6 - English exports to the Baltic

Summary

As suggested in the previous chapter, the changing size of English vessels renders a bare presentation of shipping statistics inadequate as a description of changes in the volume of England's Baltic traffic. Only a close analysis of the contents of English vessels will allow for a reconstruction not only of changes in the quantity, but also in the quality of the merchandise being shipped into the Sound.

Once again the STT are the most complete source for such a reconstruction, despite all the difficulties that this source entails: the true ownership of the cargoes is impossible to establish on the basis of the STT as the compilers merely assumed that the nationality of shipmaster, shipowner, cargo owner and cargo were all identical. Certainly the distortions inherent in this assumption are minimized in the case of the English because certain goods, such as Suffolk broadcloths, can only be English in origin. Furthermore, it is unlikely that English ships would have carried any non-English goods as English shipping was less efficient and more expensive than the Dutch fluyt. If one restricts the study to the cargoes of English vessels alone, one may be sure that only English goods are being included. On the other hand, such a study obviously ignores those English goods carried by the Dutch, though this carrying trade was less significant for exports to the Baltic than for the bulky commodity imports from it, where cost and efficiency of shipping was crucial.

It is also important to remember that there was a great reform of Danish customs procedures in 1618 which rendered the recording techniques of the STT more reliable.