DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.57079#0021
THE LEVANT COMPANY
5
vessels with Levant commodities, but these
vessels came at the merchants’ own risk,
and, unlike the “ Flanders Galleys,” regu-
lated their movements at their own will. A
vessel of this kind was wrecked off the Isle
of Wight in October, 1587,12 and that was the
last of the Venetian vessels trading to England
of which we know.
The interruption of the commerce of Venice
which the League of Cambrai had brought
about exercised a very beneficial influence
on the enterprise of English merchants. Up
till that time they had been content to receive
Levant goods from the Venetians ; now they
were forced to go themselves for them. Thus
we find that between the years 1511 and
1534, five London ships “ with certain other
ships of Southampton and Bristow (Bristol)
had an ordinary and usual trade to Sicily,
Candia and Chios.” 13 In 1513 an English
12 Sir William Monson was an eye-witness of this
catastrophe, and describes it in his Naval Tracts, IV. p.
408 (given in Churchill’s Collections of Voyages and
Travels, 1752). Sir William there says: “The goodly
ship struck upon the shingles at The Needles and all
on board save seven poor creatures perished, and her
entire merchandize was lost.”
]3 Richard Hakluyt: The principal navigations,
5
vessels with Levant commodities, but these
vessels came at the merchants’ own risk,
and, unlike the “ Flanders Galleys,” regu-
lated their movements at their own will. A
vessel of this kind was wrecked off the Isle
of Wight in October, 1587,12 and that was the
last of the Venetian vessels trading to England
of which we know.
The interruption of the commerce of Venice
which the League of Cambrai had brought
about exercised a very beneficial influence
on the enterprise of English merchants. Up
till that time they had been content to receive
Levant goods from the Venetians ; now they
were forced to go themselves for them. Thus
we find that between the years 1511 and
1534, five London ships “ with certain other
ships of Southampton and Bristow (Bristol)
had an ordinary and usual trade to Sicily,
Candia and Chios.” 13 In 1513 an English
12 Sir William Monson was an eye-witness of this
catastrophe, and describes it in his Naval Tracts, IV. p.
408 (given in Churchill’s Collections of Voyages and
Travels, 1752). Sir William there says: “The goodly
ship struck upon the shingles at The Needles and all
on board save seven poor creatures perished, and her
entire merchandize was lost.”
]3 Richard Hakluyt: The principal navigations,