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The Earliest Original English Seaman's Rutter and Pilot's Chart

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

Alwyn Ruddock
Alwyn Ruddock
Affiliation:
(Birkbeck College, University of London)
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Extract

This article reports the discovery of two documents of considerable interest in the early history of navigation in England. When Henry VIII was planning to send ships of the royal fleet to Harderwijk in Guelderland in 1539, no pilot's book or chart of this part of the coast of northern Europe could be found in England. Therefore two experienced shipmasters, John Aborough of Devon and Richard Couche of Dover, were sent in haste to the Low Countries to make a survey of the coast and chart the route the king's ships would have to follow. Working with speed and secrecy, they compiled and brought back to the king a rutter giving sailing directions for Zeegat van Texel and the Zuider Zee and also a rough chart showing in detail the channels through the Haaks Banks, the entry to Marsdiep and the channel from thence to Enkhuizen. These two documents are the earliest original examples of such navigational directions drawn up by Englishmen which have so far been discovered. Both are reproduced in full and discussed in detail in this study.

Among the Marquess of Salisbury's family archives at Hatfield House is a document of great interest in the early history of navigation in England. It is a seaman's rutter giving directions for the navigation of Zeegat van Texel and the Zuider Zee which was compiled by two English shipmasters in 1539 on direct orders from King Henry VIII. A narrow roll of manuscript fashioned by roughly sewing four strips of parchment end to end, being not quite 6 in. wide and nearly 3½. long when fully opened out, this appears to be the earliest original English rutter which can be found today. It is true that the well-known set of fifteenth-century ‘Sailing Directions’ published by the Hakluyt Society in 1889 were compiled at an earlier date. But these have only survived in a copy transcribed by a professional scribe, William Ebesham, among a number of treatises on heraldry, chivalry and similar matters contained in a volume called the Great Book, part of the library of a country gentleman of East Anglia, Sir John Paston. The parchment roll at Hatfield would appear, therefore, to be the earliest example of an original English rutter which has yet been discovered.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1961 , pp. 409 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1961

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References

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1 Cecil Papers, 223/1.

2 Sailing Directions, ed. James Gairdner, Hakluyt Society publications, 1889; Doyle, A. I., ‘The Work of a Late Fifteenth Century English Scribe, William Ebesham’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXXIX. 298Google Scholarsea.

3 Waters, D. W. The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, p. 14.

4 Pollard, A. F., Henry VIII, pp. 361–84; Letters & Papers Henry VIII, XIII (i), no. 994.

5 This was the portrait which now hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

6 Letters & Papers Henry VIII, XIV (ii), nos. 213, 274.

7 The Rutter of the Sea, trans. Robert Copland, first published in 1528. De Kaert van der Zee, published by Jan Seuerszoon at Amsterdam in 1532; only one example of the original edition exists today, in the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels, but a modern edition ed. J. Knudson, was published in Copenhagen in 1914.

8 Ruddock, Alwyn A. ‘Trinity House at Deptford in the Sixteenth Century’, English Historical Review, LXV. 461.Google Scholar

9 Letters & Papers, Henry VIII, XIV (i), no. 732; John Dee, General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1577 edn.), p. 7.

10 See below, p. 419.

11 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 153, fo. 114.

12 Several variations of his surname appear in contemporary documents, such as Couche, Coche, Cowche and Cowchie. I have used Couche throughout because this is the form almost always used in the records of his home town, Dover. See J. Bavington Jones, Records of Dover, pp. 189–91 ; S. P. H. Statham, Dover Charters, p. 345; Add. MS. 29618, fos. 340v–41, 351 et seq.; Letters & Papers Henry VIII, V, no. 377; ibid., XI, no. 232; ibid., XIV (i), no. 728; ibid., XIV (ii), no. 155, &c.

13 Arundel MS. 97, fos. 57v, 59; Cotton MS., Galba B. x. no. 106.

14 Taylor, E. G. R., The Haven-Finding Art, p. 193.

15 State Papers Henry VIII, vol. 153, fo. 137V.

16 Arundel MS. 97, fos. 91, 96V. Thomas Cromwell was Lord Privy Seal at this period.

17 Lisle Papers, vol. 2, nos. 3–4.

18 Taylor, E. G. R., op. cit., pp. 168–9; Le Livre de Mer, ed. J. Denucé et G. Gernez, pp. ix et seq.

19 Taylor, E. G. R., op. cit., pp. 133–4; D. W. Waters, op. cit., pp. 30–31.

20 Harleian MS. 296, fo. 167.

21 High Court of Admiralty, Libels, Allegations, Decrees and Sentences (HCA. 24), file 5, larger bundle, nos. 8, 10–11; Examinations (HCA 13), vol. 2, 28 March 1538.

22 State Papers Henry VIII, vol. 154, fo. 15.

23 N.E.D.

24 Cotton MS., Augustus I. ii. 29.

25 Letters & Papers Relating to the War with France, 1512–13, ed. A. Spont, Navy Records Society publications, vol. X, p. 97; Calendar State Papers Venetian, II, nos. 225, 662; Letters & Papers Henry VIII, II, no. 1113.

26 Cotton MS., Vitellius C. XVI. fo. 273V.

27 Letters & Papers Henry VIII, XIV (ii), nos. 287, 347, 356.

28 Correspondence Politique de MM. de Castillon et de Marillac, Ambassadeurs de France en Angleterre, 1537–42, ed. J. Kaulek, p. 137.

29 The Chronicle of Calais, ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Series, 1846, pp. 167–9, 173.

30 Ibid., p. 143; State Papers Henry VIII, VIII, p. 209.

31 Pollard, A. F., op. cit., pp. 384 et seq.