The Mariner's Mirror

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ISSN: 0025-3359 (Print) 2049-680X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmir20

Medieval Ship Graffiti in English Churches:

Interpretation and function

Matthew Champion

To cite this article: Matthew Champion (2015) Medieval Ship Graffiti in English
Churches: Interpretation and function, The Mariner's Mirror, 101:3, 343-350, DOI:
10.1080/00253359.2015.1054691

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2015.1054691

Published online: 03 Aug 2015.

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 Notes 343
References
Albareda, J., La Aljafería: datos para su
conocimiento histórico y artístico y
orientaciones para una restauración y
aprovechamiento del edificio (Zaragoza,
1935)
Eastland, J and J. Ballantyne, HMS ‘Victory’:
First Rate 1765 (Barnsley, 2011)
Gardiner, R. and B. Lavery, B., The Line of
Battle: The sailing warships 1650–1840
(London, 1992)
Downloaded by [University of Western Ontario] at 11:01 27 December 2015
Iñiguez Almech, F., Así fue la Aljafería
(Zaragoza, 1952)
Medieval Ship Graffiti
in English Churches:
Interpretation and function
In early 2010 a community archaeology project
was established to undertake the very first
large-scale survey of surviving medieval graffiti
inscriptions in English churches. The multi-
award winning Norfolk Medieval Graffiti
Survey has to date recorded over 26,000
individual inscriptions from Norfolk alone, and
the project has now expanded to include the
counties of Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Kent,
Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and East Sussex,
with plans in place to expand the project to include
the whole of England.1 Although the project has
discovered a number of nationally important
individual inscriptions, the main advantage of
such a wide-ranging survey has been the ability
to study particular types of graffiti inscriptions
within a far wider context than has previously
been possible. One of the most obvious topics
for research has been the easily identifiable
graffiti type that has come to be known as ‘ship
graffiti’.2 At the time of writing the survey has
already indentified in excess of 300 individual
ship graffiti from across the country, with many
more examples undoubtedly awaiting discovery.
This short article represents just a few of the
findings of the survey work so far undertaken,
suggests possible interpretations and functions
1 www.medieval-graffiti.co.uk.
2 Gardiner, ‘Graffiti and their use in Late
Medieval England’.
101(3).indd 343
Lavery, B., ‘The construction of the eighteenth
century man-of-war’ in M. Bound, The
Archaeology of Ships of War, vol. I (Oxford,
1995), 132–6
Lavery, B., The Ship of the Line. Volume II:
Design, construction and fittings (London,
1984)
Martín-Bueno, M., R. Erice Lacabe and M. P.
Saénz Preciado, La Aljafería: investigación
arqueológica (Zaragoza, 1987)
Sobradiel, P., La Aljafería 1800–1900 las claves
para su recuperación (Zaragoza, 2009)
for a number of these inscriptions and highlights
areas of future research upon the subject.
Characteristics of ship graffiti
Previous studies indicated that the phenomenon
of ship graffiti was largely confined to ports
and coastal areas.3 While there are clear and
measurable concentrations of ship graffiti in
coastal regions, the more recent studies have
highlighted the fact that examples are not
solely confined to the coast, with numerous
inscriptions having been recorded as far inland as
the counties of Hertfordshire and Leicestershire.
In purely statistical terms though, it must be
noted that nearly 90 per cent of inscriptions are
located on the coast or its immediate hinterland.
However, if analysed purely in terms of sites
containing examples of ship graffiti, rather than
the individual examples themselves, then that
percentage diminishes to a little above 65 per
cent, the result of coastal sites often containing
large numbers of examples within a single
church, as opposed to the inland sites which
may contain only one or two examples. During
even the most cursory examination of these
surviving pre-Reformation examples of ship
graffiti in English churches, a number of general
characteristics become apparent; characteristics
that are often, but not always, shared with
manuscript depictions.4 These characteristics
relate to the majority of inscriptions, and
3 Pritchard, English Medieval Graffiti.
4 Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval
Manuscripts.
22/07/2015 14:36
 344 The Mariner’s Mirror
there are exceptions to almost all the general
conclusions, but the characteristics are present
in enough examples to make them worthy
of note. In some cases certain characteristics
may be shared by as many as 90 per cent of
examples; in others cases characteristics may
be shared by only a little above half of the
recorded examples. It must also be noted that
while regional differences may account for a
number of individual characteristics these have
been difficult to identify. As Friel points out,
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‘the answer here, as with the documents, is to
avoid an over reliance on any single source, and
to look at representational trends’.5 What is
perhaps intriguing in its own right is that many
of these characteristics or ‘representational
trends’ are shared by examples with a wide
geographical spread, suggesting that traditions
associated with the creation of these images
were universally known throughout the
country.
These main characteristics of pre-Reform­
ation ship graffiti identified to date are:
1 Full hull. The ships are invariably shown in
full profile, from either left or right, and with
the hull visible from the keel line upwards
and not, as they would most often have been
seen in reality, from the waterline upwards.
2 Furled sails. The majority of ship graffiti
depicts vessels with either no sails visible or,
where more elaborate depictions are to be
found, with sails furled.
3 Anchors. A high proportion of ship images
are shown with ropes or hawsers leading
away from the bow of stern. At the end of
these ropes an anchor will often be crudely
depicted. The rope lines can upon occasion
be rather long, with the anchor shown on
another face of a stone pier, or geographically
remote from the ship itself. As a result these
anchors have often been overlooked.
4 Single mast. Despite the fact that multi-
masted vessels are well attested from the late
medieval period the majority of ship graffiti
are single masted. There are noted exceptions
at sites such as Blakeney, Norfolk.
5 Crew. Although a less widely recognized
characteristic, a number of vessels are
5 Friel, The Good ship, 18.
101(3).indd 344
shown with human figures aboard. Whether
such figures represent crew members or
passengers is indeterminable.
6 Rigging. The majority of ship graffiti, no
matter how crude, invariably contains an
attempt at depicting rigging lines. In the
single masted vessels that vast majority
of rigging lines run towards the stern,
suggesting a stepped mast.
7 Seagoing vessels. Almost all ship graffiti
depicts vessels with a ‘masthead’, or ‘crows
nest’, even those created many dozens of
miles inland. Mastheads are not usually
found on riverine vessels, suggesting that all
the ship graffiti, without obvious exception,
depicts sea-going vessels.
Meaning and function
The most fundamental question concerning
the phenomena of ship graffiti must be why it
was actually created? What was its purpose and
meaning? Did it indeed have meaning or does it
simply represent the idle doodling of a largely
maritime-based society?
Early maritime communities were widely
noted among their contemporaries for what,
in the Protestant Reformation, became known
as ‘superstitions’. In terms of surviving
graffiti inscriptions it was not just maritime
communities but all those who had to
undertake potentially hazardous sea voyages,
who fell back upon quasi-religious acts of
superstition. The catacombs beneath Rome,
burial place of many early Christians, became
an attraction to late medieval pilgrims travelling
to the city, or stopping there on their longer
pilgrimages to the holy land. These pilgrims
took the opportunity to inscribe the surfaces
of the catacombs with their own graffiti. Often
in the form of prayers, perhaps directed at a
number of the saints and early church martyrs
reputed to be buried within the catacombs, they
show a marked anxiety associated with travel
by sea. ‘Holy souls, pray for a safe crossing for
us’, writes one, while another asks the saints to
‘grant us a safe journey over the sea’.6
While travellers by sea may have sought
safety in graffiti prayers, the mariners
themselves appear, if anything, to have been
6 Sumption, Pilgrimage, 218.
22/07/2015 14:36
 Notes 345
even more superstitious; hardly surprising in
an environment where lives, livelihoods and
fortunes could be lost in a matter of minutes
by an unforeseen storm. For medieval mariners
the chapel of St Edmund at Wainfleet in
Lincolnshire is recorded as being a particularly
attractive site for local sailors. A crew from
nearby Skegness, who had been saved from
destruction at sea during a violent storm, visited
the shrine there to present a large ship model
made of wax and provided for a candle to burn
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each day at mass ‘for a very long time’.7
Even after the rejection of the Catholic
Church in England the superstitious nature
of mariners was still remarked upon. The
seventeenth-century notebooks of practising
astrologer William Lilly give a vivid insight
into the general belief in what the reformers
of a century before would have described as
superstition. Although Lilly’s case notebooks
are by no means complete they indicate that
he was being consulted on a wide variety of
matters, ranging from trivial losses of personal
property to the fate of entire ships at sea. In
the two-year period of June 1654 to September
1656 he records being consulted on 4,403
individual matters. Of the 683 cases in which he
recorded the nature of the enquiry or the client’s
status, about a sixth directly relate to matters
involving maritime trade and sailors. Although
Lilly practised in London, whose bustling
port formed the core of the city’s trade, the
proportion of seafarers reverting to Lilly would
still appear disproportionately high, suggesting
a greater tendency among seafarers to seek out
astrological guidance than would perhaps have
been found in the wider population.8
Although all forms of pre-Reformation
graffiti inscriptions remain relatively unstudied
the particular phenomena of ship graffiti has
been widely recognized for some time. Many
examples have been identified and recorded
in the UK, Ireland and around the European
North Sea basin.9 More recently multiple
7 Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England, 81.
8 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of
Magic, 362–6.
9 Pritchard, English Medieval Graffiti;
Emden, ‘Graffiti of medieval ships’; Jones-
Baker, ‘Graffito of a Danish or Viking ship’;
101(3).indd 345
examples have been recorded along the
Atlantic seaboard of the Iberian Peninsular,
the eastern Mediterranean and the West
Indies and Americas.10 However, despite these
many identified and recorded examples, the
phenomenon of ship graffiti remains highly
enigmatic. The reasons for their creation, their
intended purpose and in many cases even the
date of their creation are still the subject of
some debate and remain open to multiple
interpretations.
It is worth remembering that ships and ship
images were no strangers to the inside of the
churches of medieval England. The name of
the main public area of the church, the nave,
was derived directly from the Latin word
navis, meaning ‘ship’ or ‘vessel’, and references
dating back to the very earliest days of the
Christian church direct that churches should
be built ‘long . . . so it will be like a ship’. As
early as the fourth century the role of bishop is
described as being like ‘one that is a commander
of a great ship’, and that of deacon as ‘like the
mariners and managers of the ship’.11 While the
church itself might have been likened to a ship
it also contained numerous ship images, from
those contained in medieval wall paintings
(especially the ever popular St Christopher), to
those accompanying the images and statues of
the saints. Last, and perhaps most obviously,
many English churches actually had detailed
models of ships hanging from the intricately
carved timbers of the roof. Often known
today as ‘church ships’, these models were
made as votive offerings to the church, often in
thanksgiving for a safe return from a perilous
journey, and they were once a common sight in
churches up and down the country. The most
obvious manifestation of these votive ships are
the over 900 examples of small model ships, of
various ages, that can be seen today displayed in
the churches of Denmark.12
From the examples of ship graffiti already
Brady and Corlett, ‘Holy Ships’; Kastholm, ‘Six
ship graffiti from Himmelev Church’.
10 Kahanov and Stern, ‘Ship Graffiti from
Akko’; Turner, ‘Bahamian Ship Graffiti’.
11 Tyack, Lore and Legend of the English
Church, 101–2.
12 Harley, Church Ships, 16–18.
22/07/2015 14:36
 346 The Mariner’s Mirror
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Figure 1  Graffito of a typical stylized cog dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century from
Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk (Norfolk & Suffolk Medieval Graffiti Survey)
recorded within the UK there is a very strong
argument for the creation of these inscriptions
as a ritual and symbolic act. This is perhaps
most clearly demonstrated by the many dozens
of examples of ship graffiti that have been
recorded within the north Norfolk churches
of Blakeney, Cley and Wiveton. These three
churches form what is known as the Glaven
Port, a cluster of settlements around the mouth
of the river Glaven that during the middle ages
functioned together as a significant commercial
shipping centre in northern East Anglia. The
ship graffiti is found within all three churches,
as well as elsewhere upon the coast, but that
located in Blakeney church is perhaps the most
significant in terms of demonstrating a possible
‘meaning’ for its creation.
The church of St Nicholas at Blakeney
contains in excess of 40 clearly defined ship
graffiti inscriptions. Intriguingly, although
examples of pre-Reformation inscriptions
are to be found throughout the church, all
the examples of ship graffiti so far recorded
have been located upon the piers of the south
arcade. Indeed even within the south arcade a
clear distribution pattern is evident. The arcade
is formed of four large piers of high quality
dressed stone. The most easterly pier, which is
located next to the side aisle altar and opposite
a now empty image niche, contains over 25
101(3).indd 346
examples of ship graffiti. Furthermore all of
these examples of ship graffiti are distinctly
separate from each other, with each ship
inscription respecting the space of those other
inscriptions around it. Where little room is
available between two larger inscriptions, then
the space has been filled with a much smaller
ship graffiti. This is even more remarkable
when it is understood that these individual
inscriptions were created over a period of at
least two centuries.13
Today the Blakeney ships, like most early
graffiti inscriptions, are difficult to see with
the naked eye. However, at the time of their
creation they would have been one of the most
obvious features in the south aisle, if not in the
church itself. Detailed examination has shown
that, in common with the vast majority of
medieval churches, Blakeney church interior
was painted and decorated in a vivid array of
pigments.14 The piers upon which the ship
graffiti are located show evidence that they
were painted a deep red ochre, with pigment
still clearly visible in some areas, and that the
ship graffiti was scratched through this pigment
to reveal the pale stone beneath. Therefore,
the graffiti, far from being difficult to see and
hidden away, would have been one of the most
13 Peake, ‘Graffiti and Devotion’, 154.
14 Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings, 3–5.
22/07/2015 14:36
 Notes 347
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Figure 2  A typical example of late medieval ship graffiti, showing a single-masted vessel with
sail furled and anchor cables running from the bow from Norwich cathedral, Norfolk (Norfolk &
Suffolk Medieval Graffiti Survey)
obvious things you saw as you entered the
church. The whole pier would have looked like
a large collection of small white ships upon a
red background; a pale fleet sailing upon a
deep red ocean.15 In common with other early
graffiti inscriptions, the Blakeney ships also
show no evidence of subsequent defacement or
destruction. Considering that they were clearly
visible for several centuries, as evidenced by the
fact that the later inscriptions clearly respect the
space of the earlier ones, this rather suggests
that they were not seen as either destructive
or outside the bounds of acceptability. At
any point in those two centuries the priest or
churchwardens could have covered them over,
or had them scrapped from the walls. The fact
that they clearly did not rather suggests that
they had a meaning and function that was
understood and, at the very least, tolerated
within the wider church community, if not
indeed respected.
While the Blakeney ship graffiti does very
clearly indicate that this phenomena had both
function and meaning it is still impossible
to unequivocally explain exactly what that
meaning or function was. It has been suggested
that the empty image niche once contained
15 Champion, ‘Reading the writing on the
wall’, 40.
101(3).indd 347
a figure of St Nicholas, who functioned as
patron saint ‘of those in peril upon the seas’
throughout much of the latter middle ages,
and that these ships were ‘votive offerings’ to
his image.16 If this is the case then the exact
nature of the votive offering remains unclear.
Were they created as thanks for a voyage
safely undertaken, as prayers for a safe passage
for a voyage yet to come, or as offerings for
ships long overdue? With an almost complete
absence of written evidence associated with
their creation any more specific interpretation
must remain as mere speculation. Nevertheless,
the Blakeney ship graffiti do very clearly
demonstrate that these inscriptions had, at the
time of their creation, a widely recognized and
powerful meaning and function.
That this concept of meaning and function
was not just localized to the inhabitants of
Blakeney is supported by the findings made
during a survey of the church St Thomas the
Martyr at Winchelsea, East Sussex. Although
relatively little of the church survives today,
being largely the remains of the chancel from a
far grander church originally conceived on the
scale of a small cathedral, the remaining fabric
tells an almost identical story to that found at
16 Peake, ‘Graffiti and Devotion in Three
Maritime Churches’, 160.
22/07/2015 14:36
 348 The Mariner’s Mirror
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Figure 3  A crudely depicted early example of medieval ship graffiti, with clearly raised ‘castles’
on the bow and stern, and a cable line running from the bow from Parham, Suffolk (Norfolk &
Suffolk Medieval Graffiti Survey)
Blakeney.17 Although early graffiti inscriptions
are found all over the surviving structure the
instances of ship graffiti are, almost without
exception, confined to the north arcade, with
a marked and distinct concentration occurring
on the most easterly pier. These ships, many
of which are shown with detailed rigging and
anchors, again appear to respect the space of
those around them, as at Blakeney, and are
largely concentrated on the east and north-east
faces of this particular pier. These faces of the
pier sit directly facing the north aisle side altar,
an area in which it is recorded a chapel dedicated
to St Nicholas once stood. It therefore appears
that, despite the town of Winchelsea being
separated by both geography and economics
from those ports located in north Norfolk, the
same ritual practises were being undertaken by
those who sailed from there.
Although other churches, such as St Mary
the Virgin in Parham, Suffolk, also contain
concentrations of ship graffiti, it is not always
possible to find any link with a specific
dedication, side chapel, individual image
or guild dedicated to St Nicholas. It must
therefore be assumed that, while the Winchelsea
and Blakeney examples do appear linked to a
particular widespread cult of St Nicholas,
17 Martin and Martin, New Winchelsea,
Sussex.
101(3).indd 348
other concentrations may well be linked with
more localized cults that have left few traces
for modern researchers. One such localized
cult, a cult that has left little evidence beyond
an intriguing distribution pattern of graffiti,
may have been located a few miles west along
the Norfolk coast from Blakeney at Burnham
Norton.
Almost all the churches of ‘the Burnhams’
contain evidence of ship graffiti, with the
notable and somewhat ironic exception of
Burnham Thorpe, birthplace of the naval
hero Admiral Horatio Nelson. However, at St
Margaret’s in Burnham Norton, the distribution
pattern of the graffiti is still very clear and
would indicate far more than chance or random
placement. The church is far smaller than many
of those that surround it but contains several
high-quality medieval survivals of interest. The
early Norman font, late medieval rood screen
and surviving wall paintings have all attracted
scholarly attention. However, St Margaret’s
is by far the best known for its superb mid
fifteenth-century wineglass pulpit, described as
one of the finest to survive in England.18 The
bequest of John Goldalle in 1450, the six-sided
pulpit is richly painted with the four Latin
Doctors of the Church, Ambrose, Jerome,
18 Pevsner, The Buildings of England:
Norfolk 2: North-West and South, 230–1.
22/07/2015 14:36
 Notes 349
Gregory and Augustine, and portrait panels
of the donors Johannes Goldalle and his wife
Katherina.
The pulpit has, in common with other
painted pulpits and rood screens in East Anglia,
been defaced at the time of the reformation.
Although the defacing of similar images was
rarely extensive enough to obliterate the whole
figure, more usually simply scratching away
the face and hands, the attempted defacement
at Burnham Norton was wholly half-hearted.
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The figures look as though they have barely
been touched, with only a few deep scored lines
running diagonally across each face. Indeed,
from a distance it is difficult to recognize
any defacement at all. Whether this lack of
enthusiasm for the defacing of a work of art was
born of any perceived extra value to the images
on the pulpit, or simply because it was so recent
a bequest that the donor’s family were still most
likely among the congregation, is unclear. What
is clear is that the rood screen itself, located
next to the actual pulpit, received no such
favouritism. Here the faces, hands and bodies
of the saints were hacked from the woodwork,
scoring deep gouges from the surface, leaving
only the barest fragment of pigment behind
them.
However, despite having escaped the ravages
of the Reformation iconoclasts, the painted
pulpit did become the focus for a number of
examples of ship graffiti. If the placement of
the ship graffiti had a particular importance,
with the potency of an image being increased
by its close association with areas of spiritual
authority, then it might be expected that the
four images of the Doctors of the Church
would form the focus for the ship graffiti. This
is not the case. While one ship image floats
distractingly upon the image of St Jerome, the
other six or seven examples are to be found
inscribed into the image of the pulpit’s donor,
Johannes Goldalle. 19
Little is known about Goldalle himself.
That he had means is unquestionable, having
been able to find the funds to create the superb
painted pulpit that remains to this day. His dress,
and that of his wife, show typically prosperous
19 Hurst and Haselock, Norfolk Rood
Screens, 27.
101(3).indd 349
and sturdy members of the local merchant elite.
He is known to have faced prosecution some
four years before the pulpit was completed, for
apparently illegally gathering shellfish from
the coastal salt marsh, and it has been assumed,
without any real evidence so far located, that
he was a relatively wealthy merchant with
connections to the maritime trade. Whatever
the case, for reasons now unknown, it was
the image of Johannes Goldalle that over the
following decades became the focus for the
creation of multiple examples of ship graffiti.
This of course raises a number of questions.
If the location of the graffiti was an important
element in its perceived potency as a devotional
act, then it must be the case that this image was
perceived as a location of particular spiritual
authority and efficacy. Did the obvious worldly
success of Goldalle that we must assume he
had as a merchant with links to the maritime
trade suggest that he would act as intercessor
for those seeking similar benevolence? Was
he perhaps an individual of noted local piety
whose care of those in the local community
could extend beyond the grave? Whatever the
truth of the matter, the image did become the
focus for the ship graffiti that still adorns it.
For whatever reason, the memory of Johannes
Goldalle, either as local saint or renowned
sailor, encouraged others to participate in
ritualized devotional activity that suggest the
development of a minor and localized cult.
Despite the evidence that at least some of
the examples of pre-Reformation ship graffiti
had specific meaning and function, the overall
picture is still less than clear. The majority of
early ship graffiti fit into no such neat patterns
as the examples from Blakeney, Winchelsea
and Burnham Norton. While ship imagery
was common within medieval theology, and
votive ships a once common sight within our
churches, direct links between such phenomena
and the ship graffiti require extensive further
research.20 In addition ship graffiti continue
well beyond the medieval period, with many
post-Reformation examples clearly serving
a commemorative or memorial function,
suggesting that at least some of the earlier
imagery may well have served a similar purpose.
20 Harley, Church Ships, 16–18.
22/07/2015 14:36
 350 The Mariner’s Mirror
Conclusions
Any attempted single interpretation as
to the creation, meaning and intended
function of ship graffiti, in line with most
narrow interpretations of the wider graffiti
phenomenon, will undoubtedly fail. These
inscriptions, while neatly fitting into a single
graffiti ‘type’, display multiple characteristics
that suggest multiple functions; functions that
the evidence suggests evolved over a period
of centuries. A fourteenth-century cog carved
Downloaded by [University of Western Ontario] at 11:01 27 December 2015
next to the altar of a medieval church may
appear superficially similar to a seventeenth-
century sloop inscribed into the rear of a rood
screen, but that need not indicate that they
were created with the same purpose in mind.
The marked and demonstrable concentration
of ship graffiti at coastal sites certainly suggests
a strong link between the graffiti and maritime
communities, implying that the graffiti had
meaning and function that was highly relevant
to these communities. However, the presence
of so many newly discovered examples at sites
far removed from the sea would also suggest
that the meaning and function went beyond the
localized settings of coastal churches; perhaps
indicating a wider link to medieval concepts of
transport and travel. Indeed, the most notable
conclusion of the recent large-scale surveys
is that it is clear that the phenomena requires
much further research, most particularly
with regard to the liturgical, architectural and
theological links between ship imagery and the
medieval church.
Matthew Champion
norfolk
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2015.1054691
© Matthew Champion
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