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Indiana University 
But none of these vessels, either Dutch or American or Brit- 
ish, which touched at a British port on their way between 
the United States and the United Netherlands are included in 
the above statistics. The Pennsylvania Packet and the 
Nieuwe N ederlandsche J aarhoeken, the two sources upon 
which the calculations in this chapter have been based, refer 
to ships as entering from the port at which they last touched 
and as clearing for the port at which they next expected to 
touch. What additions would have to be made to the above 
figures representing the number of ships sailing directly be- 
tween the United States and the Netherlands in order to make 
those figures represent the total number of ships required to 
carry all the goods that passed between the United States 
and the United Netherlands would have to be largely a guess. 
To get a clear idea of the relative importance of the com- 
merce between the United States and the United Netherlands 
it might be well to compare the shipping between those two 
countries with the shipping between the United States and 
Great Britain during the same period. The Payers on Nav- 
igation and Trade state that for the three years, 1787-1789, 
the average number of American vessels annually entering 
Great Britain from the United States was 169 and the average 
number of British vessels so entering annually was 251, mak- 
ing a total of 420 British and American vessels per annum 
entering British ports from the United States. The same 
papers give the number of American vessels clearing out from 
British ports for America as 157 per year and the number of 
British vessels so clearing as 272, making a total of 429 Brit- 
ish and American vessels clearing each year from British 
ports for the United States during 1787-1789.^°^ These sta- 
tistics were furnished after an exhaustive investigation by 
the Lords of Trade and must be considered as entirely reliable. 
Macpherson gives the number of vessels entering Great Brit- 
ain from America in the one year of 1789 as 448 and the num- 
ber of vessels clearing from Great Britain for the United 
States in that year as 532.^^^ These totals for the year 1789 
as given by Macpherson are a trifle larger than the average 
for the years 1787-1789 as given by the Payers on Navigation 
and Trade, indicating that the number of ships plying between 
^03 Atcheson (ed.), Collection of Reports and Papers on the Navigation and Trade, 72. 
Macpherson, Annals of Commerce ... of the British Empire and Other Coun- 
tries, IV, 198. 
