Shipping, mariners and port communities in fourteenth-century England

The aim of this project is to bring greater clarity and precision to academic and public understanding of the English merchant fleet in the fourteenth century.
It will investigate the number and tonnage of English ships in service, the size and social composition of maritime communities (ship masters and seafarers), and the distribution of available vessels and manpower by region and port; and it will seek to establish how and why the merchant fleet changed over time, in response to forces associated with the Hundred Years War, successive visitations of the Black Death and trade competition.
Foundational for the compilation of statistics, and of considerable interest in its own right, will be the piecing together of career profiles for both ship masters and individual ships, the latter casting light for the first time on the working lives of sea-going vessels.
The most important sources for the project are the voluminous and finely detailed records that document the privately-owned ships that were requisitioned by the crown in wartime, principally to transport armies and supplies and to patrol the seas. These 'naval' data will be computerised and combined with compatible material from trade and taxation records.

本项目旨在提升学界与公众对14世纪英国商船队的认知清晰度与精准度。本项目将调研在役英国船舶的数量与吨位、海事群体（含船长与海员）的规模与社会构成，以及可用船舶与人力在各区域、港口的分布情况；同时将厘清商船队随时间变迁的路径与动因，探究其如何响应百年战争、多轮黑死病疫情以及贸易竞争等外部因素的影响。为统计数据编纂奠定基础、且本身具备极高研究价值的工作，将是重构船长与单艘船舶的职业生涯轨迹——后者将首次揭示远洋船舶的运维生命周期。本项目的核心史料为战时王室征用私有船舶的海量详实档案，这些船舶主要用于运送军队与物资、以及近海巡逻。本项目将对这些‘海军’档案数据进行数字化处理，并与贸易、税收档案中的兼容史料进行整合。