I’m a successful merchant in a Northern European port in the late fifteenth century. My trade is land-based but I want to own a ship to help my business and sell my product internationally. What type of ship should I get and how much would I have to raise to finance it. Would it be better to buy the ship outright and perhaps sell it later when I want a bigger one, or lease it for a year or two? What is the secondhand market like? What is the difference in cost and quality between commissioning a brand new ship from the shipyards, or buying a ready-made ship secondhand? What type should I get? I know cogs are tried and tested for hundreds of years, but the recent lateen-sailed caravels are fast and manoeuvrable. And I’ve seen some large carracks owned by my competitors that seem to be able to carry much more cargo. Are they worth the extra money or too risky? How much will it cost to rig, maintain, man and provision my ship as an initial expense and then per month? How will I defend it against privateers and pirates? What about insurance?
By the late fifteenth century, it would be increasingly unlikely that a merchant would buy a ship to help his business and sell his products internationally.
Early in the fifteenth century many merchants were ship owners (most often in the form of owning shares in one or several ships, though sometimes owning a whole ship). For example, in Bristol, Walter Derby left his servant Nicholas half shares in two different ships and split a half share in another between two other servants. Thomas Sampson left his cog "Joan" to his wife Joan.
Source: Eileen Power and M. M. Postan, "Studies in English Trade in the 15th Century,"
By later in the century, however, specialization had become more common. A wealthy class of ship owners emerged in Bristol. These men sometimes owned ten or more ships and did not buy or sell goods, but made money from charging for carrying the goods for others.
William Canynges, for example, owned 10 ships and kept 800 men employed in Bristol in the late 15th century.
Carriage was expensive, with examples of one pound and of 21 shillings per tun being charged for the transport of wine from Bordeaux to Bristol.
Risks were high, from being lost to storms, to enemy action, or from having your ships commandeered by your own monarch to transport some of his army.
There was no insurance. Diversification of risk probably meant that a wise merchant would not own a ship outright. He would either own shares in several early in the century, or would pay to have his cargoes transported later in the century by the ships of a specialist shipowner, who diversified his risk by owning many ships.
The ships owned by these large shipowners were generally called "navis" or "batella", but whether cog, caravel, nao, or carrack it is difficult to say.
They were probably fairly large ships, circa 300 tuns. The largest ship mentioned in these Bristol records was the "George" of 511 tuns, which carried a cargo on her maiden voyage worth more than 1000 pounds sterling. This cargo was made up of goods from 63 merchants. If the "George" was charging a pound a tun, carriage cost half as much as the value of the cargo.
This again illustrates that it was not common by the late 15th century for individual merchants to own their own ships. The age of specialization had set in. Merchanting and Shipowning are different businesses, and it had obviously become more profitable to specialize in one or the other, rather than trying to do both.