atron of
a new goodly ship with other merchants desired us pilgrims that we
would come aboard and see his ship within: which ship lay afore St.
Mark's Church. We all went in, and there they made us goodly cheer
with diverse subtilties, as comfits and march-panes and sweet wines.
Also 5 May the patron of another ship which lay in the sea five miles
from Venice, desired us all pilgrims that we would come and see his
ship. And the same day we all went with him; and there he provided for
us a marvellous good dinner, where we had all manner of good victuals
and wine.' Ultimately, Torkington sailed in a new ship of 800
tons,[37] under a patron named Thomas Dodo. Only three days later
another ship set sail with a large party of German pilgrims.

[37] If the figure is correct, she was a large vessel for the times;
for a century later, the _Pelican_, in which Drake sailed round the
world, was only 100 tons, the _Squirrel_, in which Sir Humfrey Gilbert
was cast away in an Atlantic gale, only 10.

In all ages a great ship is a great wonder, representing for the time
the final triumph of the shipwright's art. The monster vessel that set
Lucian's friend dreaming at the Piraeus had but one mast; yet the
curious from Athens flocked down to see her extraordinary proportions
and to admire the sailors who had beaten up in her from Egypt against
the Etesian winds in only seventy days. She was the ship of the hour:
anything greater scarcely conceivable. Again, Macaulay returning from
India in 1837 compares his comfortable sailing-ship to a huge floating
hotel. Burton on his way to Mecca in 1853, when steaming across the
Bay of Biscay in a vessel of 2000 tons, prophesies that sea-sickness
is at an end now that such monsters ply across the ocean and laugh at
the storm. How puny do they seem beside the Olympic and Imperator, at
which we in our turn gaze wonderingly and think that engineering can
no further go. It is amusing to find the same proud admiration in a
traveller of 1517: 'Our ship was so great that when we came to land,
we could not run her upon the beach like a galley, but must remain in
deep water', the passengers going ashore in boats.

Quite a number of contracts between patron and pilgrim have been
preserved. Some of the terms are as follows: 'that the ship shall be
properly armed and manned, and carry a barber and a physician; that it
shall only touch at the usual ports, and not stay more than three days
at Cyprus, because