In the late seventeenth century, Louis XIV's persecution of French Protestants or Huguenots, culminating in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685, led to a massive flight of Huguenots from France and their diaspora among a number of neighbouring countries, including Holland, Prussia, Switzerland and England. The vast majority of the 50,000 Huguenots who went to England settled permanently in the country but about 2000 moved on to British America in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These transatlantic migrants established substantial communities in three colonies - South Carolina, Massachusetts and New York - but it was in South Carolina that they had their greatest effect on the economic and social evolution of British America. The great majority of migrants to South Carolina arrived in the years 1680-1695, shortly after “Carolina” was founded in 1670. Most of the Huguenots who fled from France to England in the late seventeenth century were middle-aged or elderly, but the migrants to South Carolina were predominantly young, single or married adults, as older refugees were not generally prepared to suffer the hardships involved in crossing the Atlantic and settling in a new colony. By c. 1700, there were 400-500 migrants in the colony and some 100 children born to Huguenot parents in America, comprising about fifteen to eighteen percent of South Carolina's white population of 3250.

Jon Butler has provided the most compelling thesis on the character of the Huguenot migration to South Carolina and its impact on the colony's economic and social development. He argues that Huguenot migrants to America were generally poor and that many had spent several years in England living wholly or partly on charity before migrating overseas. He also shows that migrants were rich in human capital, bringing with them a wide range of artisanal and industrial skills, but that in practice these skills were of scant value in a frontier colony like South Carolina, where the population's small size and limited wealth produced little demand for specialised craftsmen. Besides, the future of the colony lay not in sericulture, linen weaving or in the dozens of other crafts practised by the Huguenots but in the slave-plantation production of naval stores, rice, and indigo — the export staples that dominated the South Carolina economy from 1700 to the Revolution.

General Characteristics

On early modern European vessels, sailors were the largest single group. In comparison others, such as merchants, soldiers, and craftsmen, were minorities. Before the large-scale introduction of steam, sailors or rowers could be recruited in four different ways: we distinguish between local recruitment and enlistment from elsewhere, and between forced and voluntary recruitment (see figure 1). Most fundamental is the distinction between free and unfree recruitment. Unfree deployment on ships is difficult to realise, except on galleys where the rowers are chained to their benches. Originally, such vessels, mainly men-of-war, were used only occasionally in northern waters - by the Spaniards and the Dutch during the Dutch Revolt, for instance - but as a rule they were confined to the calmer waters of the Mediterranean during spring and summer. Whereas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages galleys were rowed by free men, increasingly during the sixteenth century convicts and even slaves (procured by privateers) were used in the big Ottoman, Venetian and French fleets. In France, 60,000 convicts were sent to the galleys between 1680 and 1745. In the eighteenth century sailing ships became the sole type in the Mediterranean and so did the free-born sailor.

The eighteenth century was also distinguished by the demise of the Mediterranean galley and the surge of the oared warship in the Baltic, mainly in Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Whereas all these nations resorted to conscription, only the Swedish and Danish systems can be characterised as free, while the Russian was definitely unfree. The main reason for this distinction is that the Russians drafted their recruits both for the army and the navy from among their serf population, for life-long service between 1702 and 1793, and between 1793 and 1834 for a twenty-five year period, which in practice meant the same thing. Only in 1834, when the draft was restricted to a de facto twelve-year period (in 1855 this was cut to ten and in 1874 to seven years), can one begin to speak of free labour recruitment. On sailing ships it was possible to use forced labour normally only for one voyage or campaign, such as when Britain introduced the press-gang during wartime emergencies.

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.

Introduction

In this contribution I will focus mainly on the period 1750-1870. This is due to two factors. First, Finnish vessels engaged in little besides coastal and Baltic navigation before the mid-eighteenth century. Second, there is little data on the manning of other than naval vessels before the 1780s. These features are also clearly reflected in the existing literature. While there are a fair number of articles - including ethnological studies - on sailors and maritime labour in the nineteenth century, little has been written about earlier periods. Some scattered data can be found in histories of coastal towns, but the bulk is far from impressive.

Finnish Shipping and the Demand for Maritime Labour before 1700

In the Middle Ages, Finnish shipping was confined to the Baltic. Although the Hanseatic League dominated trade, there were some active Finnish shipowners. When the League declined, Finnish coastal towns began to increase their maritime trade during the reign of Gustav Vasa. Still, by 1560 there were only about thirty vessels large enough to sail across the Baltic to North German and Danish ports, while the number of small coasters, used on voyages to Sweden and Estonia, may have amounted to seventy or eighty. Even in the former category, the vessels were small, carrying only about fifty tons on average, and the latter group obviously included many craft only marginally larger than fishing boats. It is thus quite clear that manning such a fleet did not require large numbers of sailors - a fair guess might be close to five hundred.

In addition, peasants and other coastal dwellers carried on shipping across the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. According to customs records, the number of Finnish “peasant vessels” visiting Tallinn and other Estonian ports, Stockholm and ports on Lake Mälaren, may have amounted to 350-400. Their trade, however, consisted mainly of the simple barter of dried or salted fish for grain for local consumption. This was a trade using small boats that did not involve large numbers of real sailors. Still, as a “nursery” for sailors for foreign-going vessels, “peasant shipping” had an interesting, if little known, role.

Although these essays concentrate on merchant initiatives, they are themselves innovative perspectives on early modern economic life and previews of substantial scholarly work in progress. Most new European trading ventures of the early modern period were not spectacular initiatives to exotic peoples and places. These nine essays amply document how challenging things could be for those entering a trade within the relatively familiar bounds of the North Atlantic world. Free of the “North Atlantic triumphalism” that can affect the study of early modern world trade, these studies emphasize the opportunities, aspirations and methods of the mercantile intruder into established trades, and of the innovator attempting their reorganization.

What did merchants need to know in entering an unfamiliar trade? How much “mystery” was there to specific trades? Fur, fish, rice, molasses, and wine were each complex staples, capable of dictatorial economic power over the rhythms of life in their producing areas and, as we have been learning more recently, ultimately dependent upon consumers whose tastes varied and changed over time. As scholars learn more of the totality of these trades, it becomes even easier to presume that merchants needed to know a great deal. The American exporters to Northern Europe, discussed in Professor Daniel Rabuzzi's paper, were very anxious to contact knowledgeable and trustworthy merchants there. Professor Olaf Janzen recounts the misadventures of young Edward Burd Jr., sent as supercargo to buy fish at Newfoundland and paying the obvious price of ignorance compounded by bad luck.

Merchant adventurers were primarily wholesalers, or négociants, those “gains-from-trade” dealers engaged in a seemingly eclectic exchange of goods bought where they were thought to be cheap and sold where they were expected to be expensive, with the proceeds reinvested to repeat that profitable process. Armed with some understanding of calculation and languages, and one of the many printed merchant advisors of the period, bolder traders attempted to apply some general knowledge of commodities, shipping, customs brokering, marketing, and debt collecting to whatever opportunities presented themselves. The Gaigneurs of La Rochelle, discussed by Professor John Bosher, seem to have entered the fur trade in complete ignorance, and remained wholesalers who neither bought furs directly from Amerindians nor sold hats in retail shops. What they needed to learn about trade with Canada could come from experienced partners, investors, suppliers, shippers, and workers.

A remarkable and very commendable rapprochement has taken place between maritime and labour historians in recent years. Maritime historians are becoming more interested in the social aspects of seafaring life, while labour historians have started to view sailors as part of the working class. Thus far, the emerging maritime labour history has primarily addressed the period after the invention of steamships. While the era of sailing ships has been less popular among scholars, it has aroused new interest as well.

The essays in this collection offer an issue-oriented approach to additional material for analysing the early modern period. While the data highlight gaps in our empirical knowledge, they also enable tentative interpretations. Publishing case studies from a variety of nations in a single volume shows that the editors and authors aim for more than a medley of bare facts. The focus on a contiguous geographic area (Northern, Western, and Southern Europe) and a continuous temporal period (1550-1850) provides an opportunity to explore comparative and connective elements. This setting may serve as a basis for studying regional instances as articulations of an evolving totality. Such analyses are known as encompassing or incorporating comparisons. They challenge practitioners by requiring “both a mental map of the whole system and a theory of its operation.” Fortunately, neither the map nor the theory need be accurate from the outset. “[S]o long as the provisional placements of units within the system and the explanations of their characteristics are self-correcting, map and theory will improve in use.”

I do not claim to offer an encompassing comparison here, if only because I feel I am venturing into unfamiliar territory as a social historian without specialized knowledge of the maritime industry. Quite possibly, however, my questions and conjectures may stimulate experts toward more substantive work.

The preceding case studies relate to international connections through their clear emphasis on domestic relationships. An encompassing approach, however, requires reversing this perspective to focus on the international system comprising the different countries and regions. Without broaching the controversial issue of whether Western Europe was a capitalist society as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we can safely state that a close network of commercial ties existed from Finland to Italy and beyond by the early modern period. Over time, gradual reinforcement of these commercial links boosted the volume of overall trade.

This study of English sailors between 1775 and 1870 follows the structure suggested by the editors. Participants were invited to address a series of specific questions and the paper considers these in turn. The extent of coverage of particular issues varies, however, according to their relevance in the British context and the source material. This paper follows on from that of Peter Earle, which covers the two previous centuries. Where possible it builds on his earlier survey, although material available for addressing the questions which were the focus of the conference is not always complementary for the two periods.

In the setting of a review of European sailors, it may be appropriate to commence by stressing the special features of the British experience. First and foremost, Britain is an island, separate from the mainland. Irrespective of the fact that in consequence Britain has a very lengthy coastline - in fact, the longest of any European nation - and, as Gordon Jackson has shrewdly observed, the unique feature of ports facing east and west, this insular character gave a special impetus to maritime activity of all kinds and ensured that the naval rather than military dimension was emphasised in strategic policy. During the period of this paper, Britain became the undisputed maritime world power in both mercantile and naval terms. In great part this was due to the wealth and technological lead associated with being the first country to industrialise. Britain was the leader in the utilisation of steam power, including the maritime dimension, where it was the most successful innovator. All these features have a bearing on the maritime labour force, not least the last mentioned, for Britain alone of all the countries under review from the mid-nineteenth century had a growing proportion of its maritime labour force employed in steam. In 1851, 7.5% of persons employed on fishing and trading vessels were to be found in steam; by 1881, the figure was 47.2%.2 While the focus in this paper is on seamen in the “age of sail,” it must be recognised that the growing proportion of seamen employed in this different setting - unique among European nations in its extent - had an impact on all who worked afloat. For many reasons, the British experience has certain special features.

In October 1994 in The Hague, the Institute for Maritime History of the Naval Staff (Royal Netherlands Navy), the International Institute for Social History, and the Department of Maritime History of the University of Leiden hosted a conference on “European Sailors, 1570-1870.” This meeting was organized to bring together experts on seafaring labour and the (inter)national labour market for seamen in Europe in the age of sail. The reason for this was our belief that research, particularly comparative research, into maritime labour has been hampered by the absence of an up-to-date overview in the various European countries of the labour market for seafarers. It should be stressed, however, that the organisers were well aware that they were not the first to attempt to get such an overview, as the proceedings of the 1980 International Congress of Maritime History meeting in Bucharest, Seamen in Society, show.

In recent years, as studies based upon vague concepts of “global markets,” the efficiency of international maritime labour markets or, as a kind of counterpart to the Braudelian Mediterranean, North Sea culture have proliferated, the lack of such an overview is apparent. How can one discuss global concepts without knowing the actual state of affairs in various nations? How can one construct models without at least some hard evidence? And even if one has a few pieces, are they part of the same puzzle? In short, our knowledge for each country is far from uniform, and in many cases far from linguistically accessible. Moreover, much depends on what sources have survived and what kinds of queries put to the material. Since maritime history is not an academic priority in all countries, we have a sketchy and fragmented picture, or sometimes even a total blank. As an example, a question like “how many sailors were employed in any particular period between 1570 and 1870 in any particular trade” posed for some researchers an insurmountable barrier.

Our shared interests in seafaring people were the basis and inspiration for the organisation of the conference on “European Sailors, 1570-1870.” In addition, our own research into the various aspects of the Dutch maritime labour market prompted many questions that could only be answered satisfactorily by international comparative research.

There can be no doubt that labour conditions for sailors during the age of sail in the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were characterized by great variations. There were differences in time, between or even within countries or regions, and according to the categories of shipping. It made a great difference if a sailor joined the navy, a merchant vessel, or a fisherman craft.

The working skills needed to handle a sailing vessel, whatever its size or trade, were basically the same, which made it in principle possible for sailors to move from trade to trade. Only when more specialized skills were needed in, for example, fishing, whaling or fighting, was it difficult to make such a switch. In practice, however, sailors seem to have been more traditional and were inclined to stay in a certain type of trade. It has been suggested that the labour market for sailors was imperfect and that a segmentation in markets or recruitment patterns along regional lines more or less “dictated” the trade in which a sailor would end up. But it might well be that individual choices made by newcomers on the labour market were in the first instance influenced by labour conditions - not only the material gain that was to be expected but also the non-material side.

Wage-Earning Proletarians?

It was already common in Europe by the seventeenth century to pay sailors in money, either in monthly wages or fixed rates for a certain voyage. Because of this dependence on wages, Marcus Rediker called seamen one of the first groups of collective labourers:

In short, the sailor was the exemplification of the “proletarian of the period of manufacture.”

But even if we accept Rediker's ideas about the wage-earning seamen, we must admit that his picture is not complete. It may have been true for sailors in deep-sea trades, for those serving in the large chartered companies or perhaps even the navy.

Introduction

English shipping in the middle of the sixteenth century was at a low ebb, “a meagre coastal traffic, a fishery of moderate scale, a trickle of carrying trade with the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal, France and the Baltic,” as Ralph Davis described it. The three decades from 1570, however, were marked by considerable expansion, driven by the rapid growth of the east coast coal trade, the revival of trade to the Mediterranean and the development of oceanic fishing off Iceland and the Newfoundland Banks. After 1600, voyages to the Indian Ocean became a regular feature of maritime life, while colonization in North America and the West Indies triggered a huge expansion in Atlantic trade.

The growth of these trades doubled tonnage between the 1580s and the 1640s, but as yet posed little threat to the Dutch, who remained the common carriers of Europe. English ships were notable for their strength and fighting abilities, not for their cheapness. Such powerful ships, bristling with men and guns, were suitable for the dangerous waters south and west of Cape Finisterre. But in the bulk carrying trades of the North Sea and the Baltic these expensive ships found it very difficult to compete with the lightly-manned Dutch flyboats.

In the four decades after 1650 tonnage doubled again, with rapid growth in many long-distance trades, above all to America and the West Indies, where the rise of the plantation also encouraged rapid expansion in the slave trade from West Africa. Such growth was counterbalanced to some extent by stability or decline in oceanic fishing and whaling. Nearer home, slower growth in the coal trade was compensated by rapid expansion in the carriage of timber and marine stores from Norway and the Baltic, suggesting that the English were at last becoming competitive in the carriage of bulky low-value cargoes. The other major development after 1650 was the impact of the Navigation Acts, which provided English and colonial shipping with a virtual monopoly of the colonial carrying trade, driving out the once dominant Dutch. In peacetime at least, the manning requirements of the legislation were also observed so that at least three-quarters and probably far more of the sailors on English ships were natives of England or its colonies.

This volume of Research in Maritime History comprises of papers written for presentation at Session C.10 of the Twelfth Congress of the International Economic History Association, which was to have been held in Seville, Spain in August 1998. That session, built around the theme “Merchant Organization and Maritime Trade in the North Atlantic, 1660- 1815,” had its origins in my research into an attempt by Scottish merchants early in the eighteenth century to break into the Newfoundland fish trade. I was particularly interested in the social and economic context of this venture, but soon found myself exploring larger questions about the way in which credit and marketing networks were developed in the eighteenth century; how trade was organized; and, in general, about the means and circumstances which caused merchants to invest in trades that were already well-established but which were new to them.

Recognizing that these were questions which had long engaged maritime economic historians, I concluded that they could serve as the focus of a session at the IEHA Congress. I therefore approached a number of specialists in maritime commerce, inviting them to participate in the proposed session by preparing papers with an emphasis on the logic and strategies employed by merchants in coping with the many challenges of trading within the North Atlantic region during the period 1660 to 1815. I was much encouraged by the positive response to that invitation, and I wish to say here how much easier my task of organizing this session has been, thanks to the contribution of scholars who have complied so generously and so willingly to my every request. Naturally, with nearly a dozen papers analysing maritime commerce from Iceland to the West Indies and both sides of the Atlantic, the risk was great that the very diversity of the North Atlantic mercantile experience would overwhelm the underlying unity provided by the session theme. Special thanks are therefore owing to Professors Ian K. Steele and Henry Roseveare, who accepted the unenviable task of preparing the introductory and concluding essays for this volume which reaffirm that unity.

From the beginning I decided to publish the papers in advance of the Congress largely to make them as accessible as possible.

There are two good reasons for singling out the Gaigneur family. The first is that they and their many relatives sent more ships, more goods, and more people out to Canada than any other trading firm in their time, which stretched from 1628 almost to the end of the century. This reason will be universally understood, but the second reason may puzzle the business historian who has not studied the reign of Louis XIII: the Gaigneur family and their relatives were all Roman Catholics established at or near La Rochelle, where so much business was still in the hands of Huguenot families. This is an anomaly that invites us to set aside the normal assumption on which trade is studied without reference to the religion of the traders. Close study of the Gaigneur clan shows that their trans-Atlantic trade can best be explained with reference to the religious and political events of their time. Those events count for a great deal because the Gaigneur clan's motives and purposes can only be inferred from what they did: they left no explicit statements, no letters or memoranda, that might tell us what they thought they were doing. The same may be said of most merchants engaged in shipping or trading with New France during the seventeenth century. Few indeed left any reflections on their lives; we can only try to deduce why the merchants in the Gaigneur clan traded with Canada and Acadia.

The year 1628 was a strange time to begin sending ships over to those colonies. The armies of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu had been besieging La Rochelle, a Calvinist stronghold, since the spring of 1627; it surrendered on 28 October 1628; soldiers, royal officials and Roman Catholic missionaries immediately invaded and began to catholicize the town. The public in France and throughout Europe followed these events with passionate interest. Only people unfamiliar with French history in those times could imagine that shipping to Canada was driven entirely by business motives and that religious purposes were secondary in it. This being so, the problem for the historian is evidently to determine, or to disentangle, the parts played by business and religion in the Canada trade.