Ship and boatbuilding around the Irish coasts have long histories. Nearly every harbour had shipwrights, who constructed curraghs, brigantines, schooners, smacks, barques and galliots from local wood. As in other parts of the United Kingdom, each region of Ireland had distinctive craft: Donegal, Galway and Kinsale hookers, gleotogs and poucans; Wexford cots; Greencastle yawls; Dublin herring boats; and a variety of sloops, cutters and yawls. These vessels, typically between twenty-eight and forty tons, were used for fishing, coasting and Irish Sea trades. By the beginning of the nineteenth century there were shipbuilding or repair yards at Ballyrain, Baltimore, Belfast, Clare, Coleraine, Cork, Donaghadee, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, Killibeg, Kinsale, Lame, Limerick, Londonderry, Newport, Newry, Ross, Sligo, Strangford, Tralee, Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, and Youghall. A few were wellestablished, such as the Waterford yard founded by Ambrose Congreve in 1737. Several were operated by shipbuilder/shipowners, like Devereux of Wexford, Mahony of Dungarven, McCarthy (later O'Keeffe) of Youghall, Russell of Limerick and Daniel Sweeney of Galway.

In UK terms the Irish shipbuilding industry was small. Between 1788 and 1811 the number and tonnage of vessels constructed scarcely changed; if anything, the trend was downward (see table 1). In 1788 thirty-eight vessels totalling 1670 tons were built; in 1811 there were twenty-one with a total tonnage of 1331. Some years had greater activity, such as 1789-1792 (the opening years of the French Revolution) and 1803-1804 (the resumption of war with France after the short-lived Peace of Amiens). The number of craft owned in Ireland rose by just 110, from 1016 in 1788 to 1126 in 1810, while total tonnage actually fell, from 60,776 to 58,646.

Yet these bald statistics disguise the success of the Belfast Ballast Board, which was responsible for the River Lagan waterway, in encouraging shipbuilding on the river. In 1791 the Board invited William Ritchie, a shipbuilder from Saltcoats in Ayrshire, to open a yard at Auld Lime Kiln dock. The business equalled expectations and in 1807 his brother Hugh opened his own yard nearby. In 1810 William Ritchie wrote that “since the commencement I have built thirty-two vessels and my brother eight, besides several lighters and small ones. The vessels I have built were from fifty to 450 tons burthen, the greatest part about 220 tons.” Almost certainly it was these larger vessels that explained the higher output in 1803-1804.