Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ...Communications with the Continent seem to have been conducted chiefly between the Kentish ports and those of the opposite Gaulish littoral, and in particular between Rutupiae (Richborough, just north of Sandwich) and Gessoriacum, otherwise called Bononia, now Boulogne. There was also not infrequent intercourse between Colchester and the Rhine estuary, to which we may ascribe various German products found in Roman Colchester, though not elsewhere in Roman Britain. On occasion men also reached or left the island by long sea passages. Troops, it appears, were sometimes shipped direct from Fectio (Vechten, near Utrecht), the port of the Rhine, to the mouth of the Tyne in Northumberland, while traders now and then sailed direct from Gaul to Ireland and to British ports on the Irish Channel. The police of the seas was entrusted to a classic Britannica, which intermittent references in our authorities shew to have existed from the middle of the first century (that is from the original conquest or soon after) till at least the end of the third century. Despite its title, the principal station of this fleet was not in Britain but at Boulogne, and its work was the preservation of order on either coast of the Straits of Dover. This fleet appears to have been a police flotilla rather than a naval force, but for once it emerged into the political importance which fleets often assume. About 286 a Menapian (i.e. probably, Belgian) by name Carausius became commandant, possibly with extended powers to cope with the increasing piracy; he set himself up as colleague to the two reigning emperors, Maximian and Diocletian, enlarged his fleet, allied himself with the searobbers, and in 289 actually extorted some kind of recognition at Rome. But in 293 he was murdered and his succ...
