Transportation in Elizabethan England Research Ppr Essay

Woodward Academy Quotation Notebook Spring Semester, Second Quarter Huston T. Collings English 8H-2 March 29, 2010 Collings 1 Transportation is one of the most important parts of society today and even five hundred years ago. In Elizabethan England, travel was very basic, just feet, hooves, and wheels on cobblestone streets (Singman 86). Ships were also very important to travel and colonization, for England is an island nation (Time Life Ed. 132). Many towns were put on navigable rivers just to make travel easier because many people in this time used rivers and oceans for transportation and sometimes delivery of goods (Singman 85). The most important components of transportation in Elizabethan England†¦show more content†¦When they needed to move troops across sea or fight wars on water, the king or queen â€Å"collected a navy from port towns that owed [them] ships as part of their feudal service and from merchants who leased [them] their trade vessels† (Wagner 205). Commercial ships of the time would mainly carry a few guns, and war ships were very similar except they were narrower, and some of the larger ones could get much bigger than any commercial ship (Singman 90). Most ships had three masts, but some could have one or two and were made for trade. There were hundreds of names for different ships including pinnaces, Collings 4 barks, and galleons. A merchant ship of about one hundred feet would have exceeded two hundred tons of carrying capacity. Most English ships were built in England, but some were acquired from abroad by purchase, capture, or legal seizure (Friel). Whenever a person had to travel across seas, there were no passenger ships so one would have to rent passage on a cargo ship. All ships were very slow if traveling by sail and would only go about four to six knots (Singman 90-91). Queen Elizabeth changed the boats for warfare and made them platforms for large guns instead of platforms for troops (Wagner 206). Life at sea was very hazardous. A person aboard a ship was always at risk of a pirate attack, a Spanish attack, and disease. Bigger ships were much better at surviving an attack because they had more guns and men. As for