Читать книгу Great Book of Spoon Carving Patterns - Joseph Fullman - Страница 17

As the Middle Ages gave way to the early modern period, and England’s maritime prowess grew, so the ports of the Southwest became ever more important. Having spent much of its history warding off unwelcome visitors from beyond, the region was now keen to do a little expansion of its own. Some of the very earliest attempts to connect the old world with the new were launched from the Southwest, beginning with John Cabot’s pioneering journey from Plymouth to mainland North America in 1497. Plymouth, along with the region’s other major ports, also began to take increased responsibility for the nation’s defence, a development that was given official recognition in 1509 with the formation of the Royal Navy by Henry VIII, one of the most antagonistic of all monarchs in a very antagonistic era. Elizabeth I expanded the navy further, which she saw as her most useful weapon for curbing the growing power of Spain, Europe’s other great maritime power, and of cashing in on the trading links being established across the Atlantic.

However, for Elizabeth, it wasn’t enough simply to forge new trading links or plundering opportunities in the Americas, those of Spain also had to be diminished. To this end she sanctioned a policy of official piracy, encouraging her greatest sailors to indulge in the euphemistic practice of ‘private enterprise’ – in other words looting Spanish ships, themselves filled with treasure looted from the indigenous populations of South and Central America. Many of these ‘great’ sailors were from the Southwest, by now firmly established as the nation’s leading maritime region, including Sir Richard Grenville from Cornwall, Sir Walter Raleigh from Devon, Sir John Hawkins from Plymouth and, perhaps the greatest of them all, Sir Francis Drake, who in 1577 became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe.

Elizabeth’s decision to increase the country’s naval power proved its worth in 1588 when Drake and Hawkins engaged the fearsome Spanish Armada of King Philip II in battle off the Southwest coast, routing them at the Battle of Gravelines. However, for all their derring-do, these men also had their less savoury sides. They helped to establish the slave trade, which helped fund the growth of the region’s most prominent ports, notably Plymouth and Bristol. Indeed in the 18th century Bristol would enjoy unparalleled success on the back of the trade in human beings, acting as the main nexus between the source, Africa, and the principal markets in America and the Caribbean (the so-called ‘Triangle Trade’).

As time passed the Southwest evolved into one of the main departure points for those looking to colonize the New World, beginning famously in 1620 when a group of puritans set sail from Plymouth aboard the Mayflower hoping to make new, austere, god-fearing lives for themselves in North America. They named their new settlement New Plymouth. Subsequent voyages followed their lead with the result that the eastern seaboard of the US is now dotted with doppelgängers of Southwestern towns including Portland, Portsmouth and Dartmouth.

In the 18th century Plymouth would play host to another world-changing departure when Captain James Cook set out from here for the South Pacific, in the process becoming the first European to lay eyes on Australia and New Zealand.