Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/488



Among the most graphic descriptions of the character of the English seamen of the fourteenth century, is that of the renowned Chaucer in his "Prologue to the Canterbury Tales." Although it is the picture of a hardened, reckless "felawe," who made no scruple to drown the prisoners whom he captured—"by water he sent them home to every land"—it affords an excellent insight into the manners and customs, as well as the dress, of the seamen of his time. Indeed, the poet's description gives a good idea of the free-and-easy character of seamen at all periods of English history; a class of men scarcely less distinct and peculiar in their habits now than then; and while equally expert and ready in tempestuous weather, no less fond, when at ease on shore, of "their draught of wyn," or of their glass of grog.

"A schipman was ther, wonyng fer by Weste: For ought I woot, he was of Dertemouthe He rood upon a rouncy, as he couthe, In a gown of faldying to the kne. A dagger hangyng on a laas hadde he Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun. The hoote somer had maad his hew al broun;

in commemoration of, this action. (Hist. Roy. Navy, ii. p. 223.) Selden quotes the lines:
 * [Footnote: represented standing in a large ship, were struck in allusion to, if not

"For foure things our noble sheweth to me, King, shippe and sword, and power of the sea."

Mare Clausum ii. c. 25.

The same writer also gives this line:

"Thus made he Nobles coyned of record,"

in honour, apparently, of the capture of Calais 1347.]