No more English but two ships this year laded there.
Note here how the Hollanders employ themselves and their Ships! First, in taking of the herrings quick [alive]; and yet are not content! but catch them again, after they be dead! and do set both their ships and mariners on work: and English ships lie up a rotting!
And whereas I said before, that there was not one ship set on work by our fishermen: there may be objected against me this. That there doth every year commonly lade at Yarmouth four or five London ships for the Straits [of Gibraltar], which is sometimes true. And the Yarmouth men themselves do yearly send two or three ships to Bordeaux, and two or three boats laden with herrings, to Rouen, or to Nantes, or Saint Malo: whereby there are returned salt, wines, and Normandy canvas; whereby the King hath some custom. But there is no money returned into England for these herrings, which cost the Yarmouthians ready gold, before that they had them of the Hollanders and Frenchmen to lade these ships: and therefore I may boldly say, Not one!
And this last year now the Hollanders themselves have also gotten that trade, for there did lade twelve sail of Holland ships with red herrings at Yarmouth for Civita Vecchia, Leghorn, Genoa, and Marseilles and Toulon. Most of them being ladened by the English merchants. So that if this be suffered, the English owners of ships shall have but small employment for theirs.
Now to show truly, what the whole charge of a Buss will be, with all her furniture, as masts, sails, anchors, cables, and with all her fisher's implements and appurtenances, at the first provided all new. It is a great charge, she being between thirty and forty Last [= 60 to 80 Tons] and will cost some five hundred pounds [= about £2,250 in present value].
By the grace of GOD, the Ship or Buss will continue twenty years, with small cost and reparations: but the yearly slite [fraying] and wear of her tackle and war-ropes and nets will cost some eighty pounds.
And the whole charge for the keeping of her at sea for the whole summer, or three voyages; for the fitting of a hundred Last of caske or barrels.
| If any willknow all theparticulars ofWeys of Salt,or Barrels ofBeer, or Hundred[weight]sofBiscuits, I willwillingly resolve[explainto] him; buthere is thewhole charge,and with the most [at theoutside.] | 100 Last of Barrels | £72 | One hundred Last of herrings, filled and sold at £10 the Last, cometh to one thousand pounds. | |
| For Salt, four months | 88 | |||
| Beer, four months | 42 | |||
| For Bread, four months | 21 | |||
| Bacon and Butter | 18 | |||
| For Pease, four months | 3 | |||
| For Billet, four months | 3 | Herrings | £1000 | |
| For men's wages, four months | 88 | The whole charge | 335 | |
| £335 | Gotten | £665 | ||
| [See full particulars in the later work Britain's Buss in Vol. III. p. 621.] | ||||