But any English traveller who, having gone a little way out of the
beaten track of summer tourists, may chance to mount the ramparts,
and look down upon the fields which stretch away to the shores of
the North Sea and the estuary of the Scheldt, and inland beyond
Damme to the Belfry and the spires of Bruges, is gazing on the
scene of a great event in the naval history of England.
Here, on what is now dry land, on the morning of June 24, 1340,
800 ships of war, full of armed men--35,000 of them--were drawn up
in line of battle; and further out to sea, beyond the entrance of
the Zwijn, the newly-risen sun was shining on the sails of another
fleet which was manoeuvring in the offing.
[Illustration: BRUGES. Qua du Miroir]
'In the cities of Flanders,' says Dr. Gardiner, 'had arisen
manufacturing populations which supplied the countries round with
the products of the loom. To the Ghent and Bruges of the Middle
Ages England stood in the same relation as that which the Australian
colonies hold to the Leeds and Bradford of our own day. The sheep
which grazed over the wide, unenclosed pasture-lands of our island
formed a great part of the wealth of England, and that wealth depended
entirely on the flourishing trade with the Flemish towns in which
English wool was converted into cloth.
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