This Lu/Jeck cog seal of 1224 depicts the fou nding of the Han sealic League. The /andhased merchant (al lefl) in !he how and !he seaf aring merchanl al the helm, are shown swearing an oa1h 10 fo rm a /roding community. The precise date of the foundin g of !he Hansealic League is unkno wn , hut it f ollowed soon af1er !he foundin g of Lu heck.
sally known as "cogs," a ship type that had suppl anted the light, fast- trave ling knarrs (cargo ships) and warri or longships of the Norsemen. One suspects the Mediterranean sailors call ed all Northern ships cogs regardless of what type they were. But indeed the cog had become the dominant ship of the Northern seas. It was a type so di stinct from the Mediterranean round ship of the day that a Chri sti an captive in the Ho ly Land is said to have anno unced that liberation was at hand , on spying a cog from hi s pri son window.
Where the Cog Came From ... The basic cog type, a fl at-bottom, deepdraft vessel built with the typical Northern clinker planking (overlapping planks secured to each other, and pinned to ra ther li ght internal framing) has been traced back by a leading student of the type, Detlev Ellmers, to simple vessels pl ying the Fri sian sands aro und the mouth of the great Rhine Ri ver, which fl ows north at the western edge of Germany to ex it into the North Sea. The type apparently evolved from boats made from a single log, upon which pl anked sides were graduall y built up. These boats, says Ellmers, were active before the arrival of the Romans on the scene, when trade and warfare with raiding Germani c tribes made the ri ver a foc us of maritime activity. In later centuries the Saxons in West Germany were conquered by Charlemagne, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 in a bid to rev ive the glories and stability of the Roman EmSEA HISTORY 76, WINTER 1995-96
pire. The expans ive-mi nded Saxons, the sa me that had in vaded Eng la nd in Arthur' s time, prom ptly tu rned aro und and began to dri ve eastward, subd uing nati ve Slav ic peopl es as they went. Thi s led to Gerrnan mi Ii tary kingdoms stretching eastward along the south shore of the Balti c Sea and ulti mately thro ugh what are now the Baltic States reac hing to the western edges of Ru ssia. From these warri or settlements emerged , most notabl y, the kingdom of Pruss ia, whi ch li ved on to become the eng ine of the militari zed Gerrnan state which launched the two World Wars of o ur century. All thi s was fa r in the fu ture in 1143, when the seaport tow n of Lubeck was fo unded in the Ba ltic. Soon after its fo undati on, its fe udal overlord the Duke of Saxony sent o ut orders that all trade wi th Scandinav ia and other states and territo ri es bordering the in land sea should come th ro ugh Lubeck-incl uding Russian trade via the Dvina and other Baltic ri vers linking up with the Russ ian rivers Dnieper and Volga. Enfo rced with marching- in-co lumn energies and purpose, thi s remarkable diktat stood and worked, leading in short order to the organi zation of the Hanseatic League, a tight organi zation of Gerrnan trading towns with Lubeck as its center. There were stro ng market fo rces behind thi s quasi-mil itary organi zation, .since the rich Gerrnan cities of the Rhine needed the grain of the conq uered lands to the east, and their military governors craved the sophi sticated products of their parent civi li zati ons. Lubeck , at the west end of the Ba ltic, stood just ac ross the neck of the penin sul a of Denmark from the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg-as it pro udly styles itself even today-situated on the Elbe River j ust in off the North Sea. Westward from this stretch the sandy shores of Frisia, reaching to the exits of the Rhine in the Netherlands .
. . . and Where She Went T he cog, grow ing in depth and size while keeping her simple, bas ic construction, became the workhorse of these burgeoning trades. She moved easil y eastward into the Ba ltic and west into the Engli sh Channel and ro und the corner into the Bay of Biscay , carrying bulk cargoes fo r whi ch she was eminently sui ted by her depth of ho ld and sturdy construction. For with the growth of tow ns, cargoes li ke grain , sa lt, timber and woo l were the sta ples of trade. But even high-va lue cargoes li ke wine, or
the spices and silks of the Ori ent co uld be more economi ca ll y moved by these deep-draft ships th an by any th at had yet sw um the seas. And th e cog swam the seas e ffective ly, des pite her ungainl y looks. Her deep draft gave her hull a grip on the water which enab led her to punch to windward in a ri sin g sea, not very e ffecti vely by modem standards, but fa r better than her more graceful , swift-travelin g Viking predecessors in the northern seas. And that same rugged hull enabl ed the cog to mo unt wooden castles fo re and aft, and sometimes even at the mas thead, from whi ch her archers could shoot fro m she lte r not ava il abl e on other vessels, and her boarding parties could storrn aboard the weakened enemy from superior he ight-another version of the " high ground" always sought in land battles. The recove ry in 1962 of a nearl y compl ete hull of a cog built at a Weser Ri ver shipyard , on Gerrnany's North Sea Coast, has told us a lot about the actual structure of these vessels in their heyday. Two full -scale replicas have been built and sailed, and construction detail s inc luding a unique method of clenching the pl ank-to-plank fastenings have enabled archaeologists to identi fy many fragmentary remains of ships of th is peri od as the ubiquitous cog. The cog was superseded by another heavy-hulled type, the hulk , a ship of a more complex design better suited to the larger size of ships involved in the gro wing volume of the northern sea trade. By 1400 thi s trade had grown to surpass th at of the Mediterranean. Soon after 1400 the hulk too was superseded by the smooth-planked carrack, a vesse l originating in the Mediterranean, though strong ly influenced by Northern ideas in the increas ing interchange that was taking pl ace. The Hansa power was at its height in 1400, with settlements in all important seaport cities around the North and Balti c Seas, through whi ch fore ign trade was rigidl y controlled-not so much by military fo rce (though that was ca lled on, on occas ion), as by the accumul ated capital, international access and lines of credit, and the expertise and unity of purpose of the Hanse merchants. All thi s was to fade away in the hundred years fo ll ow ing 1400, as the maritime world changed dramatica ll y, refl ecting and reinforc ing the changes as hore which effecti vely ended the me-1dieval settlement. 11