Jacobean Mock Sea-Fights on the River Thames: Nautical Theatricality in Performance and Print

This article explores mock sea-fights performed on the Thames in 1610 and 1613, which marshalled civic and naval vessels and personnel to offer spectators a realistic representation of the noise and magnitude of maritime combat. These nautical performances are a unique and important form of civic theatricality that offered Londoners an alternative means of visualizing the kinds of nautical combat they would have encountered in stage plays and news pamphlets. My analysis of printed accounts and eye-witness reports of these mock sea-fights explicates their complex negotiation of artifice and feigning on the one hand and realism on the other, whereby the grim realities of naval combat manifested themselves in the process of performance. The article likewise considers how this unique form of entertainment was presented to book-buyers and readers in pamphlets that feature paratextual woodcut illustrations of ships, which align the publications with other genres of ‘maritime’ print. Ultimately, what follows demonstrates the rich contributions that the mock sea-fight as a form of riverine theatricality can make to our understanding of performance culture in Jacobean London.