Travelling by ship in tudor England

[jomarch]

My characters are traveling from London to Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1590. I figured they could ride on horseback to King's Lynn and take a ship to Berwick (or?), bur I don't know: how long would a sea journey like that last and what type of ship would be used? All I could find was that a ship called Anne made that journey quite regularly a few decades before that - I'm guessing it could still be doing it at that point? How long would a ship like that operate for?

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

For state letters, there was an official post by this time, Henry VIII had set it up. This would have carried the correspondence between between Elizabeth I and James VI, who exchanged personal letters in this period, as well as official state business. This was through a post roads set-up. So looking into that would probably give you useful information. There's also an official secret service by this period, too.

That said, that would be a courier function with multiple riders, so not what you want if you want a single character to make a journey. But I think I'd probably start with looking at how it was formally done, as in the course of that you'll probably find information about general travel, and maybe people like Elizabeth's major ministers who presumably did send individual messengers on various jobs (earlier, also Cromwell did so).

[jomarch]

Specifically, it's Kit Marlowe and Robert Poley. I know that Poley carried letters to Berwick, and later in life begged to be given the job again. Marlowe's duties in the secret service are unknown but plausibly might have involved similar work. I thought that carrying letters would be a good excuse to get those two together for a few days.