Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education. E. S. Bates
può venire per mare non è lontano.
Paolo Sarpi, 1608.[23]
Hentzner, in his preface, acknowledges that the troubles of a traveller are great and finds only two arguments to countervail them: that man is born unto trouble, and that Abraham had orders to travel direct from God. Abraham, however, did not have to cross the Channel. Otherwise, perhaps, the prospect of sacrificing himself as well as his only son Isaac, would have brought to light a flaw in his obedience. There was, it is true, the chance of crossing from Dover to Calais in four hours, but the experiences of Princess Cecilia, already related, were no less likely. In 1610 two Ambassadors waited at Calais fourteen days before they could make a start, and making a start by no means implied arriving—at least, not at Dover; one gentleman, after a most unhappy night, found himself at Nieuport next morning and had to wait three days before another try could be made. Yet another, who had already sailed from Boulogne after having waited six hours for the tide, accomplished two leagues, been becalmed for nine or ten hours, returned to Boulogne by rowing-boat, and posted to Calais, found no wind to take him across there and had to charter another rowing-boat at sunset on Friday, reaching Dover on Monday between four and five A. M. It was naturally a rare occurrence to go the whole distance by small boat, because of the risk. Lord Herbert of Cherbury was the most noteworthy exception; after he had made three attempts from Brill and covered distances which varied from just outside the harbour to half-way, arriving at Brill again, however, each time, he went by land to Calais, where the sea was so dangerous that no one would venture, no one except one old fisherman, whose boat, he himself owned, was one of the worst in the harbour, but, on the other hand, he did not mind whether he lived or died.
But finishing the crossing by rowing-boat was a very ordinary experience because of the state of the harbours. Calais was the better of the two, yet it sometimes happened that passengers had to be carried ashore one hundred yards or more because not even boats could approach. In 1576 an ambassador to France complains that Dover harbour is in such utter ruin that he will cross elsewhere in future; in 1580 Sir Walter Ralegh procured reform, which was perpetually in need of renewal. In time a stone pier was built, small, and dry at low water, as indeed the whole harbour was; the entrance was narrow and kept from being choked up only by means of a gate which let out the water with a rush at low tide. The ancient, quicker route to Wissant, more or less the route which "Channel-swimmers" make for now, had begun to be abandoned when the English obtained a port of their own on the opposite coast, and had been completely dropped by this time. Boulogne had no cross-channel passenger traffic worth mentioning. Dieppe, on the contrary, was as much used as Calais, the corresponding harbour being, not Newhaven, but Rye, which was also the objective on the rarer occasions when the starting-place was Havre. So unusual was the Havre-Southampton passage that among the suspicious circumstances alleged against a Genoese who landed in 1599, one was his choice of this way across.[24]
Going by the North Sea the usual havens were Gravesend, and Flushing or Brill, in spite of Brill's shallow harbour-bar, passed on one occasion with only two feet of water under the keel when "Mr. Thatcher, a merchant of London, who had goods therein, was so apprehensive that he changed colours and said he was undone, 'Oh Lord,' and such-like passionate expressions." Harwich was reputed so dangerous a harbour that when Charles I's mother-in-law came to visit her daughter in 1638 and put in there, she found no one to receive her; it not being thought within possibility to expect her to land there. The fact that she did was probably due to her having been seven days at sea in a storm; not that the courtier-chronicler of her voyage allows she was any the worse for it, although he owns of her ladies that "they touched the hearts of the beholders more with pity than with love." A forty-eight-hour passage was nothing to grumble at: Arthur Wilson, the historian of James I's reign, left Brill in an old twenty-five-ton mussel-boat, at the bottom of which he lay, sea-sick and expecting drowning, for three days and three nights until he came ashore at—the Hague.
Among many other experiences of the kind, that[25] of John Chamberlain, the letter-writer, may be chosen. Setting out from Rotterdam, after twenty-four hours' sailing, he had been within sight of Ostend and was back again at Rotterdam. There he stayed a fortnight, putting to sea at intervals and coming back. Then the wind came fair for Calais, but veered round rather too soon and the first haven they could reach was that of Yarmouth, after two days' running before the storm. It was low tide; they went aground while entering, and for some time it looked like being lost with all hands, but getting off again, the waves took the ship against the piles at the head of the breakwater. Some thought it worth while trying to jump ashore, three of whom the others saw drowned and one crushed to death against the piles. But in the end the rest landed safely in boats, and buried the dead; and Chamberlain himself, after a winter evening spent wandering about Newmarket heath in the rain and wind through the guide losing his way, arrived in town at 11 P. M. on the twentieth day after first leaving Rotterdam.
On this route the ownership of the vessel might be guessed by the amount of swearing that went on. Dutch ships had no prayers said, rarely carried a chaplain even on the longest voyages, but swearers were fined, even if it was no more than naming the devil. Psalm-singing would go on on any vessel manned by Protestants on account of the popularity of the music written for the Reformers, but if a vessel had a garland of flowers hanging from its mainmast that again would show it a Dutchman; it meant that the captain was engaged to be married.
A CHANNEL PASSAGE-BOAT
The passage-boats were about sixty feet long, which then meant a tonnage of about the same figure, and had a single deck, beneath which the passengers might find shelter if the merchandise left them room. The complement of passengers may be taken as seventy. The highest total of passengers I have found mentioned for one ship is two thousand, of whom Della Valle was one, but that was when he sailed from Constantinople to Cairo, the vessels employed on official business between those two places exclusively being the largest in the world at that date. Apart from these, the maximum tonnage was about twelve hundred, and a 500-ton ship was reckoned a large one; an average Venetian merchantman measured about 90 feet × 20 × 16, a tonnage, that is, of about 166, according to English sixteenth-century reckoning.[26] The French traveller Villamont says the ship in which he left Venice in 1589 and which he was told cost fifty thousand crowns (say eighty-five thousand pounds of our money) to build and equip, had for its greatest length 188 feet and greatest breadth 59 feet.
As for accommodation in the larger boats, neither Dallam nor Moryson changed their clothes or slept in a bed while at sea, and there is no reason to suppose that any one else did who travelled under ordinary conditions. Cabins were to be had in the high-built sterns; even in Villamont's moderate-sized ship there were eight decks astern, the fourth from the keel, the captain's dining-room, accommodating thirty-nine persons at meal-times, all of whom, it is clear enough, slept in cabins above or below. Moryson, however, refused a cabin, preferring to sleep in a place where there was cover overhead but none at the sides.
The chief exception to ordinary conditions was the pilgrim-ship for Jerusalem in the days, which ceased during this period, when special galleys ran from Venice to Jaffa and back, in the summer. Here alone could the passenger have the upper hand, since these galleys alone were passenger-boats primarily. The captain would be willing, if asked, to bind himself in writing before the authorities at Venice, to take the pilgrim to Jaffa, wait there and bring him back, call at certain places to take in fresh water, meat, and bread, carry live hens, a barber-surgeon, and a physician, avoid unhealthy ports such as Famagosta, stay nowhere longer than three days without the consent of the pilgrim, receive no merchandise which might inconvenience or delay him, provide two hot meals a day and good wine, and guarantee the safety of any belongings he might leave in the galley during his absence at Jerusalem. No agreements, however, seem to have insured the pilgrim against starvation diet, and therefore it was prudent to store a chest with victuals, especially delicacies, and lay in wine; for, Venice once left behind, wine might be dearer or even unobtainable. Taking victuals implied buying a frying-pan, dishes, big and little, of earthenware or wood, a stew-pot, and a twig-basket to carry when he landed and went shopping. Likewise a lantern and candles and bedding, which might be purchased near St.