A few years after the Revolution measures were taken to revive the Greenland fishery; and in 1692 a company, incorporated for carrying it on with a capital of 40,000l., was granted by charter the exclusive possession of the trade for fourteen years. The preamble of their Act describes the previous trade to Greenland as “quite decayed and lost,” the merchants, who had been encouraged to enter into this business, in virtue of the previous Act of 1673, having only imported a small quantity of oil, blubber, and whale fins. They had found other nations enter into the trade with so large a number of ships, that the English fishermen were not enabled to compete with them on their separate interests; indeed the whole trade was then or soon after engrossed by foreigners. At length it was represented to the government that for several years no ships had been despatched from England to Greenland, and that the produce of those fisheries had been wholly bought from foreigners, the prices paid being six times the rates they formerly were; and the memorial added that there were few, if any, English harpooners or English seamen skilled and exercised in whale-catching, so that “the said trade could not be regained nor carried on without foreign harpinierers, or upon individual risks without a joint-stock fund.” As, however, the Greenland fishery did not rally under the protective charter conferred upon the parties subscribing, an additional capital of 42,000l. was raised in 1696, and a new Act obtained, exempting the Company from all duties upon oil, blubber, and whale fins imported during the term of their charter, but before it expired the entire capital was lost, and the Company relinquished the business. Under these circumstances the trade in 1702 was thrown open by Parliament, the Act pronouncing that it had been neglected by the Company, and thus lost to the nation. Twenty years afterwards, in 1721, the number of foreign ships engaged in the Greenland and Davis’s Straits fishery were three hundred and fifty-five, of which Holland sent two hundred and fifty-one ships, Hamburg fifty-five, Bremen twenty-four, Biscay twenty, and Bergen, in Norway, five.
Russian trade.
Peter the Great.
In 1699 the trade with Russia, now daily becoming of greater importance, in consequence of the impulse given to the Russian mercantile navy by Peter the Great, was also practically thrown open by an Act entitling any person to admission to the Russia Company upon payment of an entrance fee of five pounds. It was about this time that the Czar abdicated temporarily his high functions as a powerful barbarian prince, and, assuming a pilot’s dress, repaired to the Dutch city of Saardam, then celebrated for its extensive ship-building, where he purchased a small vessel, at the finishing of which he worked with his own hands. He afterwards worked at every branch of ship-building, associating freely with his fellow artisans. Inscribed on the roll of ships’ carpenters as Peter Michaeloff, he passed among the workmen by the name of Master Peter. After having visited Amsterdam and other towns of Holland, this extraordinary man proceeded to England, where he worked in the dockyard at Deptford in the same industrious, unostentatious manner as he had done in Holland. The Dutch had taught him the mere routine of their method of ship-building; in England he was instructed in the higher branches of the art, and was soon rendered capable of giving instructions to others. It is said that he assisted in building one of the best sailing vessels that had yet been launched. Soon after his return home Russia became a naval power, possessing for the first time a considerable fleet.[201]
Effect of legislative union with Scotland, 1707.
The maritime commerce of Scotland.
Although by the accession of James VI. of Scotland and I. of England these two countries were brought under the same sovereign, they, until the reign of Queen Anne, were for all purposes of trade and legislation foreign and antagonistic states. There was little or no commercial, much less social, intercourse between them; and the advantages enjoyed by either one, and acquired by foreign treaties, were rigorously withheld from the other. The whole amount of trade between the two countries rarely exceeding in value 150,000l. per annum, the amount of shipping employed in it was consequently altogether insignificant; but the Legislative Union in time gave an immense impulse to the commerce of Scotland, and opened to that country the rich fields of the English colonial possessions as well as her home markets. The merchants of Glasgow and Greenock were the first to reap the advantages of the Union, but their commercial operations were confined in a great measure, throughout the whole of the last century, to the West Indies, and to the plantations of British North America, more especially to Virginia, while the insurrection in favour of the son of James II., known as the “Pretender,” very materially retarded the incipient maritime prosperity of that portion of the now thoroughly united kingdom, obliging as it did the English to maintain a considerable fleet cruising off the coasts of Scotland. But when this insurrection was suppressed the trade of Scotland again steadily increased, and may be said to have gone hand-in-hand with England ever since, though interrupted for a time by the more serious rebellion of 1745-6.
Various circumstances tended to strengthen this commercial intercourse, and, not the least among the number, may be mentioned the establishment of the Board of Trade, which, though originally formed under Charles II. in 1668, only became a permanent establishment in 1696, consisting of a royal commission under the style of the “Commissioners for promoting the trade of the Kingdom, and for inspecting and improving the Plantations in America and elsewhere.” This Board afforded resources for enlarging and materially benefiting the trade of the United Kingdom by the publication of its statistical returns, and in numerous other ways, and had the exclusive superintendence of the commerce of the plantations, and indeed of their government until 1786, when a Secretary of State was appointed for the colonies, and a new council for the affairs of trade organised on its present plan.
Buccaneers in the West Indies.
No sooner had England become distracted at home by the civil war of the first Pretender and by the rupture with Charles XII. of Sweden, than the pirates of Barbary issued from their secret haunts, and greatly interrupted every branch of her maritime commerce. In the West Indies, too, the losses sustained by the ravages of the piratical buccaneers became so extensive that the most serious complaints were preferred against the Admiralty for tolerating the grievance, the result being a proclamation offering a reward of 100l. head-money for every captain, 40l. for a lieutenant down to a gunner, 30l. for an inferior officer, and 20l. for every private captured: more than this, any pirate who delivered up his captain or commander was entitled upon his conviction to a reward of 200l.[202]