Historians at the University of Southampton have mapped the trading routes of medieval shipping which helped "sow the seeds of the British maritime empire".
More than 50,000 ship movements from 600 ports around England, Wales and the Channel Islands, dating between 1400 and 1580 have been compiled for the interactive map and database.
Researchers found most shipping at the time was done between local ports rather than going abroad with traders opting for ships rather than using the country's mud-track roads.
They also found that, as well as familiar ports still in use such as Southampton, Falmouth, Cardiff and Liverpool, a large number of smaller coastal and river towns were once bustling ports, including Bewdley on the River Severn in Worcestershire, which has 200 voyages logged in the database.
At the start of the late medieval and Tudor period, English shippers were mainly coastal traders, but by the end, [Sir Francis] Drake had set out on his voyage of circumnavigation and Walter Raleigh was close to planting England's first settlers on Roanoke Island in North America."