by Ian Mortimer
We headed straight into the wind, which was blowing up strongly and it stormed so badly that our foremast snapped while we were under sail, and in the end we had to strike our main sail and take it in because our gunwale was continuously dipping under water, and the ladies groaned loudly and the gentlemen swore and threatened the waterman mightily … They could not use the oars properly, as the tide was running against the raging wind and the river ran so hollow, and the boat kept shipping water, so that in the end several guzzlers of our company presented the morning offering to the river god. Indeed they were so generous as to throw freely to the fish all kinds of English fancy sustenance, such as sack, Spanish wine, buttered eels, spirits, brandy, small and strong beer, cakes, pudding and other delicacies.73
If the wind is against you coming up the Thames, the tide may turn before you reach your destination, which will severely delay you. Then there is the cold – the sort that bites into you when your coat is wet with spray. When the London fog sinks down on the city, the watermen are plunged into an opaque blindness. If the fog mingles with the city’s smoke, it forms smog; then men have to beat drums to let the watermen know the way to the north bank.74 And don’t forget the dangers of London Bridge, which, as the old saying goes, was built ‘for wise men to go over and fools to go under’. The narrowness of the gaps between the starlings or platforms on which the piers of the bridge stand means that, at certain times of the tidal ebb and flow, the rushing of water between them is very dangerous. Only four of the nineteen arches are navigable, and one of them has a large lump of masonry in it, which fell from the bridge in 1437. ‘Shooting the bridge’ here is most unwise. Doing so when the tide is at its greatest ebb, after dark, is near suicidal.
The rivers elsewhere in Britain tend not to be as heavily used by passengers as the Thames. Your most frequent experience will be the innumerable short ferry journeys across them for a penny or two. However, crossing the estuary of a large river can be quite challenging, as Celia Fiennes finds out when she takes the Cremyll Ferry from Plymouth across the Hamoaze (the estuarine stretch of the Tamar) in 1698:
[This] is a very hazardous passage by reason of three tides meeting; had I known the danger before I should not have been very willing to have gone it, not but this is the constant way all people go, and saved several miles riding. I was at least an hour going over; it was about a mile but indeed in some places, notwithstanding there was five men rowing, and I set my own men to row also, I do believe we made not a step of way for almost a quarter of an hour; but blessed be God I came safely over. But those ferry boats are so wet, and then the sea and wind is always cold to be upon that I never fail to catch cold in a ferry boat as I did this day.75
Rivers are the arteries of trade: some navigable river networks penetrate inland for upwards of 70 miles. Of the twenty-six English towns mentioned in chapter 2 as having more than 5,000 inhabitants in 1670, only Leeds, Salisbury, Manchester, Coventry and Birmingham are not on a navigable river. Some of these waterways are not very substantial – such as the Stour at Canterbury, the Lark at Bury St Edmunds, and the Cam at Cambridge – but even these small rivers permit the shipment of bulky items. Substantial barges regularly float down the Severn from Worcester to Bristol carrying wheat, malt, textiles, ironware and linen; a few days later they make the return trip upstream from Bristol with wine, tobacco, grocery wares, coal, lead and wool. Light goods might be transported even further up the river. The lightweight cargo boats on the Severn and Wye, called trows, have masts that can be taken down to go under bridges; they carry fruit and other foodstuffs all the way upstream to Shrewsbury.76
England’s network of rivers is a tremendous asset to the nation but clearly it could be improved if all the rivers were navigable and they all joined up. Two recent initiatives – William Sandy’s clearing and deepening of the River Avon to Stratford upon Avon (completed in 1640) and Sir Richard Weston’s pioneering canal from Guildford to Weybridge (completed in 1653) – demonstrate what is possible in terms of engineering and commercial advantage. Gradually the idea spreads. In 1674 Carew Reynel declares that ‘this nation might be greatly advantaged by cutting of rivers and making them navigable from one town to another and so breed a good commerce where [there] was none before’. He suggests building a canal from London to Bristol and cutting one right across the country in the north of England, so that ships can pass from the Irish Sea to the North Sea.77
River improvement, people start to realise, is a real possibility. Several River Navigation Acts are passed to allow barges of 24–70 tons to gain access to previously inaccessible new wharves. The River Stour is deepened in the 1660s to move coal from Staffordshire; the River Salwarpe is similarly cleared to transport salt from Droitwich. The River Avon is gradually improved to allow barges to reach Salisbury by 1684. The Great Ouse is made navigable as far as Bedford in 1689; the upper reaches of the River Trent likewise, first to Wilden Ferry and then, in 1699, to Burton on Trent.78 The businessman Thomas Patten clears the obstructions in the Mersey, thereby connecting Warrington with Liverpool, and suggests improving the rivers Mersey and Irwell so that Manchester might have a wharf. In 1699 permission is granted to improve the rivers Aire and Calder so that barges can reach Leeds and Wakefield. Long before the canal-building craze of the next century, many improvements to the natural waterways of England are undertaken, facilitating the early stages of what will one day come to be known as the Industrial Revolution.
Seafaring
In Great Britain we often think of the defensive advantages of being an island but just think how much of an advantage the sea is for the industrial integration of the country. It is here that all the rivers do meet up – you can sail from one to another without having to cross any international borders. That is not the case for most other countries, whose waterways run through neighbouring states or, in the case of France and Spain, empty into seas thousands of nautical miles apart. As a result, Britain has an unrivalled commercial transport network – and that means there are thousands of ships and mariners available to help you sail around the coast or further abroad.
English shipping is growing rapidly in this period, both in respect of the number and size of ships. Back in the 1580s its total volume was 67,000 tons. By the start of our period, 1660, it has grown to three times that, being 200,000 tons.79 Then it grows even more rapidly, driven by wars with the Dutch, Caribbean commerce, the trade with North America, the demand for coal in London, the expansion of the East India Company and the importation of grain from Eastern Europe. At the same time, the cost of shipbuilding comes down, from £8 to £5 per ton.80 In 1686 the total volume of English shipping stands at 340,000 tons – more than five times its size at the time of the Spanish Armada.81
Rates of fighting ships in the Royal Navy, 167683
Integral to this maritime strength is the Royal Navy. In 1672, it has a total of 238 ships in service, manned by 29,154 sailors, some from as far afield as Scotland and Ireland.82 On top of these crews there are the shipwrights, timbermen, sail makers, rope makers, anchor makers, gun founders, administrators and suppliers of provisions who keep the whole fleet active. It is no exaggeration to say that the Royal Navy is a nationwide industry, and its warships are icons of British pride.
As the schedule of fighting ships above makes clear, the Royal Navy of Pepys’s day is highly organised – due in no small part to Pepys himself. Whereas the navy of Elizabeth’s reign had captains who were not permanent salaried officials, men who did not wear uniforms and an approach to discipline that can be called capricious at best, Pepys’s navy is a well-integrated fighting machine. The rating of ships, for example, relates to the salaries paid to the officers on board. The professionalism that is sweeping across the rest of society also has a profound effect on the Royal Navy.
When you step on to the deck of a ship of the line, you are treading on a piece of technology that costs considerably more than a stately home. A First Rate requires on average £22,000 to build and an extra £
12,000 to fit out. The most expensive English ship of all, the Royal Sovereign, has a price tag of over £65,000. Running costs are eye-watering too: the navy will spend almost £13,000 keeping a First Rate at sea for six months – in supplies, wages, maintenance, and so forth. And it can only operate for half the year, being lower in the water and thus too vulnerable in rough winter weather. The same applies to Second Rates. Hence Third Rates and Fourth Rates, which can be used all year around, are the workhorses of the Royal Navy. Operating costs of a Third Rate add up to £7,300 for six months.84
It would be unwise to travel in a warship during wartime – that is, during the years 1665–7, 1672–4 and 1689–97. Ten ships are sunk in just one battle in June 1666. The following year the Dutch sail up the Thames and sink a dozen English ships in their own harbour, capturing the British flagship, the Royal Charles, at the same time. Having said that, if you do take to the seas, sooner or later you will end up in a warship. This is because the Royal Navy is more closely integrated with ordinary life than you might imagine. Warships sometimes act as guards for valuable cargoes carried in merchantmen. If you are in a foreign port and seek a passage back to England, you may pay for passage on a warship. The mariners serving aboard contract only to serve for the single expedition, so a man might do one expedition aboard a Royal Navy ship and the next aboard a merchantman, or vice versa. Civilian ships, such as packet ships and merchantmen, are regularly attacked by foreign vessels and have to arm themselves; therefore their captains are keen to employ crew with experience in the Royal Navy. Aristocrats and important gentlemen often use naval vessels for their private ferrying about. And then there is the matter of pressing men for service. You may simply have no choice in whether or not you wish to serve on a warship – if the press gang comes looking to fill a quota and its captain decides that your physique and experience meet the requirements, then it’s a naval life for you.
Most of the ships you will come across in a British port are small compared to the great ships of the line. The largest are the merchantmen belonging to the East India Company, which are 400–600 tons burden. Almost all other trading vessels are below 300 tons, with the most common, coasters, being in the range of 60–100 tons. Approximately a quarter of all mercantile shipping is used to transport coal around the coasts and to Europe.85 The entire English fishing fleet amounts to 23,000 tons, one-third of the size of the coal trade. Smaller vessels are a mixture of sloops, ketches, galliots, hoys, pinks, smacks, flyboats and doggers. Sir William Petty even builds a prototype catamaran in 1663. I wouldn’t sail in it if I were you, though: it sinks almost as soon as it is launched.86
NAVIGATION
Just as in the modern world, if you want to sail to a particular destination, you need to travel from the appropriate port. This principle also applies to the legal quays of London. To cross the Channel to France you will need to go to the Custom House Quay. For Scotland, you’ll need the Hermitage, which is a wharf near St Katharine Docks. Boats for Colchester leave from Smarts Quay; those for Ipswich and King’s Lynn from Dice Quay. Sandwich and Dover are served from Sabb’s Dock. Plymouth, Dartmouth, Poole, Weymouth and ports in Ireland are served from Chester’s Quay, and so on.87
Once out at sea, you’ll need to place your trust in the ship’s pilot. These days, he will be a trained navigator who is licensed to operate in certain stretches of water by Trinity House, the London-based authority founded in 1514 that oversees British maritime affairs. This is just as well, for navigation can prove difficult even in well-known seas. Grand Duke Cosimo III sails to England in 1669 in an English ship – and you would have thought that an English navigator could find his way up the English Channel. Yet although he constantly checks the time, his speed, his direction, the depth of the water and the quality of the seabed, the ship somehow manages to land on the coast of Ireland. The mistake is put down to the uncertainty of the soundings, the bad time-keeping of the ship’s clock, the inexperience of the steersman in the night and the captain’s tendency to interfere with the pilot’s navigation.88
The underlying problem is the inability to calculate longitude at sea. People understand that the secret lies in accurate time-keeping, but spring-driven watches are unreliable and pendulum clocks are unusable at sea. Another difficulty comprises the poor maps and charts. Most seafarers are still using ‘waggoner’ charts (so called because they were drawn up by Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer). First published in 1588, these are strewn with errors, as many English captains know. They show the Isles of Scilly in the wrong place, for example, and the Dogger Bank is depicted 24 miles from its actual location.89 Cometh the hour, cometh the man: in 1681 Captain Greenvile Collins is given command of the yacht Merlin and told to survey the coasts of Britain (including Scotland) in greater detail than ever before. This he does over the next eight years: his nautical charts are published in 1693 as Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot. Such is the accuracy of Collins’s work that it will continue to be republished for the next hundred years.90
Trinity House also has oversight of all the lighthouses up and down the country. You will be pleased to hear that from the 1660s there is a positive programme of improvement. The old lighthouses at Harwich, Dungeness, Lowestoft and North Foreland, which previously used candles in their lights, are all rebuilt as high towers carrying coal-fired braziers. New lighthouses are constructed at Old Hunstanton in 1665; St Agnes on the Isles of Scilly in 1680; and Winterton on the Norfolk coast in 1687. Work begins on the Eddystone, 9 miles off the coast of Devon, in 1696 – the first lighthouse in the world to be constructed on an isolated rock far out at sea. This is a remarkable piece of engineering: it is 80ft high, on a rock that is submerged at high tide, with a base of granite bound by iron and copper, and topped by a glass lantern room lit by candles. At the time of its construction the Nine Years’ War is still in progress, so its designer and builder, Henry Winstanley, is guarded each day by a ship from Plymouth. Unfortunately one day the protection fails to show up and a French privateer captures him, destroys his work and takes him to Paris. When he hears of the deed, Louis XIV immediately orders Winstanley’s release, famously commenting that ‘France is at war with England, not with humanity’.
LIFE AT SEA
There is no doubt that life at sea is tough, and the further you sail, the tougher it is likely to be. Even if you have a perfect outward journey, there is a nagging worry that things will not be so wonderful on the way back. Ralph Thoresby’s voyage from Hull to Rotterdam in 1678 is fast, taking just 48 hours to sail the 250 miles, with no greater problem than a bout of seasickness. On his return, however, his vessel is struck by a tremendous storm and blown on to its side on a sandbank in the North Sea. Poor Thoresby has to lie there, with waves crashing over him, for sixteen hours before the storm abates.91 Ship-borne diseases are hardly any more merciful. When the Britannia arrives in Philadelphia in 1699, half of the 100 passengers aboard are dead.92 One of the reasons why Edward Barlow starts writing his journal is so that people ‘may understand in part what dangers and troubles poor seamen pass through’.93
If you are considering a voyage, here are a few things you can expect. Sleeping arrangements are basic and uncomfortable. As an ordinary sailor, Barlow has a cabin that is ‘like a gentleman’s dog kennel’, as he has to crawl into it on all fours. This is not unusual; another description of such cabins is ‘nasty holes, which breed sickness and in a fight are very dangerous’.94 In later years you won’t get a cabin; instead you’ll be given a hammock in which to sleep, and allocated a space just 14 inches wide in which to hang it. You’ll have to provide your own mattress, pillow and blankets. In contrast, the captain’s cabin is spacious and luxurious. Even on a Fourth Rate ship, it is the full width of the stern and 24ft long. On a larger vessel it is furnished with oil paintings and gilt carvings. Schellinks describes the captain’s cabin aboard the Third Rate Henrietta as ‘a splendid, large and expensively furnished room’. As for the lieutenant’s cabin, Schellinks and his companions are entertained there
with ‘claret, ale and delicious beer’, which suggests it is easily capable of entertaining a party. So is the mate’s cabin, to which Schellinks and companions repair for the next round of drinks.95 In later years these lesser officers’ cabins are reduced in size, to a mere 6ft by 5ft and they are divided by canvas partitions rather than wooden walls.96 The captain’s cabin, however, remains spacious and opulent.
Women are only to be found aboard ship in certain circumstances. Obviously there are those who are bound for a new life in North America or the Plantations. Some travel as indentured servants. The East India Company, however, does not permit men to bring out their womenfolk to India and the Far East, even if they are going to be stationed out there (although a handful of wives do slip through the net). The Royal Navy has a policy of allowing wives and girlfriends to stay with their men on the first leg of a long voyage, but no further. This, combined with the cramped hammock arrangements, leads to some lewd displays just after setting sail: in the gloom below deck you may well see ‘a man and woman creep into a hammock, the woman’s legs to the hams hanging over the sides’.97 Not even officers are allowed to take their womenfolk outside British waters. Captain Sir William Jennens is dismissed and imprisoned for taking his wife on convoy duty in the Mediterranean in 1670.98 It is well within British waters that the adventurous twenty-year-year-old Anne Chamberlyne takes part in a sea battle – the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 – serving in the ship commanded by her brother. She survives the battle, but dies in childbirth the following year.
When it comes to food, the difference between the lot of the ordinary seamen and the officers is as great as the inequality of their sleeping quarters. Standard fare for a sailor in the Royal Navy is a gallon of beer (served by ladle from a barrel) and 1lb of biscuit every day, as well as a weekly ration of 4lbs salted beef, 2lbs pork, three-eighths of a fish, a quart of peas, 6oz of butter and 12oz of cheese.99 On paper, it looks a good calorie count for a working man. However, measures are sometimes cut short by the ship’s purser. The beer tends to go off or is watered down. Butter goes rancid, biscuits are attacked by beetles. The corks in barrels and liquor bottles are gnawed by rats. In the Mediterranean, rice might be substituted for fish, olive oil for butter, and raisins for beef. These alternatives do not go down well with the men. You will also find that the cooking facilities restrict the preparation of the food. Having a large fire on board a wooden ship is clearly hazardous: the heat has to be contained within a hearth of 600–2,500 bricks, depending on the size of the ship. That additional weight restricts the positioning of the galley; normally it is located in the hold or on the middle gundeck in a large ship. In either location it is both smoky and dark, making it very difficult to cook, especially if you are catering for hundreds of men. Most food for the ordinary sailor is therefore simply boiled in large cauldrons. Officers, in contrast, may dine on roasted meat and rich puddings. On 10 July 1675, having just sailed passed Lisbon, the naval chaplain Henry Teonge is invited to the captain’s cabin to dine with all the officers of the squadron; they feast on
