Manual of Ship Subsidies | Page 2

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 3) a convention establishing a "reciprocal liberty of commerce," between the "territories of Great Britain in Europe and those of the United States," was signed in London.[O] In 1824-1826 reciprocity treaties were entered into with various continental powers. In 1827 (August 6) the