Derek Aldcroft once described the British coastal trade as “the Cinderella of the transport world.” He was referring to the lack of provision made for it by the ports compared to overseas trade just before and during the First World War. His appellation might also be applied to its position in the research hierarchy in that it has attracted relatively little scholarly time and attention. One indication of this is that the standard textbook on the coasting trade in early modern England remains that written by T.S. Willan in 1938. Although a number of articles have been published adding to and amending the picture portrayed by Willan, there has been no attempt to incorporate this recent research into a new book-length synthesis. For the modern period the situation is worse. There is no book dealing with this aspect of British transport history. Worse still, with one honourable exception, those textbooks which do exist on British transport history devote a tiny proportion of their often impressive bulk to the topic. Apart from a few articles, many of them in the Journal of Transport History, and a couple of chapters in two collections of essays, the coastal trade remains largely overlooked. It is not surprising, then, with this degree of neglect by professional scholars that the neophyte coming fresh to the subject, having made reasonable endeavours to locate a body of knowledge, might conclude that the coastal ship was never of any great significance to the trade and growth of the British economy and to the modernization of society.

This essay tries to correct this view. More specifically it attempts three things. It puts forward a little more evidence to sustain the contention that coastal shipping deserves the sobriquet of the Cinderella trade. It then endeavours to explain why there has been such a profound neglect. The third section sketches, albeit very briefly, the main outlines of what we now know about the economics and impact of the coastal trade and, in so doing, provides a context for the other articles in this volume.

Let us then reinforce the view that the coastal trade has remained a relatively under-researched topic, relative, that is, to most other forms of transport. One piece of evidence may support this view. Recently a bibliography of the British coastal trade was published.