A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



but the fortress was rebuilt and re-armed between 1 87 1 and 1876. A fort, commanding the 

 harbour, was also constructed at Shotley. 



The Suffolk deep-sea fisheries appear to have declined after the Restoration. A petition to 

 Parliament of about 1 665, from Lowestoft, Pakefield, and Kirkley, said that their subsistence 

 depended on the cod and herring fishery, that they were now very poor, and that half the owners 

 had ceased to send out boats. The decrease was common to the whole coast, so that in 1670 a 

 company was formed under the patronage of the king, and endowed with exceptional privileges, 

 for the purpose of restoring the fisheries. At this time Pakefield and Kirkley possessed fourteen 

 sea-coin" fishing boats, Lowestoft twenty-five, Southwold eight, Aldeburgh and Corton each two. 

 and Dunwich one. Southwold and Aldeburgh each owned three Iceland ships. 1 There were 

 several capitalist associations formed towards the end of the seventeenth century with the object of 

 revivifying the fisheries, but they all failed, and private enterprise declined with them. In 1720 

 Lowestoft had five Iceland ships, but only one in 1748, which was so unsuccessful that Gilling- 

 water who wrote in 1790, says that it was the last. 2 A witness before a parliamentary committee 

 of 1785 3 attributed the cessation of the Iceland fishery to the vexatious salt regulations, 'millstones 

 about the neck of the fishing trade.' The Dogger Bank fishery, begun about 17 14, was no doubt 

 also a factor in the diminution. The wars of 1739-63 do not seem to have exercised much 

 injurious influence, seeing that on 5 June, 1744, the Lowestoft owners advertised that the mackerel 

 fishery was not stopped as reported. Between 1772 and 1 781 the average number of Lowestoft 

 herring boats was thirty-three a year, 4 but sixty-nine was that of Southwold between 1760 and 

 1770.' During the war of American Independence, Louis XVI ordered that fishermen were not 

 to be molested, but the French government showed no such chivalrous consideration during the 

 Revolutionary War. The risk and losses thus caused were accountable for a further decrease, so 

 that in 1798 there were only twenty-four Lowestoft herring boats, but Yarmouth and Lowestoft 

 between them possessed forty or fifty mackerel boats. 6 In 1750 'The Society of the Free British 

 Fishery,' with a capital of ^500,000, was incorporated under the aegis of Parliament. It went the 

 way of its predecessors, but its interest for us lies in the fact that Southwold was the head quarters of 

 the association, wharves and storehouses being erected there, and as many as fifty-three fishing 

 ' busses ' belonging to the company lying in the port in 1753. 7 In 1786 Ipswich attempted to join 

 in the Greenland whale fishery by sending two ships, but the enterprise was relinquished in a few 

 years. 



Notwithstanding certain disabilities Ipswich maintained its position as a port. We find that 

 in 1729 three vessels owned there were taken up for the Admiralty, of which two were of 350 and 

 one of 270 tons ; 8 in 1 73 1 and 1734 others of 320, 350, and 400 tons are mentioned as belonging 

 to the place. The Orwell, however, was gradually silting up, and in 1744 there was no depth, 

 even at high water, at Ipswich quays, so that vessels of any size were compelled to load at 

 Downham Bridge. There was a shipbuilding yard at Downham belonging to John Barnard, who 

 shortly afterwards removed to Harwich on account of its superior advantages for his trade. In 1741 

 the Hampshire, 50, was launched at Downham, and the favour enjoyed by a builder working for the 

 Admiralty is indicated by a Navy Board order of 12 February, 1 740- 1, that another builder, 

 Mr. Goody, was to be informed that if he persisted in employing shipwrights who had left Barnard, 

 and their work on the Hampshire, his protections would be withdrawn. 9 When the Hampshire was 

 built there were 14 ft. of water at Downham at low tide, 10 but in order to be able to build big ships 

 without inconvenience, Barnard induced the Admiralty to lease Harwich dockyard to him. His 

 principal yard at Ipswich was on the left bank of the river below the bridge, and this is shown as 

 then existent in a map drawn in 1674. By 1764 there were four building yards, two of them 

 being those called the Halifax and Nova Scotia yards on the right bank of the Orwell at Stoke, both 

 eventually, together with Barnard's original yard, held by the Bayley family. The fourth yard may 

 have been occupied by a builder named Stephen Teague ; in 1763 William Barnard and William 

 Dodman held the Nova Scotia yard. In 1804 Prentice, Godbold, and Rayment were the Ipswich 

 builders besides the Bayleys. The latter built several East Indiamen, the largest being the 

 William Fairlie, 1,348 tons, launched in 1 82 1 from the Halifax yard. 11 The East India Company's 

 shipbuilding was in the hands of a ring of Thames builders so that outsiders, whatever their merits, 

 obtained little of it. 



1 Gillingwater, Hist, of Lowestoft, 91. ' Ibid. 109. * Reports (1785), xxxvii, 6li. 



4 Gillingwater, 94. Until the middle of the eighteenth century boats from the south coast came to hire, 

 or ' host,' themselves during the herring season to Lowestoft owners ; the custom ceased when the Lowestoft 

 boats again increased in numbers. There were forty-eight in 1 775 (ibid. 80). 



4 Pari. Papers (1798), 1, 1 41. 6 Ibid. 



7 Gardner, Hist. Acct. of Dunwich, 1 96. 



8 Navy Bd. Min. 2544, 20 Feb. 1728-9. 



9 Each private builder was given a certain number of ' protections ' sheltering his men from impressment. 

 10 Navy Bd. Min. 2554, 22 August, 1740. " India Off. Mar. Rec. Misc. 529. 



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