Guided Pathway

Anthropologists describe a long tradition among sailors of offerings to Neptune of shorn hair or clothing, before voyages, or after rescue from shipwreck. Sometimes the offerings were placed in a temple, as Horace, in his Ode to Pyrrah, cites: “The sacred wall of Neptune’s Temple demonstrates by a votive tablet that I have consecrated my dripping garments to the powerful god of the sea.” But also the hair or cloth offerings could simply be cast into the open sea. After Charles V’s abdication from the Dutch throne, his even more unpopular successor Phillip withdrew from the Netherlands by ship to Spain, from whence he would direct the horrific intensification of the Catholic Inquisition in the Low Countries (#10). During that voyage south his fleet was forced by a storm to make textile offerings. John Lothrop Motley described the event in The Rise of the Dutch Republic:

The fleet, which consisted of ninety vessels, so well provisioned that, among other matters, fifteen thousand capons were put on board, according to the Antwerp chronicler, set sail upon the 26^th August (1559) from Flushing. The voyage proved tempestuous, so that much of the rich tapestry and other merchandise which had been accumulated by Charles and Philip was lost. Some of the vessels foundered; to save others it was necessary to lighten the cargo, and “to enrobe the roaring waves with the silks,” for which the Netherlands were so famous; so it was said that Philip and his father had impoverished the earth only to enrich the ocean.
(p 215, Motley)