University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

Some years ago the editor called attention to "the Present occasion" mentioned
in the dedications to Smith's Accidence. This occasion was the break
with Spain in 1624 that began England's involvement in the Thirty Years'
War (1618–1648). Further background is now needed to supplement the
paragraphs already published.

Toward the end of summer 1614, when clouds were beginning to gather
around King James's favorite, Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, a young man
named George Villiers, aged twenty-two, was presented at court, more or
less by the cloud makers. George was lively, intelligent, and unusually good-looking.
Despite Somerset's opposition, Villiers was made a gentleman of the
bedchamber and knighted in the spring of 1615. Shortly thereafter he was
created Viscount Villiers and Baron Waddon, with a grant of land valued at
eighty thousand pounds to support him. Then in January 1617 George
Villiers was made earl of Buckingham, and a year later he was raised to
marquis. Not yet twenty-six, he had become the second-richest nobleman in
England.

About this time, King James, in financial trouble again, commanded
the appointment of a commission to examine the abuses made in his administrative
departments, especially in the navy. For more than thirty years the
lord high admiral had been Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, and during
that time, whether it was his other duties or his easygoing nature, the navy
had slipped from deterioration into sheer chaos. Since Villiers, or Buckingham,
had already shown interest in that branch, it was not long after the
commission got to work in March 1618 that he moved to oust Nottingham,
fifty-five years his senior. John Chamberlain put the story this way, in a letter
dated October 24: "Yt is geven out that he [Buckingham] hathcompounded
with the old Admirall for a goode round summe of redy monie, and 3000li
yearly pension during his life, and after his decease 1000li to his Lady and
500li to his eldest sonne by her."

Be that as it may, Buckingham was made
lord high admiral of England in January 1619.

Meanwhile, Henry Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering) of Ightfield,
Shropshire (1587–1653), ardently anti-Spanish, had been favorably noticed
as a seaman by the same Nottingham and allowed to sail as a privateer, to
pillage Spaniards only. A graduate of Oxford, where he had studied under

John Davies of Hereford, Mainwaring had wanted to sail to modern Iran,
but was prevented by an embargo brought about by the Spanish ambassador
in London. This move pushed Mainwaring over the line into outright
piracy, but he made a private covenant with himself that he would never
molest English shipping or English cargoes. For three years he pursued this
career with fabulous success in Mediterranean waters as well as on the
Atlantic. But at last, after some preliminaries, in June 1616 James I pardoned
him under the Great Seal of England, on condition that he return and "give
up the trade."

There was an interlude from 1617 to 1619 during which Mainwaring
was knighted and played an important part in the establishment of English
sea power in the Mediterranean. Then, in a sense foiled, he again returned
to England. This is where the story of Smith's Accidence begins to take shape.

In 1620 Mainwaring was appointed lieutenant of Dover Castle and
deputy warden of the Cinque Ports. In addition, he became active in the
Virginia Company. But most important of all, he set to work on his "Nomenclator
Navalis," later to be known as "The Seaman's Dictionary." That this
work was completed in all its essentials by May 17, 1623, is attested by the
surviving manuscript copy dedicated "To the right Honorable the Marquis
of Buckingham ... My most honored Lord and Patron."

Buckingham was
raised to the dukedom on May 18.

As we know, Smith's Generall Historie was entered for publication in July
1624. A month before, King James's government had signed a treaty to aid
the Dutch republic in their renewed war with Spain, but news had just
reached London (and promptly been hushed) of the "massacre of Amboina"
in the Moluccas, where ten English merchants had been put to death by
command of the Dutch governor there. Despite the efforts at concealment
by the government in London, word got out before the end of the year and
caused a violent sensation,

which can hardly have been allayed by subsequent
reports of Dutch activities in the great bay of New York. With the
prospect of increased naval war, general interest in ships grew rapidly.
Englishmen wanted to know not just how to sail them, not just how to man
them, but how they were built and what seamen ought to know.

Smith had already shown some competence in exploring and surveying
by sea. He had become known in mercantile circles in the West Country as
well as in London. And in groups of ready listeners he had caught the ear of
adventurers (or those who would be) with tales of his early experiences in the

Mediterranean and on the broad Atlantic. Someone, we may surmise, who
had perhaps only heard of Mainwaring's "Dictionary," suggested to Smith
that he ought to write a book about ships. That sort of thing had happened
with the Generall Historie — someone else had an idea, and Smith wrote a book.
Now, Smith listened again and took the hint. The result was the nearly unreadable
collection of lists of seamen's terms that constitutes the Accidence.

Part of this account of the origins of the Accidence is only hypothetical.
But the bare facts are easily listed: Smith's Historie was finished in 1624; by
1624 one or more manuscript copies of Mainwaring's "Dictionary" were in
circulation; and between then and the day the Accidence was entered for
publication late in 1626, Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby, Smith's personal
friend, was in charge of an important expedition with few trained sailors
and without any handbook for beginners. Smith wrote that he had "beene
perswaded" to print the Accidence.

If the persuader was not Willoughby,
some other person saw the need. Once the rough sketch was published, we
know that "some other person," Sir Samuel Saltonstall, did see the need,
and the next year the Sea Grammar, a perfected version of the Accidence, was
published.

The Accidence is little more than an omnium gatherum of names for the
appurtenances and people that make up a ship and her crew. The applicability
of these names to the things involved is aided by the broad groups into
which they are divided. But Smith also here and there introduces terms out
of place and at least once starts to say something he does not finish. A reader
gets used to that with Smith. In the Accidence, however, there is some evidence
that Smith may not have written a final text, but perhaps dictated it to a copyist
from hastily scribbled notes made while on board one ship or another. Since
the printer's copy seems to have been pushed through the press with some
speed, it may be that Smith did not have time (or perhaps inclination) to go
through the scrivener's manuscript thoroughly. Or, if he did take that
trouble, he may not himself have known how to spell some of the more unusual
words he heard. In his day, a handy dictionary was unknown.

For further information on the Accidence, the reader is asked to turn to
the editor's Introduction to the Sea Grammar, where Smith's debt to Sir Henry
Mainwaring is outlined and other contemporary works of similar nature
are mentioned and briefly discussed.