Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T21:56:29.954Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Safety at Sea during the Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2021

Morgan Kelly Open the ORCID record for Morgan Kelly [Opens in a new window] ,
Cormac Ó Gráda  and
Peter M. Solar
Morgan Kelly
Affiliation:
Professor at the School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected].
Cormac Ó Gráda
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus at the School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected].
Peter M. Solar
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus at CEREC, Université Saint-Louis—Bruxelles, Boulevard du Jardin botanique, 43, 1000 Brussels, Belgium and Associate Member at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, George Street, Oxford OX1 2RL, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Shipping, central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, was an extremely hazardous activity. Between the 1780s and 1820s, a safety revolution occurred that saw shipping losses and insurance rates on oceanic routes almost halved thanks to steady improvements in shipbuilding and navigation. Copper sheathing, iron reinforcing, and flush decks were the major innovations in shipbuilding. Navigation improved, not through chronometers, which remained too expensive and unreliable for general use, but through radically improved charts, accessible manuals of basic navigational techniques, and improved shore-based navigational aids.

“Curse thee, thou quadrant!” dashing it to the deck, “no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea.”

Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Ch. CXIII

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 239 - 275
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are grateful to Richard Dunn, Aidan Kane, and Adrian Leonard for helpful comments on earlier versions; to Adrian Leonard for sharing data with us; and to Ian Buxton and Nicholas Rodger for advice. As ever, the editors and referees of this Journal helped sharpen the arguments and presentation.

References

REFERENCES

Albion, Robert Greenhalgh. Forests and Sea Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926.Google Scholar
Allen, Robert C. “Technology.” In The Cambridge Economic History of Britain, Vol. 1, edited by Floud, Roderick, Humphries, Jane, and Johnson, Paul, 292–320. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anon. Smeaton and Lighthouses: A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel. London: Parker, 1844.Google Scholar
Baker, Alexi. “‘Precision,’ ‘Perfection,’ and the Reality of British Scientific Instruments on the Move during the 18th Century.” Material Culture Review 74–75 (2012): 14–29.Google Scholar
Bentham, Maria Sophia. The Life of Brigadier Sir Samuel Bentham, K.S.G. London: Longman Green, 1862.Google Scholar
Berg, Maxine, and Pat, Hudson. “Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 45, no. 1 (1992): 24–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodenmann, Siegfried. “The 18th Century Battle over Lunar Motion.” Physics Today 63 (2010): 27–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogart, Dan. “The Transport Revolution in Industrializing Britain.” In The Cambridge Economic History of Britain 1700 to 1870, Vol. 1, edited by Roderick, Floud, Jane, Humphries, and Paul, Johnson, 368–91. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Chet, Guy. The Ocean Is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688–1856. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Clark, Geoffrey. “Insurance as an Instrument of War in the 18th Century.” The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance 29 (2004): 247–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory. Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockerell, Hugh A. L., and Edwin, Green. The British Insurance Business: A Guide to Its History & Records. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Cohn, Raymond L. Mass Migration under Sail: European Immigration to the Antebellum United States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Collins, Grenville. Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot. London: Freeman Collins, 1693.Google Scholar
Cotter, Charles H. A History of Nautical Astronomy. London: Hollis and Carter, 1968.Google Scholar
Cotter, Charles H. “John Hamilton Moore and Nathaniel Bowditch.” Journal of Navigation 30, no. 2 (1977): 323–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crafts, Nicholas F. R. “Productivity Growth during the British Industrial Revolution: Revisionism Revisited.” CAGE Working Paper No. 204, University of Warwick, Coventry, England, 2014.Google Scholar
Crafts, Nicholas F. R., and Harley, C. K.. “Output Growth and the British Industrial Revolution: A Restatement of the Crafts-Harley View.” Economic History Review 45, no. 4 (1992): 703–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Simon C. “The Use of Chronometers to Determine Longitude on East India Company Voyages.” The Mariner’s Mirror 102, no. 3 (2016): 344–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Simon C. “Marine Chronometers: The Rapid Adoption of New Technology by East India Captains in the Period 1770–1792 on over 580 Voyages.” Antiquarian Horology 40, no. 1 (2019): 76–91.Google Scholar
Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the 17th and 18th Centuries. 2nd ed. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1972.Google Scholar
Denzel, Markus. “The Price of Minimalizing the Risks at Sea: The Hamburg Marine Insurance Rates in the 18th and Early 19th Century.” In I prezzi delle cose nell’eta preindustriale: selezione di ricerche, edited by Nigro, Giampiero, 367–83. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Dessiou, Joseph F. Sailing Directions To Be Used with John Hamilton Moore’s Chart of the British Channel, and the South-West Coast of Ireland … Sixth edition, etc. London: John Hamilton Moore, 1802.Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard. The Telescope: A Short History. London: Conway, 2011.Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard. “North by Northwest: Experimental Instruments and Instruments of Experiment.” In Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration, edited by MacDonald, Fraser and Charles, W. J. Withers, 57–76. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard, and Rebekah, Higgitt. Finding Longitude. London: Collins, Royal Museums Greenwich, 2014.Google Scholar
Earle, Peter. Sailors: English Merchant Seamen, 1650–1775. London: Methuen, 1998.Google Scholar
Florence, Edler de Roover. “Early Examples of Marine Insurance.” Journal of Economic History 5 (1945): 172–200.Google Scholar
Farr, Grahame E., ed. Records of Bristol Ships 1800 to 1830. Bristol: Bristol Records Society, 1950.Google Scholar
Fisher, Susanna. “The Origins of the Station Pointer.” International Hydrographic Review 68, no. 2 (2001): 119–26.Google Scholar
Fisher, Susanna. “‘More Attractive and Useful’: The Popularity of Privately Published Blueback Charts in the Nineteenth Century.” The Cartographic Journal 40 (2003): 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Susanna. The Makers of the Blueback Charts: A History of Laurie Norie and Wilson Ltd. St Ives, UK: Imray Laurie Norie and Wilson, 2011.Google Scholar
FitzRoy, Robert. Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the Years 1826 and 1836. Appendix to Volume 2. London: Henry Colburn, 1839.Google Scholar
Gascoigne, John. “Navigating the Pacific from Bougainville to Dumont d’Urville: French Approaches to Determining Longitude, 1766–1840.” In Navigational Enterprises in Europe and Its Empires, 1730–1850, edited by Higgitt, Rebekeh, Dunn, Richard, and Jones, Peter, 180–97. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.Google Scholar
Gilligan, H. A. “Captain William Hutchison and the Early Dublin Bay Lifeboats.” Dublin Historical Record 33 (1980): 42–45.Google Scholar
Glover, William. “Using Longitude on Early Nineteenth Century Voyages to Hudson’s Bay.” The Northern Mariner 27 (2017): 355–72.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Peter. “The Influence of Iron in Ship Construction, 1660–1830.” Mariner’s Mirror 84, no. 1 (1997): 26–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Rupert T. The Marine Chronometer: Its History and Development. London: J. D. Potter, 1923.Google Scholar
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor. “The Computation Factory: de Prony’s Project for Making Tables in the 1790s.” In The History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets, edited by Campbell-Kelly, Martin, 104–21. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Harley, C. Knick. “The Shift from Sailing Ships to Steamships, 1850–1890: A Study in Technological Change and Its Diffusion.” In Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain after 1840, edited by McCloskey, Donald N., 215–34. London: Methuen, 1971.Google Scholar
Harley, C. Knick. “Ocean Freight Rates and Productivity, 1740–1913: The Primacy of Mechanical Invention Reaffirmed.” Journal of Economic History 48, no. 4 (1988): 851–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, William. A Treatise Founded upon Philosophical and Rational Principles: Towards Establishing Fixed Rules, for the Best Form … of Merchant’s Ships … and Also the Management of Them … by Practical Seamanship. London: Thomas Billinge, 1971.Google Scholar
John, Arthur H. “The London Assurance Company and the Marine Insurance Market of the Eighteenth Century.” Economica 25, no. 98 (1958): 126–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Morgan, and Cormac, Ó Gráda. “Adam Smith, Watch Prices, and the Industrial Revolution.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 131 (2016): 1727–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Morgan, and Cormac, Ó Gráda. “Speed under Sail, 1750–1830.” Economic History Review 72, no. 2 (2019): 459–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Morgan, Gráda, Cormac Ó, and Peter, Solar. “Safety at Sea during the Industrial Revolution.” Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-05-27. https://doi.org/10.3886/E119642V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingston, Christopher. “Governance and Institutional Change in Marine Insurance, 1350–1850.” European Review of Economic History 18, no. 1 (2013): 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, Andrew. The Last Sailing Battlefleet: Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815–1850. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Landes, David S. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Leggett, Don. Shaping the Royal Navy: Technology, Authority and Naval Architecture, C.1830–1906. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Leonard, Adrian. “Underwriting British Trade to India and China, 1780–1835.” The Historical Journal 55 (2012): 983–1006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, Adrian. “Underwriting Marine Warfare: Insurance and Conflict in the Eighteenth Century.” International Journal of Maritime History 25 (2013): 173–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, Adrian. “The Origin and Development of London Marine Insurance, 1547–1824.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014.Google Scholar
Leonard, Adrian. “The Pricing Revolution in Marine Insurance, 1600–1824.” Unpublished working paper, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd’s List, various issues.Google Scholar
Lloyd’s Register, various volumes.Google Scholar
London New Price Current, various issues.Google Scholar
Lubbock, Basil. The Blackwall Frigates. Glasgow: J. Brown and Son, 1922.Google Scholar
Lucassen, Jan, and Unger, Richard W.. “Labour Productivity in Ocean Shipping, 1450–1875.” International Journal of Maritime History 12, no. 2 (2000): 127–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacDonagh, Oliver. A Pattern of Government Growth. London: Mc-Gibbon and Kee, 1961.Google Scholar
MacGregor, John. Commercial Statistics: A Digest of the Productive Resources, Commercial Legislation, Customs Tariffs, of All Nations. Including All British Commercial Treaties and Foreign States. Vol. 3. London: Charles Knight and Company, 1847.Google Scholar
McConnell, Anita. Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800): London’s Leading Scientific Instrument Maker. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.Google Scholar
McCulloch, John R. “On the Frequency of Shipwrecks.” Edinburgh Review 60 (1835): 338–53.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J. “The Early History of ‘Lloyd’s List.’” Historical Research 64, no. 155 (1991): 427–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, David Philip. “Longitude Networks on Land and Sea: The East India Company and Longitude ‘Measurement in the Wild’, 1770–1840.” In Navigational Enterprises in Europe and Its Empires 1730-1850, edited by Dunn, Richard and Higgitt, Rebekah, 223–47. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel. The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel. A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, John Hamilton. A New and Correct Chart of the Baltic. London: 1791 (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b5973549g)Google Scholar
Moore, John Hamilton. The New Practical Navigator. 10th ed. London: John Hamilton Moore, 1794.Google Scholar
Mörzer, Bruyns, Willem, F. J., and Richard, Dunn. Sextants at Greenwich: A Catalogue. London: National Maritime Museum, 2009.Google Scholar
Musson, Albert E. “British Origins.” In Yankee Enterprise. The Rise of the American System of Manufactures, edited by Mayr, O. and Post, R. C., 25–48. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1981.Google Scholar
Musson, Albert E., and Eric Robinson. Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Norie, John W. A New and Complete Epitome of Practical Navigation. London: Author and for William Heather, 1805.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. “Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600–1850.” Journal of Political Economy 76 (1968): 953–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Sarah. “The Indemnity in the London Marine Insurance Market, 1824–50.” In The Historian and the Business of Insurance, edited by Oliver, M. Westall, 74–94. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Parkinson, C. Northcote. Trade in Eastern Seas 1793–1813. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1937.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and David, Richardson. “Insuring the Atlantic Slave Trade.” Journal of Economic History 79, no. 2 (2019): 417–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petto, Christine. Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France: Power, Patronage, and Production. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015.Google Scholar
Phillips, Eoin. “Instrumenting Order: Longitude, Seamen and Astronomers, 1770–1805.” In Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration, edited by MacDonald, Fraser and Charles, W. J. Withers, 37–56. London: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Phillips, Sir Richard. A Million of Facts and Correct Data in the Entire Circle of the Sciences. London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, 1832.Google Scholar
Pollard, Albert F., revised by Ronald C. Cox. “Trengrouse, Henry (1772–1854).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27707 (accessed 2 Jan 2017).Google Scholar
Prince’s Price Current, various dates.Google Scholar
Probert, William. “The Humanitarian, Technical and Political Response to Shipwreck in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The 1836 Inquiry and its Aftermath.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Southampton, 1999.Google Scholar
Prosser, Richard Bissell, revised by Ronald C. Cox. “Manby, George William.” In Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17919 (accessed 2 Jan 2017).Google Scholar
Public Register and Daily Advertiser, various dates.Google Scholar
Puttevils, Jeroen, and Marc, Deloof. “Marketing and Pricing Risk in Marine Insurance in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp.” Journal of Economic History 77, no. 3 (2017): 796–837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, Paul. “The Early Development of Magnet Compass Correction.” The Mariner’s Mirror 87, no. 3 (2001): 303–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rediker, Markus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Rees, Abraham. The Cyclopaedia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. London: Longman, 1819.Google Scholar
Rees, Gareth. “Copper Sheathing: An Example of Technological Diffusion in the English Merchant Fleet.” Journal of Transport History 1, no. 2 (1971): 85–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodger, Nicholas A. M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815. London: Allen Lane, 2004.Google Scholar
Schotte, Margaret E. Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550–1800. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Shadwell, Charles F. A. Notes on the Management of Chronometers and the Measurement of Meridian Distances. London: Potter, 1855.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1. London: W. Strahan, 1776.Google Scholar
Snodgrass, Gabriel. “Letter from Gabriel Snodgrass, Esq. to the Right Honorable Henry Dundas, … And to the … Chairman, the Deputy Chairman, and the Court of Directors of the East India Company, on the Mode of Improving the Navy of Great Britain.” Printed by order of the Hon. Court of Directors, 1797.Google Scholar
Solar, Peter M. “Opening to the East: Shipping between Europe and Asia, 1770–1830.” Journal of Economic History 73, no. 3 (2013): 625–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solar, Peter M., and Duquette, Nicolas J.. “Ship Crowding and Slave Morality: Missing Observations or Incorrect Measurement?” Journal of Economic History 77, no. 4 (2017): 1177–202.Google Scholar
Solar, Peter M., and Luc, Hens. “Ship Speeds during the Industrial Revolution: East India Company Ships, 1770–1828.” European Review of Economic History 20, no. 1 (2016): 66–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solar, Peter M., and Klas Rönnbäck. “Copper Sheathing and the British Slave Trade.” Economic History Review 68, no. 3 (2014): 806–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spooner, Frank C. Risks at Sea: Amsterdam Insurance and Maritime Europe, 1766–1780. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Stevenson, D. Alan. The World’s Lighthouses before 1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Stigler, Stephen M. The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Swade, Doron. The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer. London: Penguin, 2001.Google Scholar
Temin, Peter. “Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution.” Journal of Economic History 57, no. 1 (1997): 63–82.Google Scholar
Tomory, Leslie. Progressive Enlightenment: The Origins of the Gaslight Industry, 1780–1820. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Gerard L’Estrange. Scientific Instruments, 1500–1900: An Introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.Google Scholar
United Kingdom. House of Commons. “Report from the Select Committee on Marine Insurance.” Parliamentary Papers 1810 IV (226).Google Scholar
United Kingdom. House of Commons. “Comparative Account of the Population of Great Britain in the Years 1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831.” Parliamentary Papers 1831 XVIII (348).Google Scholar
United Kingdom. House of Commons. “Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Cause of Shipwrecks.” Parliamentary Papers 1836 XVII (567).Google Scholar
United Kingdom. House of Commons. “Report from the Select Committee on Shipwrecks of Timber Ships.” Parliamentary Papers 1839 IX (217).Google Scholar
Vasey, Thomas Watson Cornforth. “The Emergence of Examinations for British Shipmasters and Mates, 1830–1850.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1980.Google Scholar
Wepster, Steven. Between Theory and Observations: Tobias Mayer’s Explorations of Lunar Motion, 1751–1755. New York: Springer, 2009.Google Scholar
Williams, David M. “Merchanting in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Liverpool Timber Trade.” In Merchants and Mariners: Selected Maritime Writings of David M. Williams, edited by Scholl, Lars, 81–108. St John’s, Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2000.Google Scholar
Wright, Charles, and Ernest Fayle, C.. A History of Lloyd’s. London: Macmillan 1928.Google Scholar