Polish Ships in English Waters in the Later Middle Ages1

POLISH SHIPS IN ENGLISH WATERS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES1

Maryanne Kowaleski

In recent years, our understanding of the overseas trade between England and the Baltic ports of medieval Prussia now in Poland has increased substantially thanks to the publications of Stuart Jenks, T. H. Lloyd, and John Fudge, among others.2 But still rather less is known about the shipping from those Polish ports that carried the trade since such discussions often subsume all Baltic shipping under the rubric of “Hanseatic.”3 Yet it is worth considering “Polish” shipping from Gdańsk (Danzig), ElblAg (Elbing), Braniewo (Braunsberg), and Kaliningrad (Königsberg) on its own, rather than as simply an extension of the German Hanseatic maritime network. Recent archaeological evidence, for instance, points to a separate Slavic boat-building tradition that inﬂ uenced the construction of ships in this region.4 During this period, moreover, Gdańsk, the leading port in the region, sought to fall under the jurisdiction of the Polish king and was often politically at odds with its seigneurial German overlord, the Teutonic Knights. In 1409–11 Gdańsk paid homage to the Polish king during the War of Poland and Lithuania with the Knights, in 1440 joined the Prussian Union of Polish

1 I wish to thank Richard Unger for motivating me to expand my horizons to explore a maritime region about which I knew little. I also want to acknowledge the generous advice of Stuart Jenks, who patiently answered many questions and gave me access to documentation I would otherwise not have seen. Thanks also to Steve Rigby, for access to his unpublished transcriptions of the Boston customs accounts. The views expressed here, however, are my own. 2 Jenks, England, die Hanse und Preußen; Lloyd, England and the German Hanse; Fudge, Cargoes, Embargoes, and Emissaries. Still useful is Postan, “The Economic and Political Relations,” pp. 91–153. 3 For example, Heinsius, Das Schiff der hansischen Früzeit; Dollinger, The German Hansa, pp. 141–58; Wolf, Tragfähighkeiten, Ladungen und Masse; Schildhauer, The Hansa, History and Culture, pp. 149–54. There are several works treating Gdańsk shipping that draw on the local Gdańsk toll accounts, but they focus on all types of ships traveling through Gdańsk or on trade, not shipping, and rarely say much about the Polish vessels that made the trip to Britain. See, for example, Lauffer, “Danzigs Schiff und Wahrenverkehr am Ende,” pp. 1–44; Samsonowicz, “Deux formes d’activité commerciale,” pp. 70–82. 4 See, for example, Litwin, “Boat and Ship Archaeology,” pp. 7–10; Indruszewski, Man, Ship, Landscape.

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towns to defend its rights against the Knights, from 1456 on led the war effort against the Teutonic Knights, and in 1466 formally became part of the Polish kingdom.5 The enthusiastic participation of Gdańsk in overthrowing the political yoke of the Teutonic Knights and its desire to have the king of Poland as their overlord does raise the question of why Gdańsk and other medieval ports in what is now Poland are so frequently characterized as exclusively part of the Hanseatic world.6 Indeed, although Gdańsk was an important member of the Hansa, the port was increasingly at odds with the Hanseatic towns further west, and often followed its own path, especially with regard to relations with England.7 Scholars have also perhaps been hasty in assuming how universally “German” the shipmasters and crews of Polish ships were during this period. While the Teutonic Knights were ethnically German and the mercantile elite of Gdańsk and other major ports in the region all had German names, the mariners manning the ports’ ships were probably drawn largely from the ethnically mixed population of the town and its hinterland, which included a substantial Slavic population.8 The seeming ubiquity of middle low German in the medieval documentation of the ports now in Poland is also not a reliable indicator

5 Gdańsk’s political and military role is discussed in Cieślak and Biernat, History of Gdańsk. ElblAg also became part of the Polish kingdom. 6 Aside from attaching the appellation “Hanseatic” to most descriptions of Gdańsk, all German and even recent English works on the commercial history of the Baltic (such as Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, and Fudge, Cargoes) call the ports by their German names (Danzig, Elbing, Braunsberg, Königsberg) rather than by their Polish names. 7 The specifi c policy interests of Gdańsk within the Hanseatic League are discussed by Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, pp. 114, 129–31, 173–74, 191–201, 206, 242–48; Jenks, England, die Hanse und Preußen, II, pp. 556–64, 604, 618–35, 700–702, 706, 730–31; and Fudge, Cargoes, pp. 26–27, 64–65, 70–81, 96–97, 128–31. For the prominent role played by Gdańsk in the privateering wars, see Cieślak and Biernat, History of Gdańsk, pp. 88–89; Fudge, Cargoes, pp. 70–74. 8 Gdańsk’s population grew from abut 10,000 in the late fourteenth century to c. 20,000 in the mid-fi fteenth century, when Polish immigration was clearly on the rise; for these fi gures and a discussion of the ethnicity of these populations, see Cieślak and Biernat, History of Gdańsk, pp. 16–17, 37–38, 53, 74, 103–104, The extent of inter- marriage among the population of this region further muddies the water of who was “German” as opposed to “Slavic.” Note too that the majority of ships at Gdańsk in the port’s fi fteenth-century customs accounts were quite small, under 24 tons (n. 38, below), and thus within the fi nancial reach of a middling group of investors, some of whom could have been ethnically Slavic. As Stuart Jenks points out (personal commu- nication, May 16, 2007), there was also a substantial immigration of “Baltic” peoples to Gdańsk in the medieval period.

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