We have provided a map of most of the ports and voyages that appear in the database. While most major English ports are easy to locate many of the creeks and riverine ports listed in the customs accounts and port books can be difficult to find. Additionally, there are ports listed in the accounts that no longer exist (washed away through coastal erosion or storms) and many that ceased to function as ports centuries ago. Mapping the voyages of coastal ships was particularly challenging, not least because many sailed up English rivers far inland, so Worksop on the River Ryton appears as does Halloughton on the River Trent. The River Severn catchment is vast with ships sailing from Worcestershire and Shropshire riverine settlements to places along the coast of England and beyond. Some places are difficult to distinguish from one another. For example, it is difficult to differentiate between the variant spellings of Helford and Helston. 'Yarmouth' is often used for Great Yarmouth but also Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight; Blakeney in Gloucestershire is the same form as that recorded for the town of Blakeney in Norfolk; Hythe in Hampshire is recorded in the same way as Hythe in Kent. Documentary context is therefore used to identify ports that share a common name. For example, it is likely that the Blakeney recorded in Bristol or Gloucester records is the Gloucestershire town; the Yarmouth and Hythe recorded in a Southampton coastal port book are likely to be located in Hampshire/Isle of Wight. There are some places however for which documentary context offers little help; one such place is Walton, which could either be Walton near the Rivers Deben and Orwell or Walton-on-the-Naze. Likewise they often abbreviate ‘Combe’ in records relating to Devon and Cornish shipping could be many places. In such cases we can narrow these places down by looking at the careers of ships and shipmasters in the documents that record these place names fully, or record the county they are in, and use these to identify the port (i.e. Ilfracombe; Combe Martin, or Combe in Cornwall), although this is not always achievable.
When mapping the ports and voyages in England sometimes proximity locations have been used when the latitude and longitude of some places is difficult to locate. For example, ships described as sailing to or from the Orwell (which is a place where ships gathered/anchored rather than a port or town) have been fixed to Harwich. Likewise for ships described as leaving or arriving at Goseford we have used King’s Fleet as the geographical location.
Locating some foreign ports was also difficult. For many ports the clerks tended to use Anglo-centric names or recorded the names in Latin (Rogomagnus is Rouen) form. In some cases the names used for foreign ports could be linked with more than one destination (Morels could be in Wales, Spain or Brittany) and ‘Bay’ is used as a generic term for the Bay of Bourgneuf (an important place in the salt trade). In terms of mapping the voyages therefore it has meant that occasionally we have used places as geo-locational ‘fixes’: so Saint-Nazaire has been used for voyages going to the ‘Bay.’ In some cases a country of origin is given as the voyage origin or destination and in this case the coordinates used are those given for the country.
Below is a list of ports and destinations for which no easy geographical location can now be found. It is important to stress that these are all in the database as recorded ports and voyages, so it is always worth searching the database for places that cannot be located on the interactive map. Additionally, the database is an evolving resource that will be updated and extended, so new places may appear that are not recorded on the interactive map.
For guides to ports and aids for locating them the following books are useful:
Calendar of Patent Rolls; the indexes can be useful.
Susan Flavin and Evan T. Jones (eds), Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent, 1503-1601 (Bristol Records Society publication, 2009)
C. M. Fraser (ed), The Accounts of the Chamberlains of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1508-1511 (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1987)
N. Gras, The Early English Customs System; A Documentary Study of the Institutional and Economical History of the Customs from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1918)
The publications of the Southampton Port Books by the Southampton Record Society (several editions)
J. F. Wade (ed) The Customs Accounts of Newcastle upon Tyne 1454-1500 (Publications of the Surtees Society, 1995)