Many of these accounts are interesting and instructive, and two of them may be referred to with advantage as illustrative of the size and character of the ordinary English merchant vessels then trading with the Mediterranean. One of the smaller class, named the _Holy Cross_, is described as “a short ship of 160 tons burthen.” She traded with Crete and with Chios, and her last voyage seems to have been an unfortunate one. Having been a full year at sea in performance of this voyage, “she with great danger returned home, where, upon her arrival at Blackwall, her wine and oil casks were found so weak that they were not able to hoist them out of the ship, but were constrained to draw them as they lay, and put their wine and oil into new vessels, and so unload the ship.” As to the ship herself, she is described as having been “so shaken in this voyage and so weakened that she was laid up in the dock and never made voyage afterwards.” As there is no reason for doubting the accuracy of the above statement, it is clear that these English merchantmen must have been badly-built vessels and very slow sailors. Indeed, the description of the voyage of a larger vessel confirms this opinion so far as regards speed. She is spoken of as “the good ship _Matthew Gonson_, of burthen 300 tons,” and the names of her owner, “old Mr. William Gonson, Pay-master of the King’s Navie,” and of her principal officers are also given. The whole number of this ship’s company is represented to have been one hundred men; she is said to have had “a great boat which was able to carry ten tons of water, which at our return homewards we towed all the way from Chio until we came through the Strait of Gibraltar into the main ocean,” as well as a long-boat and skiff; while it is remarked that, “we were out upon this voyage eleven months, and yet in all this time there died of sickness but one man.” These are the only extant narratives furnishing any insight into the working of English merchant ships at the beginning of the sixteenth century; but the trade with the Levant must then have been of considerable importance, as an English consul was established at Chios in the year 1513,[53] while English factors were about that period sent to Cuba and the other countries in the West discovered and colonised by the Spaniards. [Sidenote: Leading English shipowners.] [Sidenote: Patent to the Cabots, 1496.]