Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/73

 *seys, muscatel and other wines, sweet oils, cotton, wool, Turkey carpets, galls, pepper, cinnamon and other spices. These details, with particulars of the more important of these voyages, were copied by Hakluyt himself "from certaine auncient Ligier bookes" of Sir William Locke, mercer, of London, Sir Wm. Bowyer, Alderman, and Master John Gresham.

Many of these accounts are interesting and instructive, and two of them may be referred to with advantage as illustrative of the size and character of the ordinary English merchant vessels then trading with the Mediterranean. One of the smaller class, named the Holy Cross, is described as "a short ship of 160 tons burthen." She traded with Crete and with Chios, and her last voyage seems to have been an unfortunate one. Having been a full year at sea in performance of this voyage, "she with great danger returned home, where, upon her arrival at Blackwall, her wine and oil casks were found so weak that they were not able to hoist them out of the ship, but were constrained to draw them as they lay, and put their wine and oil into new vessels, and so unload the ship." As to the ship herself, she is described as having been "so shaken in this voyage and so weakened that she was laid up in the dock and never made voyage afterwards."

As there is no reason for doubting the accuracy of the above statement, it is clear that these English mer-*