There is nothing like trade for the encouragement of shipping, but it was not until the end of the thirteenth century that the inland towns of the continent required for their trade the highway of the ocean, and thus the ports became important and the demand for shipping increased. One of the most important of the Hanseatic sea trade routes was from Bruges to northern Russia, whither hundreds of craft sailed every year, owned by the Baltic merchants. And it was not until the fifteenth century that the Dutchmen, Zeelanders and Frisians seriously competed with the Hanseatics, for the latter was a very close corporation, whose organisation was kept secret, and its ban was regal in its effect. By its decree no German merchant was allowed to go into partnership with an Englishman, Fleming or Russian, and the result was that for centuries our shipping was kept out of the Baltic. All this time the Hanseatic trade was doing a great deal to encourage its own shipping, for there were needed many craft and seamen to carry eastwards from Germany to Russia the produce of the looms and the breweries, returning with furs, wax, skins, tallow and fat. Similarly the shipping went across to Sweden to fetch the copper and iron, while to Bruges and London this Russian and Swedish produce was brought for distribution. As in the cargo ships of the Mediterranean, so here in the north, the merchants accompanied their wares “over sea and sand.” Some of them would mutually arrange to charter a ship, and in order to encourage the captain to get the goods safely across the sea, they would give him an interest in the sales. Otherwise, as soon as pirates hove into sight he might feel inclined to hurl the goods overboard, and a similar desire was thus checked in the case of the ship labouring in bad weather. Piracy in the English Channel, Irish Sea, North Sea and the Baltic went on merrily during the Middle Ages, and played havoc with the merchant ship, though, as in the south, this kind of activity was less a crime than a specialised form of seafaring. In the Cinque Ports dwelt a class of seamen commissioned, according to Matthew of Paris, to plunder all merchant ships of any nationality other than English as they passed up and down the Channel; so in the thirteenth century we find the Scotch, Irish, Welsh and French all fitting out vessels to cruise about in readiness for a cargo ship full of valuable goods.