Fishing and Maritime Trade

Introduction

First of all, reference has to be made to the geographical advantages of Lowestoft’s position on the East Coast. A substantial number of its male inhabitants made a living from going to sea, while others remained on shore and earned money from processing catches of fish and handling other cargoes. A select minority of these latter even grew wealthy through maritime activity, because they were the people who owned the vessels which caught herrings and cod or which carried merchandise of different kinds. A considerable amount of research has been devoted to various aspects of English coastal and overseas trade in the Pre-industrial Era, but fishing has not fared so well. The balance was partly redressed by publication of a national fisheries history in the year 2000 (in which Lowestoft features) – D.J. Starkey, C. Reid & N. Ashcroft (eds.), England’s Sea Fisheries – but the country still does not have a body of material to compare with Scotland, Holland or the Scandinavian nations. Much of the material in this piece has been reproduced elsewhere – The Ocean’s Gift (1995) and Lowestoft 1550-1750 (2008) – but no apology is made for its presence here because sea-based industries were probably the single most important factor in Lowestoft’s development from the end of the 13th century onwards.

Fishing and Trading - types of vessel used

There is comparatively little surviving pictorial or documentary information to enable accurate assessment of the structure and working-practice of fishing craft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Details found in official records suggest that the craft ranged from about ten or fifteen tons burden up to seventy or eighty tons, with some of the larger Iceland barks reaching as much as 120 tons. At the time, this was the measurement of a vessel’s hold capacity in terms of the number of tuns it could carry – the tun being a large cask of 252 gallons capacity, used for storing wine. Obviously, in view of its size, no ship carried a single tun, as such, but much smaller casks of manageable size, such as the firkin (nine gallons) or kilderkin/half-barrel (eighteen gallons). Casks were used for the carriage of all kinds of wet and dry goods and, so, the tun could be broken down to twenty-eight firkins or fourteen kilderkins. Thus, a small ship of ten tons could carry 280firkins or 140 kilderkins, while one of 120 tons would accommodate totals of 3,360 and 1,680 respectively. It is unlikely, in the interests of sea-worthiness, that any vessel carried cargo to its full estimated limit.

The capacities cited would probably have meant overall vessel lengths ranging from twenty or twenty-five feet up to sixty or seventy plus. Most of the craft would have been decked, the larger ones probably with a raised foredeck and poop, and they would have had two or three masts. These latter would have been square-rigged and extra sails could have been set on bowsprits and outriggers, as required. Vessels of this type appear on a late 16th century map of the local coastline from Pakefield to Gorleston (c. 1570-80) and they may be taken as typical of the time. The map itself has sometimes been referred to as the “Martin Map” as it was once in the possession of Thomas Martin of Palgrave, a well-known Suffolk antiquarian of the 18th century. It is lodged in the British Library’s Additional Manuscripts collection, but a copy is held by Suffolk Archives (Ipswich) – Acc. No. 368. 

The map also has two vignettes of a smaller, inshore vessel, which would possibly have been in the range of fifteen to eighteen feet in length. It has a single mast amidships and is shown carrying a furled lugsail. Further pictorial information is to be had from the map drawn to accompany the Lothingland defence survey of 1584 – which has been the subject of another article in these pages, titled Lothingland Invasion Scare (1584).This shows two three-masters of the kind referred to above lying at anchor off Lowestoft, as well as three, smaller crayers. Two of these latter are double-masted (one of the craft is very small), while the third one has a single mast. Plying between the five vessels and the shore are three ferry boats, which offloaded fish and general cargo and which conveyed supplies and merchandise to visiting ships. All of them are shown as being crewed by four oarsmen.

One problem which arises when discussing vessels of 400 years ago is their dual-purpose nature. Although both Henrician and Elizabethan surveys refer specifically to merchant ships, craft up to 100 or 120 tons might also have been used on fishing voyages. This has been observed in the port of Rye and also nearer to home, in Aldeburgh. In the latter town, chamberlains’ accounts of the late 16th century show that six vessels were involved in both fishing and the coastal salt-carrying trade, eleven in fishing and coastal coal voyages, and three other craft in all three activities. Lowestoft would probably have been no different from these other two communities – but, up till now, nothing in documentation of the time, relating directly to the town, has been found to confirm dual use. However, this was certainly a feature of the smallest inshore craft and these combined fishing with ferrying goods to and from the shoreline – Lowestoft having no working harbour of its own until 1831. It is worth noting that any vessel is only useful to its owner when it is in use; laying it up simply removes earning capacity and causes the planks to spring.

As far as larger craft are concerned, dual use would have not made much difference to storage facilities below decks. The hold compartments (pannells) were easily re-arranged to suit the cargo and the main task would have been one of cleaning the spaces after either fishing or carrying goods – particularly the former. However, the organisation of deck-space would have been of major importance in herring or mackerel fishing. Whether the nets were hauled for’ad or amidships, there was one vital requirement: adequate room for the removal of fish from the meshes and for stowing the gear. The usual way of providing necessary working-space, and getting rid of the obstruction caused by stays and shrouds, was to drop the foremast back into a cruck or support of some kind and leave it there for as long as the boat was hanging to its nets or the work of hauling was in progress. There were no such problems with line-fishing for cod or ling, because the hauling of lines and the handling of the fish required far less deck-area.

As the 17th century progressed, it seems that the distinction between fishing craft and trading vessels became more clearly defined. Certainly, in Lowestoft’s case, by the time that the surviving Tithe Accounts book (Norfolk Record Office, PD 589/80) began to record farming and fishing in the parish in the year 1698, the larger, deep-sea fishing vessels (or great boats, as they were known) seem to have been distinct from the traders which were operating out of port. Each type could have been converted to other uses if need arose, but the design and construction had diverged, leading to distinct differences in appearance. The fishing vessels had become lower in the water than the traders and they carried large lugsails on their three masts, as opposed to smaller sails set on yards. A Richard Powles ink-and-wash study of the beach area and Lowlight (1784) shows both types of craft more effectively than words can describe, with the latter also depicting two great boats under construction (or repair) on the shoreline – these being instantly recognisable by the grooved crossbar on the stern, in which the mast rested while fishing was in progress. And another of his views (taken of the town, from out at sea, and dating also from the 1780s) shows six great boats; four of them anchored up and two under sail. 

Little is known about the cost of building such vessels. Details found in probate inventories refer to craft already in use, without reference to age or condition. And, in any case, it is not until 1656 that the first valuation is recorded, when a fishing vessel belonging to Josiah Wilde (merchant) was appraised at £55, without its gear. Twenty-six years later, Elizabeth Pacy (merchant’s widow) had two fishing craft, called the Herring and the Mackerel, worth £100 each with nets and other equipment, while a third one, the Susan (named after the oldest daughter), was valued at £45 exclusive of gear. Her next-door neighbour, James Wilde (merchant), owned five fishing boats when he died in February 1684. They were called the Envoy, the Mermaid, the James, the Swallow and the Amity, and they were valued at £200, £140, £100, £100 and £50 respectively. In 1699, the two vessels belonging to Joseph Barker (merchant) were reckoned to be worth a total of £300, inclusive of fishing gear, while a year later three craft owned by William Rising (merchant) had a combined value of £500 placed upon them – again, inclusive of gear. The Mayflower, which belonged to Samuel Munds (merchant), must have been smaller than all of these others because it was only worth £25, exclusive of gear, in the year 1711.

Six years later, the great boat (and that is the description of it in the inventory) owned by Leake Bitson (merchant) was appraised at £87 3s. 0d., while in 1719 and 1723 John Colby (merchant and apothecary) and Thomas Utting (grocer) had a vessel each, assessed at £100 and £60 respectively. All three valuations did not include the vessels’ gear. During the same period as that covered by the nine inventories cited, ferry boats and small inshore craft ranged in value from £1 to £6, depending on age and on how many oars and other pieces of equipment were included in the valuations.

Finance and Organisation

Leaving the question of dual use aside, it is possible to ascertain the pattern of ownership of Lowestoft vessels from both wills and probate inventories, but the most detailed information is to be found in the parish Tithe Accounts. Between 1698 and 1725, fifty-three individuals are seen to have either owned fishing craft outright or to have shared ownership with other people – this length of time being chosen, as it was sufficiently long to give the detail required. Seven of the men were boat-masters and the rest largely merchants – along with a grocer, a victualler and a yeoman, whose presence maintained the local tradition of a mixed economy. Details available in the probate records suggest that, up until the middle of the 17th century, more people of craftsman status were involved in fishing than was the case later on. No definite reason can be given for this, but it may be a sign that part of the town’s economy was beginning to change and develop from its previous diversity into something more specialised. This diversity being that many people, who had an interest in fishing, were also involved in other areas of economic activity.

Fishing seasons tended to be unpredictable in their yield (this was especially the case after 1700) and it may be that the industry needed a stricter financial regime, in order to be successful. There was also a tendency for the larger boats to become bigger and more expensive to build, as time went on, and this possibly discouraged what may be described as a “part-time” interest in fishing. Furthermore, it is likely that a number of people were forced out of fishing during a period of decline in the first half of the 17th century and never returned to it.

As far as smaller, inshore craft are concerned, evidence probate material and the Tithe Accounts suggest that these were owned and worked primarily by the fishermen themselves. The latter records are particularly compelling, showing that of the eighty-five owners recorded between 1709 and 1725 (the former year being the first one in which the vessels were recorded for tithe purposes) only fifteen were merchants and the other seventy fishermen. The small boats, as they were known, were much less expensive to finance, carrying a crew of only two or three men (as opposed to ten or eleven) and working far fewer nets closer in to the shore. Their operators constituted, for the most part, a body of men which was largely independent of the merchants where the fishing operation itself was concerned, but who relied upon their more influential neighbours to buy catches for processing and retail.

As Table 1 clearly shows, control of the fishing industry was dominated by the merchant and seafaring levels of society, if evidence provided by wills and inventories is to be believed. The information available in both types of document has been amalgamated to produce a single statement regarding which kinds of people owned boats, fishing gear and curing materials, and in which combination. Most important of all in the industry were those able to be classified in all three categories. The presence of women is indicated by a number in brackets in the relevant social and occupational groups. It is to be observed that they do not feature in the final period analysed – perhaps because the industry had become more specialist in nature than previously and less spread across the whole community.

Table 1. Financial interest in fishing: probate material (1560-1730)

The proportion of those people in society, who had an interest in the fishing industry and for whom wills and inventories have survived, remained fairly constant throughout the whole period investigated. It was 16.2% for 1560-1599, 15.1% for 1600-1699 and 15.2% for 1700-1730. Financial control of the industry evidently lay largely in the hands of merchants and wealthier members of the seafaring fraternity, for it was these people to whom a majority of the larger vessels belonged. This capitalist élite, if it may be so termed, either owned fishing vessels outright on an individual basis or had shared interests in craft. The latter system is most noticeable up to about the middle of the 17th century, but single ownership increased thereafter – especially during the first three decades of the 18th.

In principle, the basic idea behind financing fishing voyages was to invest capital in the purchase of vessels or shares in vessels, to contribute a certain amount of the gear used (this varied, according to individual agreement) and to provide the victuals. At the end of the season, when all catches had been sold, it was hoped that the amount raised would exceed the expenses (equipment, provisions, repairs and wages), thereby producing a profit. This was then distributed according to the amount(s) of money which individual people had committed, with the largest investors receiving the largest pay-out(s). In the event of a poor season, there was sometimes no profit to draw. This factor was no doubt one of the reasons why the merchants tended to specialise in curing fish as well as financing the catching of it: losses incurred during periods of poor yield could be partly offset by the money made from selling processed herrings and cod at premium prices. The other advantage was the amount of overall control exercised by having an interest in both fishing and curing, because the price that catches fetched was less liable to fluctuation when both branches of the industry lay in the same hands.

If the information revealed in Table 1 is matched with the number of wills and inventories studied (507 and 100, respectively), it is seen that 33% of merchants identified between 1560 and 1599 had a direct interest in the ownership of both fishing boats and gear and in fish-curing. For 1600-1699 the proportion was 34%, and for 1700-1730, 64%. If those merchants whose interests embraced two of the three elements of the industry are added to the people involved in all three, the proportions for the three periods rise to 40%, 47% and 82% respectively. The figures serve to suggest a tightly-knit élite, which had considerable influence in the conduct of both fishing and curing. And the ties formed by mutual business interests were further strengthened by about 30% of the merchants being related to each other by marriage.

Kinship was an even stronger factor among the maritime classes, with about 40% of seafarers having marriage connections. As Table 1 indicates, their interest lay primarily in the possession of boats and gear, rather than in the processing of catches, but there was an influential minority which had an involvement in all three facets of the industry. It was customary for crew members on board fishing vessels to contribute a certain number of nets or lines (depending on the nature of the voyage) towards the overall amount of gear carried, the idea being to spread the investment over as many people as possible and provide the justification for paying fishermen by a share system. For herring voyages, ordinary crew members usually supplied one dole of nets each (a dole consisting of two individual nets), with masters and mates making a larger contribution. The same applied to line-fishing for cod and ling, where ordinary crew members usually provided one set of hand-lines and masters and mates a greater number. Given a degree of good fortune and sound business sense, it was possible for enterprising fishermen to rise in the world: in three generations, one branch of the Pacy family progressed from seafarer status to become the wealthiest merchants in Lowestoft during the second half of the seventeenth century. 

In the absence of any references to net-makers in the occupational data, manufacture of fishing nets and lines, a labour-intensive and specialist task, seems to have been mainly carried out by the fishermen and their families (including children). But there is also the possibility that equipment was brought in from outside sources, even though none has as yet been found. Routine repair would have been carried out on board ship while a voyage was in progress and crew members would also have been involved in maintenance work in between fishing seasons. In addition to this, casual labour would have been available at times of peak activity (chiefly, the autumn herring season) to ensure that the equipment was kept at a serviceable level. The battle against wear and tear was never-ending – a vital task in ensuring that the gear worked effectively and that expenditure on new equipment was not undertaken lightly.

Probate inventories, dating from between 1590 and 1730, give a range of values for fishing-nets. Those for herring, depending on their depth, ranged from 3s. to 12s. each; mackerel nets were worth between 1s. and 13s. 4d. (the former must have been a very poor specimen); and sprat nets worked out at about 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. All this gear had been used and was of varying age and condition. The only prices available for what was obviously new gear occur in 1682 and 1719, when valuations of £1 per net were given. The constant exposure of fishing gear to salt water caused the fibres of the twine to degrade and regular treatment was needed to counter this. Both nets and lines were steeped in a tanning solution before and after voyages – a process much the same as that which helped to convert cattle hides into leather. Some of the equipment may well have been treated in oak or ash bark solution in any of the town’s two or three leather tanneries, but a number of leading merchants had tan-houses of their own inside their yards. Because of the material used, the process of treating nets and lines was commonly known as barking – a term which remained in use well into the 20th century, long after oak and ash bark had ceased to be used.

Apart from the financing of fishing voyages, the other matter of major economic importance in the industry was the organisation behind the handling and processing of catches. Dried and salted cod was primarily intended for local markets, travelling perhaps no further than Norwich – though some of it may have found its way to Sturbridge Fair, the great market held annually near Cambridge (24 August to 29 September), where huge quantities of cured fish were traded. The smoked red herrings, however, were a different matter, being conveyed in considerable quantities to the Italian port of Leghorn (Livorno) as well as to other, less distant destinations – both in England and across the North Sea. Some idea of the scale of the curing operation in Lowestoft during the second half of the seventeenth century is given in the record kept by James Wilde (merchant) of expenses incurred in contesting Great Yarmouth’s claim to domination of the East Coast herring industry during the early 1660s. Wilde co-ordinated Lowestoft’s response to its neighbour’s monopolistic manoeuvring and the detailed accounts he compiled of money and materials disbursed were luckily given permanent form in Edmund Gillingwater’s late eighteenth century history of the town (pp. 221-44).

Altogether, a total of £869 9s. 3d. was spent on fighting Great Yarmouth in the House of Lords, £581 13s. 3d. of which was raised by a levy collected from people who were curing red herrings and from others who were involved in the manufacture of casks (coopers and brewers, largely). A toll of 2s. per last was the charge made on herring curers for the year 1660, followed by one of 5s. per last for 1661, 1662 and 1663, with a late, final imposition of 2s. in 1674. Just over 450 lasts of red herrings were cured in 1661 by sixteen merchants, a total which had risen to 668 lasts in 1663, with seventeen men involved. By 1674, production had increased to 700 lasts and there were twenty-one merchants involved. At ten barrels to the last and with each barrel containing 1,000 fish, the quantities produced were considerable.The fishermen counted out a last as 100 long hundreds of herrings (a literal count, by hand), at 120 fish to the long hundred, thus making the measure a total of 12,000 fish. At 1,000 fish to the barrel, this meant a total of twelve barrels. The merchants regarded the last as 10,000 cured fish, or ten barrels. This meant that, for every five lasts of fresh herrings purchased, there were six lasts of cured fish to sell.

Most of the curing-sheds, or fish-houses as they were called, stood at the base of the cliff in Lowestoft, below the dwelling-houses of the people who owned them – a topographical feature which gave the town a very distinctive layout. The proximity of their living-quarters to the fish-houses would have enabled Lowestoft merchants to exercise strict quality-control of their product, which enjoyed a good reputation far and wide. Each merchant probably employed one skilled man, who supervised a team of servants and casual workers. The task of curing was seasonal in nature and occupied the period September to December. Once it was over, fish-house personnel would have switched to other employment, either with the same master or with another. The manufacture of containers required for packing and transporting the red herrings would have been an important undertaking. The 700 lasts of red herrings cured in 1674 would have required a total of 7,000 barrels – which helps to explain why coopering was one of the most important land-based maritime trades, in terms of the number of people employed. Large numbers of casks would also have been needed for transhipment of dried and salted cod, as well as for other goods both dry and liquid. During the early years of the 20th century, an experienced cooper was capable of making about seventy barrels a week: see D. Butcher, Following the Fishing (1987), p. 15. Rates of manufacture may not have differed greatly two centuries or more previously. Therefore, it would have taken ten men about ten weeks to have made the casks required for the 1674 herring season.

It would appear that, during the 16th century, London fish merchants exercised some degree of influence in the exporting of Lowestoft red herrings, but their presence does not seem to have been a feature of the trade after about 1600 – which may have been partly due to a decline in the town’s maritime fortunes occuring during the first half of the 17th century. A fishmonger from the capital called Gabriel Puckle actually owned a house in the town, which he bequeathed in July 1593 to a child who had still to be born. No positive evidence of his trading activities has come to light, but he must have been involved in the local fish trade to have been a resident. There is more information regarding John Archer (fishmonger), who is revealed in a manor court entry of December 1584 as dealing in red herrings. He was the man identified as the largest shipper of red herrings out of Great Yarmouth in the year 1580-1 – this, by Neville Williams in The Maritime Trade of the East Anglian Ports, 1550-1590 (1988), p. 149. It is very likely that he was trading in fish in both Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, in which case his shipments from the former place may well have included herrings cured in the latter. Alternatively, he may have changed his operating base from one town to the other.

The Italian port of Leghorn (Livorno), to which the product was sent, became the great centre for English goods transported to the Mediterranean during the later part of the 16th century – red herrings being regarded as a particular delicacy in Italy. That meant Lowestoft was ideally placed to participate in an expanding trade. Traffic from Great Yarmouth to Leghorn increased noticeably during the 1580s and 90s, with red herrings as a main commodity, and London merchants were noted as shipping Lowestoft fish as well as those cured in Yarmouth. According to one observer, Anthony Michell – in his Cambridge PhD thesis of 1978, ‘The port and town of Great Yarmouth and its economic and social relationships with its neighbours on both sides of the sea, 1550-1714’ – the Leghorn trade was first developed in Great Yarmouth during the 1570s and 80s, which would tie in with the Duke of Tuscany’s promotion of the place as an entrepôt. If references to Leghorn barrels in various Lowestoft probate inventories are significant, it remained a port of reception well into the eighteenth century.

Given the lack of references to London merchants after about 1600, it seems possible that their interest in the direct handling of Lowestoft red herrings came to end comparatively early on during the seventeenth century. The evidence thereafter suggests that local merchants were arranging their own trans-shipments. It made economic sense to do this, especially if local vessels were used for carriage. Both wills and probate inventories of the second half of the seventeenth century and the first thirty years of the eighteenth show considerably more men and women with investment in merchant shipping than had been the case before 1650. Any kind of maritime venture entailed a good deal of risk and one way of spreading this was to have more than one person involved in ownership of a vessel. The shares were usually organised in halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths, and a person’s holding was arranged according to how much of an interest he or she was prepared to purchase. It is likely that the larger a vessel was, the larger the number of people having shares in it would be. 

Table 2 shows that the people involved in owning merchant ships, or shares in such craft, belonged to the same levels of local society as those who had an interest in fishing boats. In some cases, certain merchants and mariners had direct involvement with both types of vessel. Thus, it was, that trading craft were controlled by the same elite as that which directed the fishing industry. There was a mutuality of interest in such an arrangement, because not only were cargoes of cured fish exported on merchant vessels, but necessary supplies of marine stores and salt brought in from abroad. However, there is some suggestion that the shares held by Lowestoft people in trading craft may not have been held exclusively in vessels belonging to the town. There is at least one reference, in a will of March 1702 (that of Nicholas Utting, grocer), to a share held in a Yarmouth pink. Thus, it is interesting to note that, in spite of the civic posturing by one town against the other with regard to trading privileges, at least some of the inhabitants were prepared to work together in commercial undertakings. More than a century earlier, in the 1570s, two former Yarmouth officials had even moved into Lowestoft to live there: Allen Coldham (bailiff in 1559), to operate a retail enterprise; Cornelius Bright (bailiff in 1546, 1556 and 1564), to spend what may best be described as his retirement.

Table 2. Financial interest in trading vessels: probate material (1560-1730)

The number of seafarers who, increasingly throughout the second half of the 17th century and into the 18th, either owned or partly owned the vessels which they commanded, was relatively small when taken as a proportion of all the men who made their living on the oceans (probably, no more than about 3% or 4%). However, a hint of what the promotion to master could mean for a mariner, in terms of earning capacity and subsequent social elevation (regardless of any financial interest in the vessel), can be seen in the following example.

Samuel Munds was the son of James Munds (mariner) and in August 1682, at the age of thirty-nine, he was the master of a trading vessel called the Black Lyon, which was part-owned by Elizabeth Pacy (via her husband’s will) and which was involved for at least some of the year in coastal coal traffic. When he died, in April 1710, Munds had by then become a merchant himself and his inventory shows that his worldly goods were worth a total of £258 8s. 3d. He lived in a house on the east side of the High Street at its northernmost end,and his interests in farming, brewing, fishing and fish-curing were sufficiently diverse to necessitate nine appraisers being required to value his property. The one boat which he owned, the Mayflower, was a fishing vessel. It would not be true to say that he was a typical figure in Lowestoft maritime circles, but he was certainly one of a handful of men of his time who were influential in both fishing and trading and who had learned the business thoroughly from the inside and at a lower level than the one where they finished up.

As a feature of interest (no longer able to be seen), the outlines of the southern gable and end-stack of his dwelling were once visible on the northern wall of No. 2 High Street. Refurbishment of the fabric removed all traces of this echo from the past. 

Conclusion

The most basic and obvious way of demonstrating the increased importance of maritime pursuits after Lowestoft had gained port status in 1679 is to show the proportion of occupations recorded for seafarers as a percentage of occupations as a whole. The ninety years from 1561 to 1650 produce 161 occupations at sea out of a total of 986 recorded occupations in all (16.3%). The hundred years from 1651 to 1750 produce 463 out of out of a total of 1019 (45.4%). Some allowance has to be made, however, for the sheer number of fishermen named in the tithe accounts, which does tend to inflate the figure. If these 168 are removed from the reckoning, a proportion of 30% of the whole is arrived at as the seafaring element in the occupational structure for the period 1651-1750.

Once the town had been given specified rights of import and export, it was able to develop an even more wholly committed maritime economy than it had previously had. More people in the wealthier levels of local society began to acquire trading vessels, or shares in them, and the older-style mixed economy (while it did not die out completely) was less pronounced than it had been previously. The town’s population grew as well, from around 1,500 in 1650 to just short of 2,000 in 1750. This rise in the number of inhabitants, though not spectacular, is sufficient (25%) to suggest that something was perhaps occurring in Lowestoft to serve as the incentive for people to move there.

Another aspect of sea-borne trade in and out of Lowestoft after port status had been granted may be seen in a consequent decrease in the amount of traffic handled by Great Yarmouth. Further evidence of Lowestoft’s maritime expansion is also to be found in the presence of Trinity House pilots – men who were recruited from among local mariners in order to use their knowledge of inshore sandbanks for the benefit of those less familiar with the danger. And it was almost certainly no accident that Trinity House also chose to build a new lighthouse on the top of the north cliff, just out of town, in the year 1676. Admittedly, this was some three years before the town was elevated to port status, but there was obviously the need for such a facility. An increase in the amount of trade in and out of Lowestoft, as well as up and down the coast, was probably instrumental in prompting the Elder Brethren to act the way they did. 

The town’s first pair of candle-burning lights had been set up somewhere on the beach in 1609, two years after the provision of a similar amenity at Caister, to the north of Great Yarmouth. The particular stimulus to provide lights on the beach at Lowestoft was the fact that the Stanford Channel had become dangerous to negotiate and the lack of markers of any kind had caused loss of life and goods. With two leading lights positioned correctly on the shore (either of which could be moved as need dictated), it would then become possible for vessels to line up the pair of markers and sail through the sandbanks into safe anchorage. 

By 1628, one of the lights was in danger of being washed away and the decision was taken to build a new structure as an “upper light”. This stood immediately north of Swan Score, to the rear of what is now Nos. 38-40, High Street. After the Corporation of Trinity House had acquired the land from the Lord of the Manor, had organised a supply of materials with which to build it and had recruited a gang of workmen, the conduct of construction was left in the hands of John Wilde (merchant). The light remained in operation until 1676, when a new, isolated, cliff-top site about a quarter of a mile to the north-north-west was chosen as being more suitable – perhaps because of fire-risk to adjacent properties from the earlier marker. After the old light had been dismantled, the redundant plot was conveyed to William Frary (blacksmith), against whose property it abutted. The new coal-burning light on the north cliff was built under the aegis of Samuel Pepys, as Master of Trinity House, and it performed long service before being superseded in 1873 by the building seen today. Thomas Baskerville (topographer, traveller and writer), on his visit to the town in 1677, recorded seeing it in action – as well as its smaller, candle-burning companion down on the beach. 

Safety measures of the kind described above showed awareness of the dangers posed by offshore sandbanks, but a more potent reminder of the perils of life at sea may be found elsewhere. Out of ninety-one seafarers who made wills which have survived, forty have no burial recorded in the parish registers – a fact that probably implies death occurring away from home by one means or another. There are also frequent references in the Lowestoft burial entries to “a stranger washed ashore”, a simple statement that serves to illustrate the risks of life on the high seas and the anonymity of drowning in a place removed from one’s own home-area. The local manorial records abound with details of the retrieval of pieces of wreck on the beaches to the north and south of Lowestoft, but it is only occasionally that the human drama inherent in such events manages to convey itself. Two examples will serve to illustrate the point.

On 27 December 1610, the Kirkley/Pakefield water leet (a manorial court dealing with wreck of the shore and salvaging activity) recorded two references to a mishap involving a boat belonging to Nicholas Pacy of Lowestoft (mariner). The first noted the finding of “a parcel of nets” belonging to him. The second is worded as follows: “Item we present two men which came [were washed] ashore at Pakefield the one had in his purse vs. vid. which men came out of Nicol Pacy’s boat and carried away by one Fisher’s son of Lowestoft in his carte, and what the other man had they know not”. The two events are almost certainly connected. In an entry of 3 November 1610, the Lowestoft parish registers record the burial of John Hurne (ship’s carpenter) and James, a Scotsman (probably his Christian name). Both men are stated to have drowned in local inshore waters. The inquest into the finding of their bodies therefore took place eight weeks after they had been interred.

On 25 January 1669, the wreck of a trading vessel carrying groceries was enquired into. Its cargo was a valuable one and worth considerable amounts of money to the salvors. Among the items retrieved, apparently without too much salt-water damage, were chests of oranges and lemons, barrels and cases of tobacco, casks of oil and soap, quantities of claret and brandy, and various items of furniture and clothing. Regardless of where the craft was bound, the high-quality grocery items may well have been the kinds of commodity available to the wealthier levels of Lowestoft society. It is the items of apparel, of course, which provide the touch of sadness. They were made of good-quality woollen cloth and linen and were all initialled W.I., M.I. or A.I. They obviously belonged to a family travelling on the vessel – passengers perhaps, or maybe the master’s own immediate relatives. Whoever they were, their bodies were probably never recovered and their only memorial was to have certain of their personal effects recorded as wreck of the sea.

CREDIT: David Butcher