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Vol.One  - M.N. History

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A forgotten chapter of our seafaring history
Monday 8 December 2008

<p>HISTORY is bound to be selective, partly because of our inability to see what is important until well after events have taken place, by which time the facts may have been either lost or garnished. Whole tracts of history may be obliterated by this selectivity, as we are provided with a narrative which more readily suits the narrator, and which then become established in the national consciousness.</p>
<p>Britain, we have been brought up to believe, is a &#8216;maritime nation&#8217; and while it might be unfashionable to recall such a concept today, it was command of the seas that enabled this small island off the coast of Europe to lay hold of a global empire, in which half the world on most Mercator projections appeared to be coloured red. Similarly, it was, we have been assured, the power of the Royal Navy that facilitated this astonishing conquest, and our maritime heroes are the commanders of its ships and the admirals of its fleets. And our written history, in whole libraries full of erudite books, informs us of their deeds.</p>
<p>There is, of course, another part of our maritime history, in which seamanship and courage played no less a part but which, in contrast, is largely lost to us. The merchant navy, represented by British commercial shipping, has played an equally important role, arguably before the King&#8217;s Navy had ever been thought of, but this subject is, by comparison to that vast naval bibliography, unknown and untouched. And so it is today. It is not so many years ago that a public awareness exercise commissioned by the Chamber of Shipping discovered that a worrying number of British people questioned by pollsters believed that merchant shipping was &#8220;a branch of the Royal Navy&#8221;.</p>
<p>We are very proud to number among this newspaper&#8217;s regular correspondents Richard Woodman, who has become a distinguished maritime historian, in parallel with a long career at sea and as an Elder Brother of Trinity House. His latest project is perhaps his most ambitious: a five-volume history of the British Merchant Navy. He has been driven to this tremendous labour by a growing consciousness of this unwritten chapter of our nation&#8217;s history, and the need to set down this amazing story before it is lost forever. If our past informs our present, and even suggests strategies for our future, then there are lessons to be learned here, in a world more dependent than ever upon merchant shipping for the movement of people, raw materials and manufactured goods. There are lessons too for the United Kingdom, which let its merchant marine nearly disappear some years ago, and today is clinging to a mere residue of the ships and manpower which, even in my lifetime, dominated the trade routes of the world.</p>
<p>&#8220;What has never been attempted,&#8221; writes Capt Woodman, &#8220;is an intimate history of the British mercantile marine as an engine of imperial expansion and maintenance, and as an important and influential factor on the making of the modern world.&#8221; </p>
<p>Thus, there may be books on ships viewed as artefacts and volumes written about technology, but little that considers that vital ingredient, the people who made it all happen. The first volume of this holistic portrait, Neptune&#8217;s Trident &#8212; Spices And Slaves 1500-1807, has been published by The History Press, and ought to be packing the Christmas stockings this year.</p>
<p>It is an amazing narrative and Capt Woodman tells it brilliantly. From our sheltered and comfortable 21st century standpoint, much of this mercantile history might appear reprehensible, invariably exploitative, and often criminal. Shipmasters throughout this period would have to face terrifying hazards, and were as capable of fighting their ships as any naval commander, and often hovered around the dividing line between legitimate trade and piracy. Trade itself was the very antithesis of &#8220;free&#8221;, and privileges were guarded fiercely, some of the most brutal encounters being between incomers attempting to arrange their own trade treaties with native potentates, and those who believed they had the business sewn up.</p>
<p>This period takes in the worst excesses of the Barbary pirates, whose slaving voyages took them as far as Iceland, and would regularly &#8220;harvest&#8221; human cargoes from Ireland and the Cornish peninsula. Their toll of merchant ships and the grim captivity of their crews was horrendous, lasting several centuries. As we become exercised over the present rise of piracy, it is worth noting Woodman&#8217;s point that between 1613 and 1621 the pirates of Algiers alone &#8220;brought in 447 Dutch, 193 French, 120 Spanish, 60 English and 56 German prizes, not counting those sunk&#8221;.</p>
<p>This volume covers the early attempts to discover the Arctic passages to Cathay, many of them heartbreaking stories of fortitude and failure, but driven, like so much else, by the hope of riches lying over the horizon.</p>
<p>Also here is the emergence of the great mercantile empires that would really launch oceanic sea trade in the east and west hemispheres, the vigorous component on the eastern seaboard which would explode into the United States, and the extraordinary voyages around the Indian Ocean, where shipmasters were traders, diplomats, strategists and warriors, as they negotiated footholds for their factories and trading posts in what was often a very hostile location. There is the grim story of the Atlantic slave trade, which is now imprinted on the national consciousness as part of the collective guilt our masters wish us to feel.</p>
<p>But, above all, this is a book about people; shipmasters and seafarers, merchants and traders, buccaneers and privateers, who are as as much a part of our nation&#8217;s story as any admiral, and whose tales need to be told. Four more volumes to come &#8212; what a treat.</p>
<p>Neptune&#8217;s Trident &#8212; Spices and Slaves: 1500-1807 is volume one in a history of the British Merchant Navy, by Richard Woodman. ISBN 978 0 7524 4814 5. Published by The History Press, www.thehistorypress.co.uk, price £30.</p>

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