Jacobean Mock Sea-Fights on the River Thames: Nautical Theatricality in Performance and Print

Abstract

This article explores mock sea-fights performed on the Thames in 1610 and 1613, which marshalled civic and naval vessels and personnel to offer spectators a realistic representation of the noise and magnitude of maritime combat. These nautical performances are a unique and important form of civic theatricality that offered Londoners an alternative means of visualizing the kinds of nautical combat they would have encountered in stage plays and news pamphlets. My analysis of printed accounts and eye-witness reports of these mock sea-fights explicates their complex negotiation of artifice and feigning on the one hand and realism on the other, whereby the grim realities of naval combat manifested themselves in the process of performance. The article likewise considers how this unique form of entertainment was presented to book-buyers and readers in pamphlets that feature paratextual woodcut illustrations of ships, which align the publications with other genres of ‘maritime’ print. Ultimately, what follows demonstrates the rich contributions that the mock sea-fight as a form of riverine theatricality can make to our understanding of performance culture in Jacobean London.

KEYWORDS:

• Mock Sea-fights
• Ships
• Nautical Performances
• Thames
• Turks
• Theatricality
• Civic Drama
• Woodcuts
• Paratexts
• Palatinate Wedding
• Anthony Munday

Acknowledgements

This article arises from a contribution to a seminar panel at the 2019 Shakespeare Association of America annual meeting. I offer my thanks to the convenors, Andrew Gordon and Tracey Hill, and to the other seminar participants — especially David M. Bergeron and Sarah Crover — for their thoughtful comments and feedback on my research. I am also grateful to Aaron Pratt at the Harry Ransom Center for his assistance with reference queries, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and recommendations.

Notes

1 A key exception is D. M. Bergeron, ‘Are We Turned Turks?: English Pageants and the Stuart Court’, Comparative Drama, 44:3 (2010), 255–75. The sea-fights are discussed briefly in S. C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), 459-61; and R. Barbour, Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of the East, 1576–1626 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 99–101.

2 See: T. Hill, Pageantry and Power: A Cultural History of the Early Modern Lord Mayor’s Show, 1585–1639 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 1–2, 155–68, and D. Carnegie, ‘Galley-foists, the Lord Mayor’s Show, and Early Modern English Drama’, Early Theatre, 7:2 (2004), 49–74.

3 See: M. E. Muñoz-Santos, ‘Why Ancient Rome Staged Epic, Violent Sea Battles’, National Geographic History Magazine, 26 September 2017 <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2017/09-10/roman-mock-naval-sea-battles-naumachia/> [accessed 20 August 2020].

4 See: P. Bandara, ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’ Aquatic Entertainments for the Wedding of John Flemming, Fifth Lord of Fleming to Elizabeth Ross, May 1562’, in M. Shewring (ed.), Waterborne Pageants and Festivities in the Renaissance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 199–209. Small-scale allegorical performances of waterborne conflict featured in Elizabethan progress entertainments at Kenilworth (1575) and Elvetham (1591); another Jacobean mock sea-fight was also staged in Bristol in June 1613 (see STC 18347 and Bergeron, ‘Turks?’, 269–72).

5 Jonathan Burton notes that between 1579 and 1624, over 60 dramatic works featured Islamic themes, characters, or settings. J. Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 11. See also: M. Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); J. Schleck, Telling Tales of Islamic Lands: Forms of Mediation in English Travel Writing, 1575–1630 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2011); B. Andrea and L. McJannet (eds.), Early Modern England and Islamic Worlds (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); D. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2003).

6 On definitions of ‘Turk’, see: <https://www.tideproject.uk/keywords-home/> [accessed 22 March 2021].

7 These issues are explored at length by Burton, Traffic and Turning; and by N. Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); N. Matar, Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (University Press of Florida, 2005); and N. Matar, British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760 (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

8 See, for example: J. Brotton, This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World (London: Penguin, 2016).

9 See: N. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); and J. Brotton, This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World (London: Penguin, 2016).

10 See: J. Larkin and P. Hughes (eds.), Stuart Royal Proclamations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973–1983), vol. 1, 30–31, 55, 98–99, 145–6, 203–6.

11 See: M. Hutchings, Turks, Repertories, and the Early Modern English Stage (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Burton, Traffic and Turning, chapter 2.

12 The text of several such ballads is reproduced in D. Vitkus (ed.), Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), Appendix I. On historical pirates and literature, see: C. Jowitt, The Culture of Piracy, 1580–1630: Literature and Seaborne Crime (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). On the circulation of news, see: U. McIlvenna, ‘When the News was Sung: Ballads as Media in Early Modern Europe’, Media History, 22:1–2 (2016), 317–33; E. Cecconi, ‘Comparing Seventeenth-century News Broadsides and Occasional News Pamphlets: Interrelatedness in News Reporting’, in A.H. Jucker (ed.), Early Modern English News Discourse (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009), 137–58, and J. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), chapter 4.

13 See: C. Edelman, ‘Morose’s Fights at Sea in Epicoene’, Notes and Queries, 53:4 (2006), 516–19; P. Womack, ‘Off-stage’, in H. S. Turner, (ed.) Early Modern Theatricality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 71–92.

14 See: T. Marshall, Theatre and Empire: Great Britain on the London Stages under James VI and I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), chapter 3.

15 On James’s anti-Islamic views, see: Dimmock, New Turkes, 200–1, and Bergeron, ‘Turks?’, 257–9.

16 On representations of Moors and Indians in mayoral pageants, see: Chew, Crescent 463–8, and A.G. Barthelemy, Black Face Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), chapter 3.

17 For a notable exception (inspired by the 1610 sea-fight) see pp. 6–7 above.

18 On the journey by water, see: R. Strong, Henry Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance (London: Pimlico, 2000), 115–16. Samuel Daniel’s masque, Tethys Festival, was another marine-themed investiture entertainment (STC 13161).

19 The celebrations were made possible by a loan of £100,000 from the City of London, secured at the end of April. See: D. M. Bergeron, ‘Creating Entertainments for Prince Henry’s Creation (1610)’, Comparative Drama, 42:4 (2008), 435.

20 Early modern usage of i/j and u/v has been regularised silently in quotations throughout. The place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. Short Title Catalogue citations refer to the second edition of A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475–1640 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976).

21 Signature references to primary works are provided in the main body of the article throughout.

22 Munday does not provide a clear reason: ‘whether by the violent storme of rayne, or other appointment of his majestie, I knowe not’ (D2r).

23 Bergeron, ‘Turks’, 263; Strong, Lost Renaissance, 121. In his edition of Pageants and Entertainments of Anthony Munday (New York: Garland, 1985), 48, Bergeron glosses the word: ‘a large ship, especially of war (OED). Though the dictionary does not attest this meaning until 1642, that seems to be what Munday had in mind’. The OED notes mid-sixteenth-century usage of ‘Castle, n. 7. Nautical. A tower of elevated structure on the deck of a ship’ in the sense of a ship’s ‘forecastle’, but there is nothing to suggest that the word was used metonymically in the early seventeenth century.

24 J. Stow and E. Howes, The Annales, or a generall chronicle of England, begun first by maister John Stow … and after him continued … by Edmond Howes (1615; STC 23338), 4G1r.

25 John Chamberlain to Alice Carleton, 4 January 1613, in N. E. McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), vol 1, 416.

26 Crescent moons commonly feature on woodcuts depicting Islamic/Ottoman soldiers and ships: see STC 11029, STC 11359, STC 25022, and STC 25022.5.

27 For a more detailed description of the fireworks see: Stow and Howes, 4G1r.

28 An engraving of the naumachia on the Arno is reproduced in F. A. Dominguez, ‘Philip IV’s “Fiesta de Aranjuez”, Part I: The Marriage of Cosimo II de Medici to María Magdalena de Austria and Leonor Pimentel’, Hispaniófila, 157 (2009), 39–62 (44). On Harrington’s report see Strong, Lost Renaissance, 100.

29 Chruso-thriambos. The Triumphes of Golde (1611, STC 18267), A3v. Records do not provide specific details about the number or types of vessels used; see: J. Robertson and D. J. Gordon (eds.), A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies of London, 1485–1640 (Oxford: Malone Society, 1954), 73–74

30 The surviving texts of these entertainments, together with a list of celebratory poems and ballads, are reproduced in J. Nichols (ed.), The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First (London: 1823), vol. 2, 527–626.

31 D. M. Bergeron, ‘Stuart Civic Pageants and Textual Performance’, Renaissance Quarterly, 51:1 (1998), 163–83.

32 Bergeron, ‘Textual Performance’, 164–5.

33 W. Perrin (ed.), The Autobiography of Phineas Pett (London: Navy Records Society, 1918), 103. The Spy was built in 1586 and was part for the fleet that sailed against the Armada. See: W. L. Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present (London: Low, Marston & Co, 1897), 423, 425, 588–9.

34 See also Stow and Howes, 4H2r.

35 On firework castles, see: S. Werrett, Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 19–20.

36 Chamberlain remarks in early February that ‘above five hundred watermen [are] alredy pressed, and a thousand musketters of the trained bands in the shires hereabout made redy for this service’ (see: McClure, Letters, 416, 421). An abstract or brief declaration of the present state of his Majesties revenew (1651; Wing A148), B*3, notes that funds were granted to Robert Mansell for the ‘Navall Fight’ and fireworks.

37 McClure, Letters, 421.

38 Perrin, Autobiography, 102.

39 Ibid.

40 The naming of the miniature ship as the Disdain might have been in homage to the Lord Admiral’s pinnace of the same name, which was built in 1585 and played a part in England’s defence against the Spanish Armada (see Clowes, Royal Navy, 564, 581, n., 593). It seems unlikely that Pett refers here to the old pinnace, since his mention of the Spy specifically identifies it as ‘old’ and belonging to the Admiral, while no such comment is made about the Disdain. See note 33 above.

41 See Perrin, Autobiography, 22–23, and Nichols, Progresses, vol. 1, 425, for accounts of the ship’s first excursion. See Strong, Lost Renaissance, 35–38, on Henry and Pett’s relationship.

42 Strong suggests that ‘Flickers of the dead Prince of Wales’s vision perhaps survive in the naval battle of the Thames’ (Lost Renaissance, 137).

43 Bergeron, ‘Turks’. See also: M.-C. Canova Green, ‘Lepanto Revisited: Water-fights and the Turkish Threat in Early Modern Europe (1571–1656), in Waterborne Pageants, 177–98 (but note that the author mistakenly conflates accounts of the 1610 and 1613 events).

44 The poem was first published in His Majesties Poeticall Exercises at vacant houres (Edinburgh, 1591; STC 14379) and then as His Majesties Lepanto, or, Heroicall song (1603; STC 14379.3).

45 There is also confusion about some of the ships: where Taylor and Pett talk about the ‘Venetian Argosy’, the Venetian vessel is here identified as a ‘carvelle’, and the ‘Argosy or Galliaza, seemed to be of Spaine’ (A4v).

46 McClure, Letters, 423.

47 See: Heavens Blessing, B1r-C2v.

48 McClure, Letters, 423.

49 Perrin, Autobiography, 103.

50 Bergeron, ‘Turks’, 237.

51 See: A. Fowler, The Mind of the Book: Pictorial Title Pages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1–54.

52 J. A. Knapp, ‘The Bastard Art: Woodcut Illustration in Sixteenth-Century England’, in D. A. Brooks (ed.), Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 151–72.

53 C. Marsh, ‘A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 79:2 (2016), 245–62.

54 Ibid., 246.

55 L. Razzal, ‘“Like to a title leaf”: Surface, Face, and Material Text in Early Modern England’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 8 (2017), para. 5, 6. <https://www.northernrenaissance.org/like-to-a-title-leafe-surface-face-and-material-text-in-early-modern-england/> [accessed 10 July 2020].

56 The first edition of The Magnificent Marriage (STC 11358) uses a ‘large woodcut, knight and squire on horse-back posed for tilting’. W. Jackson and E. Unger (eds.), The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature 1475–1700 (Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll, 1997), 373. The second edition (STC 11359) uses a different illustration that broadly privileges the ‘Turk’ but not the maritime content of the sea-fight; it is a ‘crusade’ image, where a group of turbaned soldiers bearing crescent moons on their shields clash with a presumably Christian faction.

57 M. B. Saenger, ‘The Birth of Advertising’, in Brooks, Printing, 197–219. Saenger’s discussion focuses on title pages proper rather than the type of illustrated initial leaf I am describing, but the general concept holds true.

58 R. S. Luborsky and E. M. Ingram, A Guide to English Illustrated Books, 1536–1603, 2 vols (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1999), vol. 1, 103–13.

59 See: Royal Museums Greenwich online catalogue Object ID SEC0239 and SEC0243. Thomas Cockson’s engraving of Howard exists in at least two states. See British Museum Collections Online: items 1912,0709.17 (c.1599) and 1849,0315.9 (c.1599–1602).

60 See STC 21546, STC 21546.5 and STC 20891. The attractiveness to printers of a ship woodcut with the arms of the Lord Admiral is further attested by a cruder, reversed adaptation of this woodcut (identified as Type 5 by Luborsky and Ingram), which was similarly used on maritime news pamphlets and navigation manuals.

61 On the role of illustrations and title page marketing, see: P. J. Voss, ‘Books for Sale: Advertising and Patronage in Late Elizabethan England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 29:3 (1998), 733–56 (especially 737–43).

62 Knapp, ‘Bastard Art’, 152.

63 S. Werner, Studying Early Printed Books, 1450–1800: A Practical Guide (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 83.

64 Allde himself had printed numerous editions of The Safegard of Sailers that variously used the Type 7 and Type 8 ship woodcuts on the title page before 1613 (1587, STC 21546; 1590, STC 21546.5 and STC 21547; 1605, STC 21549; 1612, STC 21550).

65 Both of the pamphlets use a large woodcut of an English ship facing a Turkish ship with two bodies hanging from the foremast, which was most likely created especially for this publication. See: K. Sisneros, ‘Early Modern Memes: The Reuse and Recycling of Woodcuts in 17th Century English Popular Print’, The Public Domain Review, 6 June 2018 <https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/early-modern-memes-the-reuse-and-recycling-of-woodcuts-in-17th-century-english-popular-print> [accessed 13 August 2020].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Shmygol

Maria Shmygol is a Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded ‘The Complete Works of John Marston’ project at the University of Leeds. She is preparing an edition of William Percy’s The Aphrodysial, or Sea-Feast (1602) for the Malone Society, and is the co-editor, with Lukas Erne, of the German play Tito Andronico (1620), which is forthcoming with Arden Shakespeare.