Peter von Danzig was a 15th century ship of the Hanseatic League

Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe...

. It was the first large vessel in the Baltic Sea

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

 featuring carvel

Carvel (boat building)

In boat building, carvel built or carvel planking is a method of constructing wooden boats and tall ships by fixing planks to a frame so that the planks butt up against each other, edge to edge, gaining support from the frame and forming a smooth hull...

 planking.

Career

The Peter von Danzig was built at the French west coast and was originally named Pierre de la Rochelle or Peter van Rosseel. Carrying sea salt

Sea salt

Sea salt, salt obtained by the evaporation of seawater, is used in cooking and cosmetics. It is historically called bay salt or solar salt...

 from the Atlantic, the ship arrived in Danzig in 1462 after having been damaged in a storm.

The ship lay inactive for a while in Danzig harbour, and after the owner died without having paid repair costs, the ship was eventually seized and changed over to a warship when the Hanse declared war on England.

Between 1471 and 1473 the Peter von Danzig operated in the North Sea under captain Paul Beneke, hunting English merchantmen with a letter of marque

Letter of marque

In the days of fighting sail, a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was a government licence authorizing a person to attack and capture enemy vessels, and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale...

 and securing Hanse convoys. After the Treaty of Utrecht (1474)

Treaty of Utrecht (1474)

The Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1474 after the Anglo-Hanseatic War between England and the Hanseatic League.This naval war had begun in 1470 using the naval strategy of commerce raiding in the North sea and the Channel. One of the most successful Man of war was the Peter von Danzig...

, the ship undertook several trade trips abroad, before it was decommissioned in the late 1470s.

See also

• List of world's largest wooden ships
• Adler von Lübeck
  Adler von Lübeck
  The Adler von Lübeck , also called Der Große Adler or Lübscher Adler, was a 16th century warship of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, Germany...
  
  
• List of ships of the Hanseatic League

Further reading

• Jochen Brennecke: Geschichte der Schiffahrt, Künzelsau 1986 (2nd ed.) ISBN 3-89393-176-7
• Propyläen Technikgeschichte (Ed. Wolfgang König): Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Volker Schmidtchen: Metalle und Macht. 1000 bis 1600. Berlin, Frankfurt/Main 1992 (2nd ed.) ISBN 3-549-05227-8