In a Boat of Brown Paper From London to Quinborough

A 17th Century publicity stunt

In the early 1600s the English Poet, John Taylor, made himself a boat from brown paper and set sail down the Thames, aiming to land at Queenborough in Kent, on the south side of the Thames estuary. He published the story of this adventure as part of a longer poem titled ‘The Praise of Hempseed’ in 1620 (in which there is an early reference to Shakespeare). Unfortunately, this publication doesn’t contain a picture of the paper boat, so we have no contemporary evidence for what it looked like, but it must, presumably, have been folded in some way. (The illustration above is taken from another of his poems, ‘The Sculler’.) As you can imagine, the voyage didn’t go well, but nevertheless John Taylor claimed the he had successfully made it to his destination, a distance of some 40 miles.

Here are some excerpts from the poem which should give you the flavour of what John Taylor claims happened.

I therefore to conclude this much will note 
How I of Paper lately made a Boat, 
And how in forme of Paper I did row 
From London unto Quinborough Ile show. 
I and a Vintner (Roger Bird by name) 
A man whom Fortune never yet could tame)
Took ship upon the vigill of Saint James
And boldly ventur'd down the River Thames, 
Laving and cutting through each raging billow, 
(In such a Boat which never had a fellow) 
Having no kinde of mettall or no wood 
To helpe us eyther in our Ebbe or Flood :
For as our boat was paper, so our Oares 
Where Stock-fish …

… bound fast to two Canes with pack-
thread. 

The water to the Paper being got, 
In one halfe houre our boat began to rot : 
The Thames (most lib'rall) fild her to the halves, 
Whilst Hodge and I sate liquor'd to the calves. 
In which extremity I thought it fit 
To put in use a stratagem of wit, 
Which was, eight Bullocks bladders we had bought 
Pust stifly full with wind, bound fast and tought, 
Which on our Boat within the Tide we ty'de, 
Of each side foore, upon the outward side. 
The water still rose higher by degrees. 
In three miles going, almost to our knees, 
Our rotten bottome all to tatters fell, 
And left our boat as bottomlesse as Hell. 
Thus we from Saturday at evening Tide, 
Till Monday morne, did on the water bide, 
In rotten paper and in boysterous weather, 
Darke nights, through wet, and toyled altogether. 
But being come to Quinborough and aland, 
I tooke my fellow Roger by the hand, 
And both of us ere we two steps did goe 
Gave thankes to God that had preserv'd us so :

What God thought of their foolishness and the necessity of preserving them from it is not recorded.

John Taylor was a waterman by trade, making his living by ferrying people across and along the Thames, but in many ways he is the epitome of what we now think of as a contemporary artist. He sold much of his poetry by subscription, that is to say, he thought up a stunt and people promised to buy a copy of his poem about it once he had completed it, a strategy that was not without risk. For instance, in 1618 he undertook to travel on foot from London to Edinburgh without taking any money with him nor ‘begging, borrowing, or asking meat, drink, or lodging. Having previously obtained sixteen hundred names for his account of this tour, which he called ‘The Pennyles Pilgrimage’, Taylor felt justified in having forty-five hundred copies printed; but more than half the subscribers refused to pay on the ground that Taylor had not observed the conditions of the journey. (Adapted from The Dictionary of National Biography volume 55 p438.)

Though he was never the greatest of poets, his life was a fascinating one, and throws a great deal of light on the customs and politics of 17th century England. He is well worth looking up.

Here are a few more fascinating facts about him (also largely drawn from The Dictionary of National Biography account):

In ‘The True Cause of the Watermen's Suit Concerning Players’ (written in 1613 or 1614), Taylor discusses the watermen's disputes with the theatre companies after the theatres moved from the south bank to the north bank in 1612, depriving the watermen of much of their living.

He invented the palindrome ‘Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel’, one of the few famous palindromes whose author we know.

During the English civil war he kept a public-house in Oxford, the Royalist head-quarters. After the Royalist defeat he returned to London, where he set up a similar business at the sign of The Crown in Phoenix Alley. At the time of the king's execution he changed his sign to the Mourning Crown, but the authorities objected, and he substituted his own portrait, with this inscription:

On one side:

There's many a head stands for a sign,
Then, gentle Reader, why not mine?

On the other side:

Though I deserve not, I desire
The laurel wreath, the poet's hire.

He died in 1653 and was buried in the churchyard of St Martin's-in-the-Fields.