Early in the eighteenth century, Lord Haversham stood up in Parliament and made a bold proclamation about the importance of maritime trade to Britain:
Your trade is the mother and nurse of your seamen; your seamen are the life of your fleet; and your fleet is the security and protection of your trade: and both together are the wealth, strength and glory of Britain.[1]
Haversham was by no means the first to make a connection between naval and commercial power. Years earlier, Sir Walter Raleigh had famously argued that investment in the Royal Navy would lead to both economic and strategic advantages: “whosoever commands the Sea, Commands the Trade”, he wrote, and “whosoever Commands the Trade of the world: Commands the Riches of the world and consequently the world it selfe”.[2] In both cases, the symbiotic relationship between the Navy and Trade was understood by most informed observers. However, the fact that both these men felt the need to proclaim this so assertively signals that many others needed persuasion.
One hundred years later, no such declarations were needed. Following a century marked by near-continuous conflict and the remarkable growth of British trade, these notions were now commonly accepted. Not only were naval power and commercial vitality central to British prosperity and identity, but it was also understood that they were fundamentally intertwined and mutually beneficial. In a letter written to Cobbett’s Political Register in 1803, just as a new war with France dawned, a correspondent reported that this was now self-evident to all who prospered from Britain’s maritime economy. “The Royal Navy is necessary to the maintenance of the honour, security, the independence of the country”, they noted, “but it cannot be denied, that it yields a more important protection to mercantile mariners and the mercantile marine, than to any other class of subjects . . . the ship-owner must see now, that, without the protection of the Royal Navy, his trade must instantly cease”.[3] Whether you were a farmer, a financier, a shopkeeper, or an artisan, anyone whose work and livelihood relied on the regular and smooth movement of goods around the world understood this reality.
This essay explains how British Mercantile Trade Statistics, 1662–1809, a primary source collection published by British Online Archives, offers a unique and fascinating window into the vital relationship between naval power and commerce. Firstly, we will discuss it in terms of politics and economics; how a powerful navy encouraged British global trade, and how in return, the vast customs revenue allowed the British state to invest further funds in building up its seagoing forces. Secondly, we will consider how the Navy and mercantile sector worked together to ensure that the pool of maritime labour was encouraged and replenished, using violent coercion when necessary. Taken together, it reveals how the relationship between the Navy and trade worked symbiotically, and to their significant advantage.
Politics, Economics, and Finance
The relationship between the Royal Navy and British commerce might best be described in terms of a “virtuous circle”. From the 1690s onwards, a series of parliaments voted significant funds for investment in Britain’s naval forces designed not only to protect Britain from invasion but also to boost confidence in its maritime economy and encourage merchants to undertake ventures that would hitherto have been deemed too risky. The result of this was the exponential growth of British global trade across the eighteenth century, dovetailing as it did with the steady advance of imperial conquest. The British state proved adept at both encouraging but also exploiting this trade, using excise and stamp duties—as well as customs revenues—to ensure that a significant share of this wealth entered governmental coffers. These funds were, in turn, re-invested in Britain’s naval forces, allowing the cycle of investment, reward, and re-investment to begin again. This is of course a simplified take on what was a deeply complex process, and there were several moments across the eighteenth century when this relationship appeared vulnerable. To historians looking back on the eighteenth century, however, the success of this mutually beneficial relationship is self-evident and, what is more, became evident to contemporaries too.
Britain’s “maritime” economy offered numerous advantages. Firstly, seagoing transportation was quicker and cheaper than transport by land, and Britain’s coasting trade, especially the collier trade up and down the English east coast, was crucial for providing the capital with raw materials. Secondly, the sea provided a seemingly endless range of overseas markets. For much of the century, these were primarily European, and even by the end of the eighteenth century, over half of ship voyages from London were destined for ports in the North, Baltic, and Mediterranean seas.[4] Increasingly, though, trade with North America, the West Indies, and the East Indies took on greater importance, particularly as imperial advancement bolstered commercial opportunities. This maritime economy was regulated by the Navigation Acts (especially those of 1651 and 1660) that aimed to prevent foreign nations from carrying “English” (and subsequently “British”) trade, and to shelter British merchants from foreign competition. In practice, they could be more loosely followed, especially where British colonial interests benefitted from trade into French, Spanish, and Dutch territories, and they were also controversial: Adam Smith was but one critic of this form of protectionism. Indeed, resentment of the Acts contributed to the outbreak of the American Revolution.[5] Nonetheless, the Acts served as the legislative foundation for British commercial dominance.
The British state’s other major contribution was its regular—and growing—investment in the Royal Navy. Navies, in contrast to armies, were expensive things to run, for while a regiment of soldiers can be recruited, equipped, and trained relatively quickly, the same cannot be said for a naval vessel. These were the technical wonders of their day, and expensive to boot; a single ship of the line such as the Victory (launched in 1762) cost £63,176, while a frigate would cost around £10,000. Putting together a fleet that numbered hundreds of such ships required significant investment, not to mention the funds needed to maintain the six Royal Dockyards (Deptford, Woolwich, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Sheerness, and Chatham) that ensured that Britain was always ready for war and that essential shipbuilding expertise was preserved. Fortunately for Britain, this investment was forthcoming. At the beginning of the Seven Years War (1755–1763), the British government was spending just under £4 million a year on naval expenditure, rising to £7.4 million by the end of the conflict. These sums were continuously dwarfed over the subsequent decades, however, as the British state invested ever greater amounts in naval ships and infrastructure. At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, over £20 million was spent annually on the Navy, with £22.8 million spent in 1814. Even in peacetime, millions continued to be spent.[6]
The dividend of this investment was the spectacular growth of British merchant trade. In the early decades of the eighteenth century, this expansion was uneven, as war and failed imperial ventures impacted negatively on mercantile confidence. Even here, though, the general direction was one of slow and steady growth: whereas in 1700 Britain was importing £6.1 million worth of goods and exporting £6.08 million, these numbers had increased to £8.39 million and £14.02 million by 1750, respectively. The advance of British trade in the second half of the century, however, was exponential, as the victories of the Seven Years War cemented Britain’s imperial position and instilled a newfound conviction in the security of overseas markets. At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Britain’s imports were valued at £68.4 million, a dramatic transformation from a century before.[7] A similar transformation occurred in the size of the English merchant fleet, which grew from 421,000 tons in 1751 [AB1] to 2,167,000 tons in 1809.[8] Certainly, this development was not solely down to naval protection—merchants, shipowners, trading companies, and marine insurance were all significant agents in the creation of a thriving mercantile marine. However, what is most apparent is how exports reached new heights during wartime—particularly in 1759–1760 and 1796–1800—due to the effective protection the Royal Navy was now offering.
British commercial ships were now operating in greater confidence than ever before, as outlined in the volume “Imports and Exports, 1696–1780” contained within British Mercantile Trade Statistics, 1662–1809, a collection which offers incredible insights into this exponential commercial growth. The volume “Imports and Exports, 1696–1780” offers detailed information about the nature, volume, and global origins/destinations of these goods. Furthermore, the dividend received by the state is also evident. In the second half of the eighteenth century, revenues from commerce also multiplied: excise and stamp duties increased from £3.8 million to £22.9 million, while customs revenues increased from £1.7 million to £18.8 million. Together they represented a huge majority of all state revenue: in 1805, revenues from excise and stamp duties represented 76% of all state revenue, the remaining 24% coming from direct taxes on wealth and income.[9] Here was the financial legacy of Britain’s burgeoning maritime economy, revealed in great detail by the documents contained in the volume “Navigation, Commerce, and Revenue, 1772–1809” within British Mercantile Trade Statistics, 1662–1809. Within these records lies the ultimate answer as to why the British state invested so heavily in its Navy, detailing as it does the fiscal rewards that followed burgeoning trade. Here we see the final stage of the “virtuous circle”, whereby the government received ever greater funds, soon to be re-invested in the Navy, and began the cycle all over again.
Maritime Labour
If the naval-commercial fiscal relationship was all-important, so too was cooperation over maritime labour. A key supplementary aim of the Navigation Acts was to ensure there was always a sizeable pool of maritime labour available that could be called upon in the event of war. The Acts mandated that at least half—and later three-quarters—of every English ship’s crew must be English (and after the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, British). At various points this rule was relaxed—for example in the whaling industry where there were only so many sailors willing to risk their lives in what was exceedingly dangerous work. This is also revealed in the volume containing the “Registers of Mediterranean passes”, which contains documents insisting that two-thirds of every crew had to be of English/British origin.[10] Regardless of these subtle shades of interpretation, what was consistent was a sustained attempt by the state to use the merchant marine as a “nursery” for British sailors. British merchants and shipowners were thus encouraged to employ British maritime labour, in turn allowing sailors themselves to choose those who offered the best wages, conditions, or prospects. With the coming of war, there was a ready-made and highly skilled pool of maritime labour that could be re-directed into the Royal Navy’s ranks.
War brought an urgent need for maritime labour. As greater numbers of naval ships were built, ever greater numbers of sailors were needed to man them. Calculating precise numbers is difficult, but considering the number of sailors borne at the highest point of each conflict gives an impression of the ever-rising demand for labour. In 1695, at the height of the Nine Years War (1688–1697), 48,514 men were borne, which rose to 59,596 in the final year of the War of the Austrian Succession (1739–1748). The Seven Years War saw 84,797 men recruited at its height, and over 100,000 men were needed during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The greatest demand came in the great conflicts against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France: in 1813 a remarkable 147,087 naval sailors were borne.[11] Securing skilled maritime labour on this scale would not have been possible had it not been for Britain’s thriving mercantile marine, and Britain’s rivals struggled terribly in comparison. At various points the Dutch Republic and France were able to build up significant naval arsenals capable of rivalling Britain on the waves, only to struggle to locate the requisite maritime labour needed to man and sail them.
We must acknowledge, too, that Britain’s mobilisation of maritime labour relied on coercive and exploitative practices. In an ideal world, the Royal Navy would have been manned solely by enthusiastic volunteers determined to serve their country and certainly, we know that such men existed. At the beginning of a war, recruitment posters offering a steady wage and appealing to base patriotic instincts were posted across the land. However, the call of “nation”, and the promise of regular payment, only went so far. A naval “able seaman”, someone with more than two years’ experience at sea, earned 24 shillings a month in the Navy, while an “ordinary seaman” (someone with more than one year’s experience) earned 19 shillings. A raw “landsman” was paid a mere 18 shillings. These wages placed naval sailors squarely among Britain’s “lower sorts”, on a par with agricultural labourers who in the early 1790s could expect to earn around 26–27 shillings per month, and below the estimated average male wage of between 39–45 shillings per month.[12] Most notably, the Navy did not even try to compete with commercial shipping, where skilled sailors could earn as much as 60–70 shillings per month.[13]
In every conflict of the eighteenth century, those who ran the Navy found that they could not rely on market forces to man its ships. As a result, from the outset of any war, the Admiralty authorised widespread impressment in an urgent effort to find skilled labour. This was a deeply controversial and semi-legal practice by which seamen were forced into the Navy against their will, violently when necessary.[14] It was organised by the Impress Service, a series of regulating captains and press gangs who were stationed around the British Isles with the specific intent of procuring such “Seafaring men . . . as will not enter voluntarily”[AB2] .[15] Impressment happened in two main ways. Firstly, press gangs operated in maritime communities and seaports where they targeted mariners waiting for their next voyage; sailors could be easily spotted by their large frame, their distinctive clothes, walk and vernacular, and the tarry condition of their hands. The second—and as the war went on, the most common—means of impressment was to take sailors directly from merchant ships. At the start of a war, an embargo was placed on trade which allowed the Navy to take sailors from mercantile vessels, while for the remainder of the conflict commercial ships were searched and sailors forcibly removed.[16]
In theory, at least, this relationship between merchant marine and the Navy needed to be carefully managed, for fear that the former would be left short of manpower. In 1793, the Secretary of State for War, Henry Dundas, noted that “in the first year of a War, this Country must always arm slowly, because its Trade must not be annihilated”.[17] Certainly, the Admiralty and some naval captains took this consideration seriously, ensuring that the labour needs of merchant ships were not dangerously undermined. However, there were others who cared little about the consequences of removing large numbers of men from trading vessels. The naval officer, William Henry Dillon, had no compunction seizing seamen from the ships his vessel was supposed to be convoying, noting in a matter-of-fact way how “we generally helped ourselves to one or two good seamen, just as the case would allow”.[18] Samuel Kelly, a merchant master, described a near-permanent conflict as naval officers attempted to take men from his ships: “it was customary for Naval Officers to treat masters of merchant with hauteur and contempt”, he noted.[19] Most importantly of all, impressment was frequently met by sustained resistance from sailors themselves, who found ever more ingenious ways of avoiding impressment, often with the support of merchants and shipowners.[20]
If the relationship between mercantile marine and the Navy was sometimes marked by discord, what can be said is that in general the Navy’s exploitation of its “nursery” of seamen proved effective. Throughout every major conflict of the eighteenth century, while ships were sometimes short of manpower, this rarely impacted upon operational viability. At the same time, while resistance to impressment at times deeply concerned the Admiralty and political elites alike, the Royal Navy succeeded in ensuring its ships were manned with enough men. The beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars saw widespread—and increasingly collective—resistance to impressment, with riots and affrays becoming endemic. Despite this, though, the Royal Navy was able to put large fleets to sea, and in the subsequent decade win some of its most famous victories.[21] When compared to its rivals in France, Spain, and the Netherlands, the combination of a thriving mercantile marine, allied to the coercive powers of the state, gave the Royal Navy a terrific advantage when it came to naval recruitment, for all that we are left with the uncomfortable truth that tens of thousands of men serving in the Royal Navy were there against their will. Whether there through volition or not, the British state’s role in encouraging and legislating mercantile trade ensured that there was a constant pool of skilled maritime labour that could be drawn upon.
Conclusion
By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain found itself in an unprecedentedly strong position, with a trading empire that spanned the globe, and a Navy that had more ships than all its Western European rivals added together.[22] Enjoying unrivalled sea power, Britain became the world’s unquestioned hegemon, controlling global trade routes, acting as an international policeman, and watching its global power increase further still. Writing shortly after Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, the Prussian Field Marshal, Augustus Gneisenau, spoke despairingly of Britain’s oceanic dominance: “They are lords of the sea, and neither in this dominion nor in world trade have they any rivals left to fear”.[23] British Mercantile Trade Statistics, 1662–1809, offers important insights into how this came about, revealing not only the exponential expansion of British trade during the eighteenth century, but also the Navy’s central role in encouraging and protecting this commerce. It should be noted that Britain’s success in these areas was neither assured, nor permanent and that even during the subsequent decades there would be frequent moments when this dominance appeared less assured. New political circumstances would also present challenges, such as when the growing influence of free trade philosophies saw the repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849. Still, not until the end of the nineteenth century was Britain’s maritime position seriously challenged, an era marked by “Pax Britannica” and Britain’s command of the oceans.
[1] Quoted in N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2004),180; Beverly Lemire, ‘“Men of the World”: British Mariners, Consumer Practice, and Material Culture in an Era of Global Trade, c. 1660–1800", Journal of British Studies, no. 54 (April 2015), 288–319. Exactly when Haversham made this comment is disputed—Rodger suggests 1714 while Lemire argues 1707—but it seems clear that he said it (and perhaps made this point twice).
[2] Written during Raleigh’s imprisonment in the Tower of London, these words were not publicly published until decades after his death in Sir Walter Rawleigh’s Judicious and Select Essayes and Observation . . . With His Apologie for his voyage to Guiana (London, 1667).
[3] Cobbett's Annual Register, 7 May 1803
[4] Patrick Colquhoun, A General view of the whole commerce and shipping of the River Thames (London, 1800).
[5] Roger Morriss, The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendency: Resources, Logistics and the State, 1755–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 79–80; Stephen Conway, “Another Look at the Another Look at the Navigation Acts and the Coming of the American Revolution”, in John McAleer and Christer Petley, eds. The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750–1820 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016),77–96.
[6] See B. R. Mitchell and Phyllis Deane, eds. Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 389–91, at 396–98.
[7] All trade figures are taken from Mitchell and Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, 279–282.
[8] Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1962), 27; Mitchell and Deane, Abstract of British Statistics, 217.
[9] Patrick O’Brien, “The Political economy of British taxation, 1660–1815”, Economic History Review 41, no. 1 (1988), 9.
[10] Denver Brunsman, The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 12.
[11] Figures taken from Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 636–639.
[12] Calculations of cash and real wages are complex and disputed. These comparisons are taken from averages in Gregory Clark, “What Were the British Earnings and Prices Then? (New Series)", MeasuringWorth, 2021 (available at http://www.measuringworth.com/ukearncpi/), which are in turn based on the following works: Gregory Clark, “Farm wages and living standards in the Industrial Revolution: England, 1670–1869”, Economic History Review 54, no. 3 (August, 2001), 477–505; Charles H Feinstein, “Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain During and After the Industrial Revolution”, Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (Sep 1998), 625–658; Charles H. Feinstein, “Wage-Earnings in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution”, in Iain Begg and S. G. B. Henry, Applied Economics and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); A. L. Bowley, “The Statistics of Wages in the United Kingdom during the last Hundred Years. Part I. Agricultural Wages”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 61 (1898), 702–722.
[13] Davis, Rise of English Shipping, 145, 151–152.
[14] See Brunsman, Evil Necessity, 35, 43–44; Nicholas Rogers, “Liberty Road: The Opposition to Impressment during the mid-Georgian Era”, in Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 85–121.
[15] National Maritime Museum, PLT1/2, “Impressment orders for John Platt of HMS Alligator, Thomas Affleck Esq. Commander”.
[16] Brunsman, Evil Necessity, 10.
[17] Brunsman, Evil Necessity, 90.
[18] William Henry Dillon, A Narrative of My Professional Adventures (1790–1839), ed. by Michael Lewis, vol. I, 368, 380.
[19] Crosbie Garstin, ed. Samuel Kelly: An Eighteenth Century Seaman whose days have been few and evil, to which is added remarks etc. on places he visited during his pilgrimage in this wilderness (London: Jonathan Cape), 194, 232.
[20] Nicholas Rogers, The Press Gang: Naval Impressment and its Opponents (London: Continuum, 2007).
[21] James Davey, Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023), 27–62.
[22] As measured in tonnage, and including France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Denmark-Norway and Austria. See Jan Glete, Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe and America, 1500–1860, 2 vols (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1994), vol. 2, 357.
[23] Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 574.