Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Legal, Financial and Cultural Environment
- 2 Maritime Communities
- 3 Five Investor Ports
- 4 Shipowning Wives, Widows and Spinsters
- 5 Active and Passive Female Shipowners
- 6 Managing Owners
- 7 Port Businesswomen
- 8 Warship Builders
- 9 Merchant Shipbuilders
- 10 Conclusion: ‘A Respectable and Desirable Thing’
- Appendices
2 - Maritime Communities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Legal, Financial and Cultural Environment
- 2 Maritime Communities
- 3 Five Investor Ports
- 4 Shipowning Wives, Widows and Spinsters
- 5 Active and Passive Female Shipowners
- 6 Managing Owners
- 7 Port Businesswomen
- 8 Warship Builders
- 9 Merchant Shipbuilders
- 10 Conclusion: ‘A Respectable and Desirable Thing’
- Appendices
Summary
Nineteenth-century maritime Britain was an expanding sector of the economy. Ports around the coast handled an increasing amount of incoming and outgoing trade and port facilities were improved to attract more business. British ships sailed around the world linking countries and continents and remained dominant in international trade during the period. The coastal and short sea trades also employed large numbers of men and vessels plying shorter, less glamorous, but essential routes. As the gateway to Britain's industrial might the ports were required to handle ever greater volumes of goods, and intensive railway building between 1840 and 1860 transformed the distribution of raw materials and manufactured goods. Shipbuilding activity increased and, while wooden sailing vessels were still built throughout the century, steam and iron gradually began to dominate the shipyards. By the end of the nineteenth century British ships carried half the world's trade and Britain built two-thirds of the world's ships. Men and their families moved to those areas where work was available either in shore-based businesses or at sea.
Around the coast of England and Wales by 1871 there were eighty-four registry ports for shipping with a combined total of over twenty thousand ships and nearly four and a half million tons, of which two and a half million tons were registered in London and Liverpool. The other two million tons of shipping were spread around the rest of the ports. In all ports the sailing ship was still the largest category.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009