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A Note on the Value of Colonial Exports of Shipping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Jacob M. Price
Jacob M. Price
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

Aside from their studies of the iron industry, historians have given relatively little attention to the non-household manufacturing industries of colonial America—perhaps, many would say, for the very good reason that there was not much activity along these lines before the conjuncture of the American and the Industrial Revolutions. Yet there were manufactures that reached significant volumes for those times. One of these was the colonial shipbuilding industry which not only provided most of the vessels that carried North American commerce with the West Indies and the Old World but also provided the capital starved colonies with a significant export. In spite of its importance this trade has not received much attention from modern economic historians, including those who deal with the balance of payments. One reason is, perhaps, that the British government in the eighteenth century did not consider colonial built ships as foreign in any sense and did not regard their transfer to metropolitan ownership as “imports.” Thus the values of such transfers were not included in the Inspector-General's accounts of imports from the colonies nor were any other records kept of them, except for the ship-by-ship entries in the Registries of Shipping (which for the most part have not survived).

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 704 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1976

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References

1 Cf. Clark, G[eorge] N[orman] Sir, Guide to English Commercial Statistics 1696–1782, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Handbooks, no. 1 (London, 1938), 45–51Google Scholar; Jarvis, Rupert, “Ship Registry to 1707,” Maritime History, no. 1 (1971), 29–45.Google Scholar

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3 Clark, Victor S., History of Manufacture's in the United States, Vol. 1, 1607–1860 (Washington, D. C., 1929), pp. 95, 98, 138, 147, 204, 206Google Scholar. The subject was ignored in Johnson, Emory R., “American Commerce to 1789” in E. R. Johnson et al., History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States, 2 vols., Carnegie Institution of Washington, publ. no. 215A (Washington, D. C., 1915), 1: 3–189.Google Scholar

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6 Price, Jacob M., “Discussion,” Journal of Economic History, 25 (1965), 656–57.Google Scholar

7 Shepherd, James F. and Walton, Gary M., Shipping, Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, 1972), 241–45Google Scholar. The thesis cited is Berner, Richard C., “The Means of Paying for Colonial New England's Imports” (M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1950)Google Scholar. Cf. also Davis, English Shipping, p. 375. On the need to add 50 percent to correct the tonnage, see McCusker, John J., “Colonial Tonnage Measurement: Five Philadelphia Merchant Ships as a Sample,” Journal of Economic History, 27 (March 1967), 82–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gary M. Walton, “Colonial Tonnage Measurements: a Comment, ” Ibid., pp. 392–97.

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9 According to Shepherd and Walton, Shipping, p. 195, the average size of vessels trading in the port of Boston rose from 46.5 tons in 1688 to 61.4 tons in 1764/65. This would include a few ships trading to Europe which would raise the average slightly.

10 Based on 128 vessels carrying tobacco from Virginia to Britain in 1771; London, Public Record Office (henceforth PRO), C.O.5/1349, 1350.

11 Bernard, and Bailyn, Lotte, Massachusetts Shipping 1696–1714: A Statistical Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), p. 53Google Scholar; Shepherd and Walton, Shipping, p. 241.

12 Hartwell, Henry, Blair, James and Chilton, Edward, The Present State of Virginia and the College, Farish, H. D., ed. (Williamsburg, Va., 1940), p. 6.Google Scholar

13 des Cognets, Louis, Jr., English Duplicates of Lost Virginia Records (Princeton, 1958), pp. 278–99Google Scholar. Although this is a nonprofessional publication, a check against the originals in PRO, CO.5 shows it to be accurate, if not complete.

14 [Alexander Cluny or Clunie], The American Traveller: or, Observations on the Present State, Culture, and Commerce of the British Colonies in America (London, 1769), pp. 8, 60–1, 75, 79, 82, 94.Google Scholar

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24 Davis, English Shipping, p. 68.

25 Champion, Considerations, 2nd ed., pp. v, viii-x, and n.

26 As in n. 23.

27 Champion, Considerations, 2nd ed., p. xn. If we recalculate Champion's data in the way Allen's was presumably calculated; we get a total of 3,929 British and Irish vessels (compared with Allen's 3,908) or 61 percent, and 2,505 “American” (compared with Allen's 2,311), or 39 percent. We cannot, however, be sure that Allen included those built in the loyal colonies in his “American” total.

28 Goldenberg, Joseph A., “An Analysis of Shipbuilding Sites in Lloyd's Register of 1776,” Mariner's Mirror, 59 (1973), pp. 419–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. 422–23 for coverage.

29 Cf. Smelser, Marshall and Davisson, William I., “The Longevity of Colonial Ships,” American Neptune, 33 (1973), pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

30 1,035 brigs + 160 snows + 864 ships = 2,059. One could get even a shorter lifespan if one added 9.24 percent to Goldenberg's figures to bring them up to the level of Champion's, which are based on the same source. It could also be argued, however, that one should add something to the shipbuilding figures for 1768–1773 to reflect the higher level prevailing before 1768 suggested by Appendix 2. These two alterations would tend to cancel each other out. Neither correction would have the advantage of referring to top-sailed vessels only as do the data in the text.

31 Davis, English Shipping, pp. 7n., 74. Cf. Allen, Considerations, pp. 52–53; Champion, Considerations, 1st ed., p. vi; 2nd ed., p. viii.

32 Articles by McCusker and Walton in note 7. Chalmers suggested adding one-third (instead of one-half) to convert registered tonnage to measured. Chalmers, George, An Historical View of the Domestic Economy of Great Britain and Ireland, new ed. (Edinburgh, 1812), p. xii; cf. also 1794 ed., p. cxxxvi.Google Scholar

33 PRO, T. 1/506, 512.

34 Davis, English Shipping, p. 375.

35 Shepherd and Walton, Shipping, p. 243.

36 Davis (p. 378) gives the price of a sample prewar 250-ton ship in the Virginia trade, fully fitted out, as £ 11 : 8 s. per ton. Two contemporary (postwar) writers estimate costs of fully fitted out vessels at £ 1 3 per ton: Hutchinson, William, The History of the County of Cumberland, 2 vols. (Carlisle, 1794)Google Scholar, 2:49; Champion, Considerations, 1st ed., p. 21; 2d ed., pp. 28–29. Hyde reports that the Liverpool firm of Fisher and Grayson's “ship books” show the average cost of ships built in the 1740's at £ 8 per ton for the hull and £ 6 for fitting out, totalling £ 1 4. Hyde, Francis E., Liverpool and the Mersey: an Economic History of a Port 1700–1970 (Newton Abbott, 1971), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

37 Proportions suggested both by Hyde (Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 14–15) and Davis (Shipping Industry, p. 378). Even higher proportional additions for fitting out are suggested by McCusker, John J., “Sources of Investment Capital in the Colonial Philadelphia Shipping Industry,” Journal of Economic History, 32 (March 1972), 150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Champion, Considerations, 2nd ed., pp. 74, 196n.

39 McCusker, “Sources of Investment,” p. 150. McCusker's Philadelphia figure refers only to topsailed vessels (over 90 percent of the American total shown in Lloyd's Register) and could be reduced slightly to allow for the small fraction of sloops and schooners sold. It could, however, also be raised to allow for the more expensive vessels built to the southward, particularly in South Carolina. These two possible corrections would tend to cancel each other out. The price figure used is on the conservative or low side.

40 I should like to thank Kenneth Lockridge, John J. McCusker, and Mans Vinovskis for commenting on the draft. The errors remain my own.