Maritime Strength and the British Economy, 1840-1850

Abstract

Your fleet and your trade have so near a relation and such mutual influence on each other, they cannot well be separated: your trade is the mother and nurse of your seamen: your seamen are the life of your fleet: and your fleet is the security and protection of your trade: and both together are the wealth, strength, security and glory of Britain. (Lord Haversham in the House of Commons, 1767). 1 The Royal Navy's victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 has been recognised by historians as the point at which Britain became the nineteenth century's unchallenged maritime power. 2 Its maritime strength in the immediate post-Trafalgar era was symbolized not only by its line-of-battle ships, frigates, corvettes and sloops scattered on stations around the globe but also by its industrial capacity to build and support such a navy; the material and monetary importance of the world's largest merchant fleet; government's reliance on a maritime presence to ensure the nation's strategic security; and the strategic significance of a number of colonial bases. 3 Far more than the mere numbers of vessels or guns, British maritime power rested on a complex relationship between government, industry, commerce, and the navy. The concentration of past studies on the RN as Britain's major military force and the protector of its trade is well known. But this continued focus on foreign and military matters to the exclusion of economics and politics has led to a skewed reading of the relationships that produced British maritime strength. A more holistic approach is required. The RN's traditional roles must be placed in the context of their linkages to the industry produced by its construction and maintenance, as well as the merchant marine it protected. 4 The period from 1840 to 1850 represents a genesis period in Britain's development of her maritime power. A technological transition from wood and sail, to steam and iron, were creating new strategic and tactical considerations for the RN. The possession of the world's largest merchant marine (and its growth during this period) made it possible for Great Britain to gain and maintain access both to all of the world's most important markets and to the most important raw materials needed for the ever evolving industrial and commercial revolution that was occurring in Great Britain. The need for that merchant fleet to ensure a steady and plentiful supply of finished goods to those markets, and the enormous economic benefits incurred through that trade, meant that British industry depended on that merchant marine and its protector, the Royal Navy. This