage 450,£809298½ }£23103104½
Men 170,7505104 }
Victualling as for men,7505104 }
Roebuck
(Sir W. Ralegh)		Tonnage 350,629431½ }20422310½
Men 160,706404½ }
Victualling as for men,706404½ }
Dainty
(Sir J. Hawkyns)		Tonnage 300,5394199½ }1422502½
Men 100,441502½ }
Victualling as for men,441502½ }
Five Ships
(Earl of Cumberland)		Tonnage 1235,2220976½ }6635999½
Men 500,2207511½ }
Victualling as for men,2207511½ }
Two Ships
of London		Tonnage 260,4675132 }15889159
Men 127,560713½ }
Victualling as for men,560713½ }

There was thus a total of 2595 tons. One third of £140,000 is £46,666, 13s 4d and this, divided by 2595, gives a unit of £17, 19s 6d a ton. For the Foresight 450 times £17, 19s 6d yields roughly the £8092, 9s 8½d to which her tonnage entitles her; the same formula gives the shares of the other ships, and of the men, substituting in the latter case 1057 for 2595. The Earl of Cumberland, one of the most persistent and one of the most unlucky of the private adventurers of his day got only £36,000, and in the end, after much bickering, Elizabeth took nearly £80,000 of the plunder. There is no doubt that the fleet was in ‘consortship,’[762] but it did not suit her interests to allow that form of division. The official belief, and one apparently well founded, was that enormous theft went on, both among officers and men, before the prize was brought into port. Robert Cecil, who had been sent into Devonshire to make inquiries, wrote to his father that, approaching Exeter, he ‘cold well smell them almost such has been the spoils of amber and musk among them ... there never was such spoil.’ Officers and men pillaged first, the captains took what they could from them, and when the admiral, Sir John Burroughs, came up, he plundered the captains. Among other items the Commissioners found that an emerald cross three inches long, 62 diamonds, and 1400 ‘very great’ pearls had been stolen. It is not known what became of the Madre de Dios, but possibly an offer from the mayor and burgesses of Dartmouth to pay £200 and build a hospital for the poor in return ‘for yᵉ carrick’ may refer to it.[763]

Merchant Shipping and Trade.

In 1584 Hawkyns wrote to Burghley ‘I ame perswydyd that the substance of this reallme ys treblyd in vallew syns her Maiesties raygne.’ So far as the carrying trade, as exemplified in the increase of merchant ships, was concerned, the statement was more than justified. The legislation that had long been directed in a more or less perfunctory manner to the encouragement of English merchant shipping by protective enactments was enforced more stringently. Such enactments were varied or renewed by the 1st, 5th, 13th, 23rd, 27th and 39th of Elizabeth. The coast fisheries were assisted by permission being granted to export fish in English bottoms, free of custom, subsidy, or poundage,[764] while the internal consumption was increased by the more rigid exaction of the observance of fish days. The coasting trade was confined to English owned ships, and the earlier statutes bearing on exportation or importation in foreign vessels were put into active operation. These measures were not fruitless. For 1576 is a list of fifty-one ships built in the preceding five years and attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the statute ordering abstinence from flesh on Wednesdays.[765] In 1581 the authorities of the Trinity Corporation sent in a certificate showing a large increase in the number of fishing boats, there being in a short time, an addition of 114 on the east and south-east coasts alone between Newcastle and Portsmouth.[766]

The bounty of five shillings a ton, for vessels of 100 tons and upwards, only paid occasionally during preceding reigns is now of common occurrence. The Exchequer warrants name 162 ships on which it was given during the reign, and the series is probably far from complete. Certain names frequently recur in these entries; the Hawkyns family of Plymouth; Olyff Burre, a coppersmith of Southwark, who obtained the bounty on 790 tons of shipping in two years; the Fenners of Chichester; Philip and Francis Drake; and William Borough. Sometimes seamen were both owners and masters but more frequently the owners are described as merchants. Towards the later years of the century, when the volume of ocean trade had greatly increased, the bounty payments become almost continuous, and then owners had to give surety not to sell their ships to foreigners. Between 1581 and 1594 there had been built—or rather had received the premium—46 such vessels of which 25 belonged to London, 7 to Bristol, 2 to Southampton, 3 to Dartmouth, and 1 each to Hull and Liverpool.[767] The Galleon Ughtred of Southampton, built by John Ughtred of Netley, was of 500 tons, and when she was sent to sea under Fenton was valued at £6035, fitted, victualled, and munitioned.[768]

It is perhaps indicative of the results of the years 1587-8-9 that while only 46 such vessels had been built in thirteen years, there were, between 1592 and 1595, 48 large ships of 10,622 tons receiving a sum of £2683, 5s. In one year—1593—London owners were paid on 16 ships of 3248 tons; Dartmouth, as in the preceding century, is ahead of the other southern ports with seven vessels of 1460 tons.[769] From September 1596 to September 1597 the bounty was paid on 57 ships of 11,160 tons; two were of 400 tons, four of 320, two of 310, thirty-two of between 200 and 300 tons, and the general increase in the tonnage of individual ships is another noticeable fact in the growth of the shipping industry.[770]

But probably the bounty was not always paid. At the foot of a list of merchantmen for the years 1572-9, the owners of which had given bond that they should not be sold to the subjects of a foreign power, the clerk writes: ‘whether all these or how many of them have had any allowance of Her Majesty I cannot tell for that there is no record of the allowance in this court.’[771] The total is 70 ships of 12,630 tons; the largest are, one of Bristol of 600 tons, one of London of 450, and one of Dartmouth of 400 tons. One entry, on 9th July, 1577, is that Francis Drake of Plymouth gives bond for the Pelican of 150 tons.[772] Very often the five shillings a ton was not paid but allowed on the customs, as in 1595, when 636 crowns were granted to three London merchants ‘to be allowed on the customs of merchandise brought by the said ships.’ It was of course to the interest of the owner to have his vessel rated at the highest possible tonnage, both for the bounty and for service with the royal fleets. For the latter the hire remained at one shilling a ton till about 1580 when it was raised to two shillings and even then the measuring officers, we are told, usually allowed the Queen to be charged for a third more than the real tonnage.[773]

Besides the stimulus of general trade and the requirements of the crown for ships to serve with the fleets, there was a further encouragement to building in the action of the great chartered associations then in possession of so much of the over sea trade. The Russia Company, chartered in 1555, traded to Russia, Persia, and the Caspian, and, late in the century, commenced the whale fishery; the Turkey, or Levant Company, founded in 1581, to the dominions of the Sultan, the Greek Archipelago, and, indirectly, to the East Indies; the Eastland Company trading through the Sound to Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark; the Guinea Company to the west coast of Africa, and the Merchant Adventurers along the northern coast of continental Europe. Many of the largest ocean-going ships either belonged to, or were hired by, these corporations, and owners who had entered into the prevalent spirit of shipbuilding felt that they had a right to have their vessels hired by the companies. Olyff Burre, the speculative owner before mentioned, petitioned the Council in 1579 to the effect that he had obtained a living for forty years ‘cheefely by the maynteyninge of shippinge and the navygacon,’ that he now had a number of vessels unemployed, and that he trusted they would order the Spanish Company to hire his ships.[774] In 1581 the Levant Company possessed fourteen ships varying in size from 200 to 350 tons; they complain, in a petition, that the new import duties levied by the Venetians are destroying their trade, and that their ships are too big to be employed in any other work.[775] In the five years 1583-7 this company employed nineteen vessels and 787 men in twenty-seven voyages, and paid £11,359 in customs. In 1600 they owned thirteen of 2610 tons and hired seventeen of 2650 tons. Their agent at Constantinople cost £1000 a year, besides presents to the Turks, and in 1591 they calculated that, first and last, they had been compelled to spend £40,000 in maintaining agents, consuls, etc.[776] The profits made by these companies were sometimes enormous and their risks were fewer than those of individual owners, for their large, well-armed and manned ships were less exposed to the dangers of navigation and piracy, the latter a factor to be always reckoned with.