MARITIME NATIONS are defined by their possession of a navy and a mercantile marine, the first consisting of their armed ships of war, the second of privately owned vessels that carry cargoes for profit either in the national interest, as imports and exports, or on behalf of others. Such national commercial ‘fleets’ are commonly referred to as a ‘mercantile marine,’ but in Britain it is known as the ‘Merchant Navy’ as a result of its importance and extraordinary sacrifice in the First World War. This was repeated between 1939 and 1945 when the integration of merchant shipping with the armed forces was so close that it did, in fact, become a second ‘navy,’ all ships being armed. The ships of national mercantile marines ‘wear’ the maritime ensign of the country in which they are registered and by which they are regulated; the ships of the British Merchant Navy wear the red ensign. Although initially also a naval ensign, an Act of Parliament in 1864 had made this the exclusive flag of privately owned British vessels.
Historically, the private ownership of vessels has been vested in a wide range of commercial entities. Some possessed no more than perhaps one or two vessels of a single type; others comprised huge and complex conglomerates with scores of ships designed with different purposes in mind and trading all over the globe under a variety of company names. Today the British Merchant Navy includes not only ships owned by British citizens, but also those placed by their owners under British regulation under the Tonnage Tax regime. This entitles them to wear the red ensign of Great Britain and, in exchange for certain undertakings (chief of which is the training of young seafarers) to receive tax breaks. British registry implies their owners sign-up to certain audited practices, which range from safety and maintenance standards to the protection of the environment through on-board regulation. This assurance of quality allows an owner of a British registered ship to be placed on the so-called ‘white list’ of national registers, making his vessels more attractive to those seeking safe and profitable delivery of their cargoes. Owning a British-registered vessel also guarantees the protection of the Royal Navy in troubled times.
The origins of both the British Merchant and Royal Navies lie in the first half of the sixteenth century when, under Henry VIII, England in particular began to flex her muscles as a potential maritime power. There had been an early medieval trade with western France (then mostly fiefdoms of the Norman kings of England), wine being the most important import. It was loaded in Bordeaux in large casks, or ‘tuns’, from which we derive the expression for describing a ship’s capacity, or ‘burthen.’ This system of measurement facilitated both the levying of the king’s customs duties and the value of a vessel when requisitioned for war. Growing exports of English wool for manufacture into cloth in Flanders encouraged trade on the east coast of England, but much commerce at the time was borne not in English ships but in those of the Hanseatic League – a confederation of the mercantile associations of port-states in what is now modern Germany – which established commercial bases in places as far apart as Bergen (in Norway) and London. These ‘easterlings’ became renowned for their straight-dealing, from which is derived the word ‘sterling’ as a mark of the soundness of the British national currency. With much of our trade in the hands of foreigners, there was little call for any major home-grown enterprise until the reign of Richard II (1377–99), when this became a political issue. In 1381 the first ‘Navigation Act’ forbade the export of cargo in anything other than an English vessel, encouraging the growth of small ship-owning syndicates of English merchants.
Merchant ships during the reign of Edward IV in the late fifteenth century. The first Navigation Act of 1381 had already forbidden the export of cargo in anything other than an English vessel, encouraging the growth of privately owned merchant ships.
Besides the wine and wool trades, English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish coastal communities had begun to extend their fishing further offshore. Meanwhile, coal began to be mined in the north-east of England, which answered a demand being created in the slow but steady expansion of London; this created a coastal coal trade that would last until the second half of the twentieth century. Despite all this, English commercial shipping remained limited in its ambitions, largely coastal or cross-Channel, extended further only by overseas military adventures. The English and Scots remained island peoples, their kings fighting each other and feuding with their nobles, their respective homelands being regarded by much of Europe as ultima Thule.
It was not until the dynastic Wars of the Roses finally ended in 1485 that the incoming Tudors offered England the conditions under which the initiative of its merchants might truly prosper. By this time there were rumours of far-off countries of fabulous wealth. Hearing of Columbus’s discoveries in 1492, and encouraged by London’s merchants, Henry VII employed the Genoese navigator Giovanni Caboto (John Cabotto) to ‘discover’ a territory in this ‘New World’ for England. In 1486 Cabot laid claim to what he called ‘Newfoundland’ and, on their homeward voyage, Cabot and his crew aboard the Matthew came across the cod-rich waters of the Grand Bank. From this point Englishmen began to look to seaward to make their fortunes while simultaneously competing with the Portuguese, who also fished the Grand Bank.
Yorkshire-born Sir Martin Frobisher was a merchant venturer who explored the possibility of a north-west passage for trade to China for the Company of Cathay in 1577. Here, he encounters hostile Inuit.
Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509; he was young and ambitious. His break with Rome over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon brought England into conflict with a Catholic Europe, itself riven by the new Protestantism. Fired by an energetic zeal purporting to be Protestant but not unmixed with envy and opportunism, an increasing number of young men went to sea in search of plunder. They actively defied the Papal decree that divided the world between the dominant maritime nations of Spain and Portugal. Riches poured into the coffers of Madrid and Lisbon, largely from the import of silver from Peru and the highly prized spices from islands in the distant east. To an aggressive Protestant state the Papal ruling was a challenge and English mariners and their backers sought to break this cartel. These ‘merchant venturers’ came chiefly from the emerging middle class but were joined by a small number of aristocrats. Chiefly based in Bristol and London, these syndicates sent out speculative trading expeditions financed by joint stock companies, which avoided direct confrontation with the predominating maritime powers by attempting to out-flank them. One tried to find a route to the Spice Islands to take advantage of the high prices commanded by nutmeg in particular, but the chosen route to the Orient, north of Russia and through the north-east passage, was barred by ice. The first voyage commanded by Sir Hugh Willoughby ended in disaster in 1554, notwithstanding which the Muscovy Company opened a profitable trade with Russia. Joined by the Levant Company, which concentrated on trade with the eastern Mediterranean, these two joint stock companies laid the foundation of regular English overseas commerce in English ships, the latter founding overseas consulates. Attempts to reach the east by way of the north-west passage, though preoccupying explorers for far too long, also ended in disaster but, in the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (who secretly invested in the enterprise), a group of London merchants and investors were granted a royal charter incorporating them as the East India Company. It was thi commercial venture, led by James Lancaster, which laid the foundations of the British Raj in India.
In this woodcut of 1580, English wine merchants from Newcastle, Bristol and London buy wine in Bordeaux, France, to ship back to England.
Sir Francis Drake was a slave trader and privateer who became famous for his voyages of exploration. His merchant ships were available to the monarch as men-of-war when required.
Ark Royal, flagship of Lord Howard, fighting the Spanish Armada in 1588. Many merchant vessels formed the fleet that stopped the threatened Spanish invasion of England.
Other trades flourished during the intermittent wars with Spain that bedevilled much of Elizabeth’s reign. The English slave trade brought John Hawkins and Francis Drake to public notice in the early 1560s and their ships were available to the monarch as men-of-war when required. Thus, in the sixteenth century, the expression ‘Navy Royal’ comprised all the ships in the kingdom and it was this hybrid force that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was now that religious intolerance and naked ambition encouraged overseas settlement in North America, all of which was supported by a growing body of English shipping. Transatlantic trade continued during the English Civil Wars, while the Commonwealth government and Protectorate under Cromwell in the middle of the seventeenth century did much to improve the English navy as it fought the Dutch. It further empowered merchant shipping by the passing of another Navigation Act in 1651. This strengthened the hold of national shipping on trade with the North American colonies, to which, as a consequence of the foreign policy of Oliver Cromwell, the sugar-growing island of Jamaica was added in 1655. After his Restoration, Charles II passed further Navigation Acts in 1660, 1663 and 1672. This last, which precipitated the Third Dutch War, effectively destroyed the Dutch navy and left the way clear for the expansion of English merchant shipping, particularly that of the East India Company in the Indian and China Seas.
Admiral Robert Blake engages a Dutch warship in 1653, one of a series of wars against the Netherlands that determined English maritime dominance of the sea. Note the red ensign flying from the rear of the English ship on the left – in Blake’s day this flag was used by both men-of-war and merchant ships.
By the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland was also seeking similar overseas success but Scottish ventures, particularly that at Dairen in central America, failed disastrously, almost bankrupted the country and led directly to the Act of Union with England in 1707. Like England, Scotland had opened a commerce with Russia by way of the White Sea and the Baltic, and both countries traded with Scandinavia. It was from these northern nations that Great Britain imported commodities such as iron, turpentine, rosin, flax, hemp, oak and pine – all of which were essential to shipping, both commercial and naval, and collectively known as ‘naval stores’.
Investors in the South Sea Company, facilitating mercantile marine trade with South America, lose their money when the ‘bubble’ bursts in the City of London in 1720.
Economic success on the plantations in Jamaica and southern colonies of North America increased the use of slave labour in English as well as Spanish colonies, attracting investment from the merchants of Liverpool, but the slave trade was given its greatest boost by the ‘Peace of Utrecht’ of 1713. This ended the War of Spanish Succession and, during the negotiations, the British diplomats wrung from Spain the permanent occupation of Gibraltar and the monopoly to carry slaves to the Caribbean – known as the ‘Asiento des negros’. (The Asiento reverted to Spain in 1750 on payment of £100,000.) The government awarded the Asiento to another joint stock enterprise, the South Sea Company, which had been formed in 1711 to facilitate trade with South America and to rival both the East India Company and the newly established Bank of England. Backed by the Treasury, it was more a political instrument than a bona fide trading enterprise. By 1720 the company’s plan to take over the national debt led to a speculative boom that went ballistic in what was called the ‘South Sea Bubble.’ Most investors, including King George I, lost heavily, many being forced into exile or driven to suicide. None of this greatly affected the shipping boom occasioned by the slave trade, which prospered until much later in the century when humanitarian agitation began to turn public opinion against it.
From the earliest times, ship owning and seafaring had been a precarious and uncertain business, hence the notion of a voyage being known as a ‘venture’. Such were the dangers that no single owner took up the challenge, risk being spread by dividing the ownership of a vessel into sixty-fourths. Even a wealthy merchant would be unlikely to own more than a handful of shares in any one ship, though he might invest in a number thereof, while the system allowed small investors a chance of a profit. Slowly groups of syndics emerged outside the more formalised joint stock companies, often specialising in certain trades and including the men actually in command of merchant ships, their ‘master-mariners’.
Since the purpose of a merchant ship was to make money, the selection of a master was usually to promote the commercial success of her voyage and he was not necessarily an accomplished seaman or navigator. It was often better for a syndicate to employ one of their fellow shareholders, or a relative, to take charge, leaving the mundane tasks of handling a vessel to the second-in-command, better known as ‘the mate’. Essentially an inefficient system leading to a good deal of shipwreck, it was accepted for many years in the absence of anything better.
Mates, and there was usually more than one as it was necessary to maintain a constant watch, were customarily drawn from the more intelligent seamen. The senior was invariably known as the mate, his junior the second mate, and so forth. Certain trades (most notably the colliers hauling coal on the east coast of England, or similar vessels that plied to the Baltic and north Russia, and the whalers that ventured into the Arctic to hunt the bowhead-whale) operated an indentured apprenticeship for boys, but little navigation was taught; although it was considered the way to becoming a mate, it was still a truly primitive art. The East India Company, like the Royal Navy, took a more professional view, not least because their ships were exponentially more valuable than ordinary merchantmen, but also because they made long voyages out of sight of land. As in men-of-war, it was common in these vessels to find young men of good family serving as midshipmen – proto-officers – the Company requiring up to six mates in the largest of their Indiamen. These, by the middle of the eighteenth century, measured up to 800 tons burthen.
Life for most of these men was tough, but it was harsher still for the ordinary seamen. Employed entirely for their physical energy, fed and paid the barest minimum, they were a much put-upon breed. In the days before tinned food and preserved fresh water, their diet was limited largely to salt meat and other dried provisions. The Vitamin C deficiency known as scurvy was prevalent and, although James Lancaster had known about the restorative effect of fresh fruit when it was available, there was great resistance to both the promulgation and the acceptance of this remedy. Seafaring was not a life of choice; more that of economic necessity. In times of dire need, particularly in the early seventeenth century, merchant sailors turned readily to piracy, while the tough conditions they were obliged to endure could, and did, prime them for mutiny. Even if they escaped shipwreck, diseases and accidents – the most usual being rupture – were common. However, despite these obstacles, it was possible for an intelligent seaman, if he was fortunate and applied himself, to rise in the service and the British mercantile marine was always a meritocracy.
An English sailor of 1650 stands ready to defend his ship against Spanish or Dutch commercial rivals.
Poster for Cunard Line, advertising the Carmania and Caronia passenger steamships en route from Liverpool to New York and Boston, c. 1910.