'The portly sail of ships'

The ship was the all-purpose transporter to those who lived along the coasts or on the estuaries of Tudor and Stuart England. Movement by water along rivers and by coastal navigation was, at most seasons, easier than by land. The Thames was the main highway of London and of its environs, crowded with boats and lined with ships. The Thames fairway led not only to France, Spain and the Low Countries, to Muscovy and the Indies, but to Harwich and Hull, Newcastle and Leith, to Dover, Portsmouth, Exeter, Plymouth and Bristol. Ships and sea travel were taken for granted by those who lived on the coast and estuaries. And these people formed the larger portion of the population at the time.

Coastal trade was carried on, for the most part, in small ships of some 20 to 80 tons burden. Some were little more than sailing barges or boats under sail. Others were more seaworthy and stouter. There were a few larger coasters, of 100 to something over 200 tons, attached to the larger ports. Some of these were old merchantmen, too slow or uncertain for longer voyages, others were specialized transports, like the Newcastle coalmen. The common rig of two masts for the smaller and three for the larger gave most of the coastal shipping a stereotyped look, but the knowing eye could spot local variations in build and sail plan which brought variety to the picture.

The number of ships in them is what is most striking about the ports of the late sixteenth century. Coasters were small, distribution took many individual vessels, and the merchantmen which carried on the overseas trade of England were themselves of no great size. The majority of them were of 80 tons or less and it took a great many ships of this size to supply the needs of even this country's three million or four million people. Mainly three-masters, they, too, had a characteristic outline, with square stern, a somewhat beaked bow and rather high upper works aft, and similar works, though much lower, forward. The Levant Company employed bigger ships, ranging from 250 to 400 tons in late Elizabethan times and up to 500 tons under the first Stuart. The East India Company did so also.