This merchant ship is a replica of the Susan Constant, a 120-ton galleon built around 1604 that took 71 male colonists across the Atlantic Ocean to Jamestown in 1606. A year later, the ship then returned to England and probably continued to transport goods across the seas – she apparently served as a merchant ship until at least 1615. The ship represents a key factor in the English economy—the international trade that made possible the many exchanges of paper, wine, spices, domestic goods and raw materials that were central to early modern middling life – our groups were producers, consumers and traders, so intimately connected to the movement of things over the water. <br /> <br /> A significant number of our upper middling groups, based in port towns, made their money and gained influence from the goods they transported into and out of England. Vessels like this one made possible contact not only with trading neighbours such as France but with areas as far afield as the West Indies and China. Many of the wealthier individuals of early modern England directly profited from the trading activities and ventures of these ships and their crew—either by their involvement as merchants or through “joint-stock organisations” such as the East India Company—and others benefited indirectly from the goods that passed through the land and made possible labour from cooking to woodworking. <br /> <br /> These boats were ocean-going then, but a large fleet of smaller vessels were engaged in the coastal trade – they moved goods from the larger ports around the British coast and up the island’s smaller waterways in bulk, so that they could then be broken down into smaller parcels of items for sale in the provinces’ shops and by travelling salespeople such as pedlars and chapmen. <br /> <br /> This ship also speaks to the colonialist project emerging in early modern Europe, the Susan Constant in particular notable for its role in the colonisation of the Americas. In addition, the ship speaks to the greatest early modern movement of people, the slave trade in which many notable English sailors and merchants, such as John Hawkins, were engaged. The scholar Imtiaz Habib’s archival research into the lives of African men and women in early modern England has demonstrated that many held socially significant positions and roles in European society which would usually confer middling status, such as ‘haberdasher’, ‘musician, ‘silkweaver’, ‘soldier’, ‘royal page’, or ‘diver’. Yet, as the scholar Ambereen Dadhaboy’s work shows, regardless of their occupational status, the position occupied by black people in Elizabethan England was “socially, culturally, and politically precarious”, and race therefore has a complex relationship with social and economic descriptions like “middling”. Boats such as the one above therefore represent a key influence on middling mobility of both people and goods, but they can also indicate the often violent, destructive, and ongoing legacy of early imperial action.
The Susan Constant Ship (Replica Galleon Ship), Around 1604

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The Susan Constant Ship

The Susan Constant Ship (Replica Galleon Ship), Around 1604

This merchant ship is a replica of the Susan Constant, a 120-ton galleon built around 1604 that took 71 male colonists across the Atlantic Ocean to Jamestown in 1606. A year later, the ship then returned to England and probably continued to transport goods across the seas – she apparently served as a merchant ship until at least 1615. The ship represents a key factor in the English economy—the international trade that made possible the many exchanges of paper, wine, spices, domestic goods and raw materials that were central to early modern middling life – our groups were producers, consumers and traders, so intimately connected to the movement of things over the water.

A significant number of our upper middling groups, based in port towns, made their money and gained influence from the goods they transported into and out of England. Vessels like this one made possible contact not only with trading neighbours such as France but with areas as far afield as the West Indies and China. Many of the wealthier individuals of early modern England directly profited from the trading activities and ventures of these ships and their crew—either by their involvement as merchants or through “joint-stock organisations” such as the East India Company—and others benefited indirectly from the goods that passed through the land and made possible labour from cooking to woodworking.

These boats were ocean-going then, but a large fleet of smaller vessels were engaged in the coastal trade – they moved goods from the larger ports around the British coast and up the island’s smaller waterways in bulk, so that they could then be broken down into smaller parcels of items for sale in the provinces’ shops and by travelling salespeople such as pedlars and chapmen.

This ship also speaks to the colonialist project emerging in early modern Europe, the Susan Constant in particular notable for its role in the colonisation of the Americas. In addition, the ship speaks to the greatest early modern movement of people, the slave trade in which many notable English sailors and merchants, such as John Hawkins, were engaged. The scholar Imtiaz Habib’s archival research into the lives of African men and women in early modern England has demonstrated that many held socially significant positions and roles in European society which would usually confer middling status, such as ‘haberdasher’, ‘musician, ‘silkweaver’, ‘soldier’, ‘royal page’, or ‘diver’. Yet, as the scholar Ambereen Dadhaboy’s work shows, regardless of their occupational status, the position occupied by black people in Elizabethan England was “socially, culturally, and politically precarious”, and race therefore has a complex relationship with social and economic descriptions like “middling”. Boats such as the one above therefore represent a key influence on middling mobility of both people and goods, but they can also indicate the often violent, destructive, and ongoing legacy of early imperial action.

Object Type Replica Galleon Ship
Year Around 1604
Owned By Jamestown Settlement, USA
Keywords mobility; excluding; race; domestic; food/drink; consumption; trade and exchange; travel; race
Image Credit Susan Constant ship, image by Warfieldian © shared via CC BY-SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons.

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