The American Struggle for the British West 
India Carrying-Trade, 1815-1830 
By F. Lee Benns, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History^ 
Indiana University 
CHAPTER L THE HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS 
During the eighteenth century, there were not, perhaps, two 
countries within the same distance from one another and with 
such easy and prompt communication which had products so 
essentially different as the West Indies and the British col- 
onies in North America. The former produced sugar, molas- 
ses, rum, coffee, indigo, and salt ; the latter, bread, flour, grain, 
meats, fish, lumber, cattle, and horses. The North American 
colonies welcomed the tropical products of their neighbors to 
the south ; while nowhere else, so readily and cheaply as in the 
North American colonies, could the West India planters secure 
the provisions and products which were so essential to their 
existence.^ It was only natural therefore that between the 
British West Indies and the American colonies, while they 
were parts of the same empire, there should have developed a 
very prosperous and mutually beneficial trade, a trade which 
became, in fact, the corner stone of American commerce. It 
was essentially a trade of short voyages, suited to small capi- 
tal, and employing many hands and much navigation. “ Ap- 
proximately five hundred vessels, generally sloops and schoon- 
ers, single-decked, and without top masts, were employed. 
More than one-third of the vessels clearing from Boston and 
New York in the decade before the American Revolution sailed 
for British West India ports. To these ports the American 
colonies exported their products annually to the amount of 
some $3,500,000.^ 
The success of the American Revolution changed all this, 
^ Edwards, Hist, of the British West Indies, II, 486-489. 
2 Works of Daniel Webster, III, 237. 
3 Edwards, Hist, of the British West Indies, II, 488. Coman, Indust. Hist, of the 
U.S., 114. 
H) 
