Payment of Hired Ships.
It has been noticed that several of the towns put forward the crown debts incurred on behalf of the military and naval forces as an excuse for their want of means when asked for ships in 1627. Private owners who may have been encouraged to build by the renewal of the bounty and the demand for hired ships soon found that as regards payment they were as badly off as the towns in their corporate capacity. They may not have expected very prompt settlement, but, by August 1627, the owners of ships taken up for the Cadiz voyage of 1625 were beginning to petition somewhat impatiently. Ipswich, for instance, had sent twenty-four vessels and had not yet received anything. In December these and other owners petitioned again, mentioning that 100 ships had been lost during the year, and declining the offer of crown lands in liquidation of their demands. They gave as the reason of their refusal the subdivision of ownership in a vessel among many members, and that they did not understand land, adding, ‘To be two years, and many of us three years, without pay deserveth consideration, many of us undone and many more will be.’[1162] By February 1628 it was noticed that ships were being purposely built with less than the regulation space between decks, so that they should be unfit for the service of the crown;[1163] and later in the year masters of transports were asking double the ordinary rates, and were even then so unwilling to serve that threats of impressment had to be used. In March 1629 one unhappy man complains that he has had a vessel hired for four years, that he has received in that time a bill[1164] for £200 which has been for three years dishonoured, and that he goes about in daily fear of arrest himself. It was not until the receipts from the ship-money writs brought relief to the treasury that these debts were paid off. Under the government of Charles the hire of ships remained at 2s a ton per month, but after 1642 the Parliament adopted a different system, that of paying £3, 15s 6d a month per man, the owner sending his vessel armed and completely provided for sea; but the state accepted responsibility in the event of loss.
Inventions connected with Shipping.
The demand for shipping naturally gave an impetus to the spirit of invention in connection with maritime matters. In July 1625 Letters Patent were granted to Wm. Beale for a cement intended to preserve the hulls of ships from barnacles, the first of a long series of such contrivances.[1165] In 1626 some one, unnamed, proposed attempting to propel boats under water,[1166] and in 1630 David Ramseye, who may have been the David Ramsey of 1618, a similar inventor, designed ‘to make boats, ships, and barges go against wind and tide.’[1167] Again, in 1632, Thos. Grent offered ‘an instrument’ for moving becalmed ships, which he called the ‘Wind’s Majesty’; John Bulmer and Christopher van Berg invented methods of raising sunken vessels and their cargoes, and in 1637 and 1640 other patents were taken out for appliances to move vessels against wind and tide.[1168] In none of these cases was any specification enrolled. In 1630 Stephen Gibbs was granted the exclusive use, for fourteen years, of the means devised by him for clearing silted havens and draining marsh lands.[1169] Perhaps the most useful device was one which does not seem to have been patented. In July 1634 Edisbury wrote to Nicholas, ‘There is now an invention found out to moor ships in the river with iron chains.’[1170] If this was the beginning of the substitution of iron for cordage in the various conditions where one could replace the other, it was the commencement of a change which vastly extended the possibilities of seamanship.
Piracy.
More deadly foes to the merchant than the chances of war and storm were the Turkish and Dunkirk pirates, who held command of the Channel, and for whom these were halcyon years until, in the next generation, the Commonwealth navy swept the seas. For reasons already touched upon, neither the ships nor the men in the royal service were capable of dealing with these freebooters, and the appeals for protection, which began within a week of the King’s accession, continued until the strengthened parliamentary naval force was able to secure the coasts.
At first the Turks—all Mediterranean pirates were inclusively described as Turks—were the most prominent enemy. In August 1625 they were reported to have twenty sail on the southern coast, and according to the Mayor of Poole, threatened that within two years they would not leave the King sufficient seamen to man his ships. As the Mayor of Plymouth said that during that year they had captured 1000 sailors, and within the ten days before his letter, twenty-seven ships and 200 men, there was some force in the threat.[1171] A year later some of the Navy Commissioners, then at Plymouth, wrote to the Council that the successes of the Turks were ‘the shame of our nation. The pitiful lamentations that are made by wives and children ... is so grievous that we know if your lordships heard it as we do, we are assured that it would move the same passion and grief in your noble hearts as it does in us.’[1172] Their culminating success was the seizure and sack of Baltimore, a thriving village port on the Munster coast. There they landed on the night of 30th June 1631, and, besides material spoil, bore off 237 English subjects, men, women and children into slavery. There were not many vessels in commission that year, but there was an inspection by the King at Chatham and Portsmouth, for which the cost of preparation was £1275, an amount which expended in another way could have saved these victims.
When any of the Turks were caught, fear of reprisals compelled the government to treat them tenderly; some prisoners were tried in June, but private instructions were given that they were not to be put to death,[1173] and shortly afterwards the relatives of 2000 men, captives in Sallee, petitioned for some redress, which explains the leniency of the executive.[1174] Nor was this petition neglected, since, by a Council order of October, guns were to be exported to Barbary to ransom English prisoners. It was a poor way of upholding the honour of England, but since the cruisers could not clear the Channel, and there was no fleet to spare for a Mediterranean expedition, it was the only one open.
While the Turks operated in the south, the Dunkirkers, who, in addition to their other misdeeds, supplied the former with provisions and stores, practically blockaded the east coast. The Newcastle townspeople wrote that they were destroying the coal trade, and at Ipswich trade had altogether ceased, fifty-eight ships being laid up for fear of them, and shipping to the value of £4000 having been taken in one year.[1175] In August 1626, when the inhabitants of the coast of Suffolk were asked for a ‘voluntary gift,’ they answered ‘with loud cries, that their vessels were fired or taken in their havens before their eyes.’ At Lynn 1000 men, having 3000 women and children dependent upon them, were out of employment, and here the pirate crews landed and plundered and burnt houses near the shore. The inhabitants of the Cinque Ports petition against the ‘force and fury’ of the Dunkirkers, and complain that they are ‘miserably oppressed by them and dare not go about our voyages to Scarborough and Yarmouth, or fish in the North Sea.’[1176]