Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:23:52.165Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Earnings of Capital in the English Shipping Industry, 1670–1730

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Ralph Davis
Ralph Davis
Affiliation:
The University, Hull
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The mainsprings of the entrepreneur's activity are his expectations of profit. Being aspirations, these are rarely expressed, but they are founded on objective facts—upon the experience of profits actually earned. Until the days of the limited company or corporation, actual profits were close secrets. Few records survive of the profits of individual enterprises before the nineteenth century, and little is known of general levels of profits and profit expectations. This paper attempts to throw some light on the subject by an exploration of some financial records of the English shipping industry in the decades around 1700. The records are of special interest because the assets of this industry were expensive and long-lived units; it was natural to relate earnings to an annual rate of return on the capital invested in those units. The industry was, moreover, a large and rapidly growing one.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1957 , pp. 409 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1957

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This is not to deny that economists and accountants have difficulty in agreeing on the definition of profits.

2 These records are scattered among the cases of the High Court of Admiralty (HCA) in the Public Record Office in London.

3 But see p. 415, below, for the special case of the northern and Baltic trades.

4 HCA 30–654; 30–664.

5 The mid-nineteenth-century records of ships lost and broken up appear to confirm this view.

6 State Papers, Charles II (SP 29 212–117).

7 This is an attempt to present the picture as it would have been recognized by a seventeenth-century shipowner; depreciation is, therefore, calculated in its simplest form, without the sophisticated procedures of modern accountancy.

8 Harper, L. A., The English Navigation Laws (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 327Google Scholar.

9 British Museum, Addit. MSS. 22184.

10 These passes, issued at various times as protections against Algerian corsairs, were taken out by most ships engaged in Mediterranean, Iberian, or transatlantic trade during periods of danger.

11 The records of some six thousand voyages have been obtained from the Port Books, and average times estimated from them.

12 Charter-party rates are particularly useful because they avoid awkward questions of the meaning of ship's tonnage. The ship was bound to take in at the lading port, and the charterers were bound to lade there, a tonnage of goods equal to the ship's burden designated in the charter party. Thus in Jamaica a ship chartered at 210 tons burden would be bound to load 600 hogsheads of sugar, according to the Jamaica convention of 7 cwt. per hogshead. Where identification has been possible, tonnage according to charter parties has corresponded quite closely with tonnage shown in the Register of Passes. See Molloy, C., De jure maritimo et navali (4th ed.; London, 1688), p. 234Google Scholar.

13 Outward freight rates were very low because the tonnage of imports greatly exceeded the tonnage of exports. See Davis, R., “Merchant Shipping in the Economy of the Late Seventeenth Century,” Economic History Review, n.s. IX (1956), 60–69Google Scholar.

14 In principle it should be possible to make such estimates from the Port Books or (in American trades) from the Naval Officer's records of cargoes entering and clearing. But the figures of ships' tonnages, though adequate for many purposes, are not sufficiently accurate to make it possible to say a ship was, say, 85 per cent rather than 100 per cent loaded. Differences in the tonnage loaded into the same ship in different voyages can often be ascertained, and confirm that some degree of underlading was common.

15 The cost figures are justified in some detail in my unpublished London Ph.D. thesis, “The Organisation and Finance of the English Shipping Industry in the Late Seventeenth Century” (1955), cns. x and xi.

16 Ships trading to nearby Europe could not be dealt with, owing to the absence of any useful records of freight rates.

17 Mr. Richard Pares suggests that outward cargoes were secured much more easily for Barbados than for other West Indian islands. “A London West India Merchant House, 1740–1769,” in Pares, R. and Taylor, A. J. P. (eds.), Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier (London: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 87–88.Google Scholar

18 HCA 13–129; 13–130; 15–7.

19 The true time charter of today, in which a ship is let out without condition as to voyage, was never used. Charterers always wanted the ship for a voyage and returned the ship to the owners at the end of that voyage, paying for the time taken.

20 Bottomry is fully discussed from the legal viewpoint in C. Molloy, De jure, Book II, ch. xi.

21 For example, Jacob, 1661 (HCA 15–8)Google Scholar.

22 For example, Kingfisher, 1661 (HCA 13–129)Google Scholar.

23 “Discourses upon Trade,” in McCulloch, J. R. (ed.), Early Tracts on Commerce (London, 1856), p. 521Google Scholar.

24 There are many cases on bottomry in the High Court of Admiralty; usually a lump sum of interest for the voyage in prospect was specified.

25 , J. P., The Merchant's Dayly Companion (London, 1684), p. 344Google Scholar.

26 North's statement that this was a regular way of financing ships is hardly credible. Established merchants could raise money at quite low rates of interest and would certainly not cripple their operations by habitually paying 36 per cent.

27 HCA 30–664.

28 The income shown here is the net return on this cargo, plus freights earned, and the costs shown are costs of the ship only, excluding the cargo.

29 HCA 30–664.

30 References: Thomas & John, HCA 30–653; Goulden Rose, HCA 15–12; Rose; HCA 15–14; Hopewell, HCA 15–12; Blessing, HCA 15–16; Richard & Elizabeth, HCA 15–18; John & Ellen, HCA 15–30; Pearl, HCA 15–36; Morton House, HCA 15–35; Charming Nancy, HCA 15–38.

31 HCA 13–129.

32 HCA 13–131.

33 Ledger of Peter du Cane in the Essex County Record Office, Chelmsford.

34 See Scott, W. R., The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint Stock Companies to 1720 (3 vols.; Cambridge: University Press, 1910–1912)Google Scholar, Vol. I, ch. i; and Handlin, O. and Handlin, M. F., “Origins of the American Business Corporation,” Journal of Economic History, V (1945), 1–7Google Scholar.

35 C. Molloy, De jure, p. 222.