Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- About the Author
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 British Coastal Shipping: A Research Agenda for the European Perspective
- Chapter 2 The Significance of Coastal Shipping in British Domestic Transport, 1550-1830
- Chapter 3 The British Coastal Fleet in the Eighteenth Century: How Useful Are the Admiralty's Registers of Protection from Impressment?
- Chapter 4 Management Response in British Coastal Shipping Companies to Railway Competition
- Chapter 5 Conferences in British Nineteenth-Century Coastal Shipping
- Chapter 6 Coastal Shipping: The Neglected Sector of Nineteenth- Century British Transport History
- Chapter 7 Railways and Coastal Shipping in Britain in the Later Nineteenth Century: Cooperation and Competition
- Chapter 8 The Crewing of British Coastal Colliers, 1870-1914
- Chapter 9 Late Nineteenth-Century Freight Rates Revisited: Some Evidence from the British Coastal Coal Trade
- Chapter 10 Liverpool to Hull - By Sea?
- Chapter 11 Government Regulation in the British Shipping Industry, 1830-1913: The Role of the Coastal Sector
- Chapter 12 An Estimate of the Importance of the British Coastal Liner Trade in the Early Twentieth Century
- Chapter 13 The Role of Coastal Shipping in UK Transport: An Estimate of Comparative Traffic Movements in 1910
- Chapter 14 Climax and Climacteric: The British Coastal Trade, 1870- 1930
- Chapter 15 The Shipping Depression of 1901 to 1911: The Experience of Freight Rates in the British Coastal Coal Trade
- Chapter 16 The Coastal Trade of Connah's Quay in the Early Twentieth Century: A Preliminary Investigation
- Chapter 17 The Cinderella of the Transport World: The Historiography of the British Coastal Trade
- Bibliography of Writings by John Armstrong
Chapter 3 - The British Coastal Fleet in the Eighteenth Century: How Useful Are the Admiralty's Registers of Protection from Impressment?
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- About the Author
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 British Coastal Shipping: A Research Agenda for the European Perspective
- Chapter 2 The Significance of Coastal Shipping in British Domestic Transport, 1550-1830
- Chapter 3 The British Coastal Fleet in the Eighteenth Century: How Useful Are the Admiralty's Registers of Protection from Impressment?
- Chapter 4 Management Response in British Coastal Shipping Companies to Railway Competition
- Chapter 5 Conferences in British Nineteenth-Century Coastal Shipping
- Chapter 6 Coastal Shipping: The Neglected Sector of Nineteenth- Century British Transport History
- Chapter 7 Railways and Coastal Shipping in Britain in the Later Nineteenth Century: Cooperation and Competition
- Chapter 8 The Crewing of British Coastal Colliers, 1870-1914
- Chapter 9 Late Nineteenth-Century Freight Rates Revisited: Some Evidence from the British Coastal Coal Trade
- Chapter 10 Liverpool to Hull - By Sea?
- Chapter 11 Government Regulation in the British Shipping Industry, 1830-1913: The Role of the Coastal Sector
- Chapter 12 An Estimate of the Importance of the British Coastal Liner Trade in the Early Twentieth Century
- Chapter 13 The Role of Coastal Shipping in UK Transport: An Estimate of Comparative Traffic Movements in 1910
- Chapter 14 Climax and Climacteric: The British Coastal Trade, 1870- 1930
- Chapter 15 The Shipping Depression of 1901 to 1911: The Experience of Freight Rates in the British Coastal Coal Trade
- Chapter 16 The Coastal Trade of Connah's Quay in the Early Twentieth Century: A Preliminary Investigation
- Chapter 17 The Cinderella of the Transport World: The Historiography of the British Coastal Trade
- Bibliography of Writings by John Armstrong
Summary
In 1988, the American Neptune published an article by Dwight E. Robinson on the British coastal fleet in the eighteenth century.2 It was a pioneering study in that before then very few pieces had been published on any aspect of the British coastal trade in this or any other maritime history journal. It reminded readers of the great importance of the British coastal trade, both quantitatively and qualitatively, from the earliest days of Britain and especially of its role as a nursery for seamen and in boosting Britain's naval power through training seamen in ship handling and navigation. It was also innovative in its methodology, as Robinson had to deal with the problem of double recording of ships and find a method to eliminate such double counting. He chose to use a computer database for this task, a relatively novel solution at the time. Furthermore, the article provided a quantitative assessment of the size of the British coastal trade in 1776, and was able to break this down by the nature of the cargo carried, between domestic coasting and that to near-continental ports, and also provided a ranking of which ports were the largest owners of coasters and therefore probably the most heavily engaged in operating coastal ships. This was important work and came up with revealing findings.
Robinson took maritime historians to task for ignoring “a comprehensive source of data” that would allow us to estimate “the extent and nature of the British domestic coasting fleet” in the eighteenth century.3 Given that the article was published over a decade ago, and that no subsequent book or article has appeared tackling the question of the size of the British eighteenth-century coasting fleet or drawing on the documentation to which Robinson referred, maritime historians appear to be either incorrigibly slow and lazy or totally disinterested in the British coasting fleet. Our object is to redeem the community of maritime historians. There are good reasons why the records in question have not been extensively used, and why Robinson overstated their comprehensiveness and value.
The records that Robinson used were the British Admiralty's thirtyeight “Registers of Protection from Being Pressed,” held in the National Archives in Kew on the western outskirts of London.
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- The Vital SparkThe British Coastal Trade, 1700-1930, pp. 41 - 60Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017