Manual of Ship Subsidies | Page 2

first
made it a way to honor, one of his laws enacting that a merchant or
mariner successfully accomplishing three voyages on the high seas
with a ship and a cargo of his own should be advanced to the dignity of
a thane (baron).[C]
The first navigation law was enacted in the year 1381, fifth of Richard
II. This act, introduced "to awaken industry and increase the wealth of
the inhabitants and extend their influence,"[D] ordained that "none of
the King's liege people should from henceforth ship any merchandise in
going out or coming within the realm of England but only in the ships
of the King's liegeance, on penalty of forfeiture of vessel and
cargo."[E]
This act of Richard II was the forerunner of the code of Cromwell,
which came to be called the "Great Maritime Charter of England," and
the fundamental principles of which held up to the second quarter of
the nineteenth century.
Under Charles I was enacted (1646) the first restrictive act with relation
to the commerce of the colonies, which ordained "That none in any of
the ports of the plantations of Virginia, Bermuda, Barbados, and other
places of America, shall suffer any ship or vessel to lade any goods of
the growth of the plantations and carry them to foreign ports except in
English bottoms," under forfeiture of certain exemptions from
customs.[F] It was followed up four years later (1650) under the
Commonwealth, by an act prohibiting "all foreign vessels whatever
from lading with the plantations of America without having obtained a

license."[G]
Cromwell's code, of which the act of 1381 was the germ, was
established the next year, 1651. Its primary object was to check the
maritime supremacy of Holland, then attaining dominance of the sea;
and to strike a decisive blow at her naval power. The ultimate aim was
to secure to England the whole carrying trade of the world, Europe only
excepted.[H] These were its chief provisions: that no goods or
commodities whatever of the growth, production, or manufacture of
Asia, Africa, or America should be imported either into England or
Ireland, or any of the plantations, except in English-built ships, owned
by English subjects, navigated by English masters, and of which
three-fourths of the crew were Englishmen; or in such ships as were the
real property of the people of the country or place in which the goods
were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually were,
exported.[I] This last clause was the blow direct to Holland, for the
Dutch had little native products to export, and their ships were mainly
employed in carrying the produce of other countries to all foreign
markets. It was answered with war, the fierce naval war of 1652-1654,
in which was exhibited that famous spectacle of the at first victorious
Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, sweeping the English Channel with a
broom at his masthead.
With the final defeat of the Dutch after hard fighting on both sides,
their virtual submission to the English Navigation Act, and their
admission of the English "sovereignty of the seas,"[J] by their consent
to "strike their flag to the shipping of the Commonwealth," England, in
her turn, became the chief sea power of the world.[K] During the ten
years of peace that followed, however, the Dutch despite the English
Navigation Act, succeeded in increasing their shipping, and regained
much of the carrying trade if not their lost leadership.[L]
Cromwell's act was confirmed by Charles II in 1660, and made the
basis of the code which then her statesmen exalted as "The Great
Maritime Charter of England."
Early in Charles II's reign also (in 1662) indirect bounties were offered
for the encouragement of the building of larger and more efficient ships

for service in time of war. These were grants of one-tenth of the
customs dues on the cargo, for two years, to every vessel having two
and one-half or three decks, and carrying thirty guns.[M] Thirty years
later (1694), in William and Mary's reign, the time was extended to
three years. Under William and Mary the granting of bounties on naval
stores was begun, and this system was continued till George III's
time.[M] With William and Mary's reign also began the giving of
indirect bounties to fishermen for the catching and curing of fish. After
the middle of the eighteenth century vessels engaged in the fisheries
were regularly subsidized, with the object of training sailors for the
merchant marine and the royal navy.[M]
While the fundamental rules of the "Maritime Charter" of 1660
remained practically unimpaired, although in the succeeding years
hundreds of regulating statutes were passed, breaks were made in the
restrictive barriers of the code during the first third of the nineteenth
century by the adoption of the principle of maritime reciprocity.[N] In
1815 (July