A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



referred to as 'the prime haven in all that countic.' When in 1672 the 

 earl of Derby was required by the king to impress seamen from Lancashire, 

 he submitted the following account of Lancashire shipping, which sufficieotly 

 shows the already established pre-eminence of Liverpool both as to ships and 



men :- 



Liverpool and Derby Hundred 

 Lonsdale Hundred 

 Amounderness 



Total 



The earl added that he was ' informed that in Wyre Water . . . there were 

 about 60 good ships and boats and above 300 seamen,' '"' Liverpool was in 

 fact growing larger and more important chiefly by reason of its Irish trade, 

 whereby Manchester was supplied with yarn for the fustian manufacture. 

 In the eighteenth century another source of temporary profit arose in the 

 African slave trade, and the first dock was laid in the very year in which the 

 first vessel sailed for Africa, in 1709. The opening of the Mersey and Irwell 

 Canal in the twenties, as well as that of the duke of Bridgewater in the sixties, 

 connected Liverpool with the inland markets, and brought increased traffic. 

 In 1738 a second dock was begun, and by the fifties the number of vessels 

 sailing to Africa was 53. Between the years 1700 and 1760 the sailings had 

 increased from 60 vessels of 4,000 tons aggregate burden, to 226 vessels of 

 23,665 tons aggregate burden. A certain amount of Irish and Spanish wool 

 was shipped to Liverpool for Lancashire consumption, but neither the import 

 of wool nor of linen yarn from Ireland could have developed the prosperity of 

 Liverpool in anything like the degree in which we know it did develop in 

 the close of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth century. Wool 

 and yarn were after all indigenous products, though it was easier and cheaper 

 to obtain them from Ireland. Cotton, on the contrary, was not indigenous to 

 this country, and with the advent of the cotton industry during the last three 

 decades of the eighteenth century the economic position of Liverpool may 

 be said to have been altogether revolutionized. It had suffered during at 

 least four centuries from isolation, its face, so to speak, being turned away 

 from the great ports of Europe. This very drawback was now its greatest 

 source of advantage. 



The Lancashire cotton industry was, as it is still, entirely dependent on 

 large and cheap imports of the raw material from abroad. Hitherto it had 

 come to the north from Smyrna, Turkey, and the Spanish colonies, by way 

 of London."' The quantity was, of course, comparatively small, and the cost 

 of transport very considerable. When the American planters determined to 

 try to meet the profitable and daily Lancashire demand for cotton, they 

 naturally decided on Liverpool as the port whither they should carry it for 

 purposes of immediate sale. It was of the greatest convenience to the 

 Georgia shippers that they could send vessels laden with their fine long-stapled 

 cotton "* right across the Atlantic to the good and safe harbourage of Liver- 

 pool. The commercial credit of the town appears to have been very strong,"' 



'■" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1672, p. 282. "» Ure, Cotton Manuf. i, 185. •" Ibid. 



"* Rep. of Select Committee on Manuf. etc. (1833), 246, par. 3986. 



304 



