In The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, Philip Reid offers a useful overview of one of the most complex but ubiquitous technologies of the early modern period, one that had an enormous importance for trade and global connections across those centuries, and yet has rarely before been considered with this level of depth and detail. After surveying the social, political, and economic characteristics of the British Atlantic and their influence on merchant shipping in the first chapter, then introducing the general features and most common types of merchant ship in the second, Reid devotes two chapters to the process of shipbuilding and questions of ship design. These are followed by a pair of chapters dealing with the merchants who owned or freighted these ships and the mariners who sailed them, before moving on to the practicalities of operating a ship during this period.
Reid's primary question is how each of these dimensions influenced the technological development of merchant ships, and he concludes with some broader reflections on this subject. Drawing on diverse historical evidence and experimental archaeology, he challenges the widespread assumption in previous scholarship that this technology was essentially static throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While there was substantial continuity in the mechanical designs and operational techniques of commercial shipping, there were numerous adaptations or “microinventions” (18–19), dynamic and cumulative developments with significant results for the material dimensions and economic impact of merchant shipping. One of the book's particular strengths is Reid's emphasis on the continuous, highly skilled efforts required not only to sail merchant ships, but to maintain them in a serviceable condition—and how this need made each ship a potential laboratory for technological change. Indeed, part of Reid's thesis is that maritime communities were more innovative and less resistant to new ideas than previously thought: “ships carried the materials and tools needed to make not only repairs but modifications to their rigs, [and] masters and crews could and did experiment with adjustments while underway. The technology of the wooden sailing ship lent itself well to improvisation” (221).
Such changes are not easy to trace, propagated as they were in diffuse, uncoordinated, and often international trajectories by skilled shipwrights and seafarers who usually did not record, let alone explain, their practices, but Reid identifies some significant examples such as adjustments to hull shape and sail plan. At the same time, like all technologies, any one ship entails “a set of compromises” (23), such as between speed and cargo capacity; it is also constrained by external limitations, including the available materials, the natural environment and conditions of a voyage, and the capabilities of the ship's crew, each of which might have had a greater impact than specific nuances in ship design. Reid argues that developments in this technology are best understood in these terms and as part of risk-management strategies adopted by merchants and sailors to mitigate the dangers they faced and to maximize the chances of a profitable voyage. As a result, while there was considerable variety in how merchant ships were built and operated, they followed “identifiable general parameters” (133) and were for the most part versatile and adaptable: “Specialized vessels were the exception rather than the rule” (41).
The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic is aimed at a broad readership, and Reid does a good job of explaining its highly technical subject, with printed illustrations from contemporary sources used to good effect in the second chapter's tour through different kinds of merchant ships, though including some diagrams in the other chapters might have helped to elucidate some of the more complex points of ship mechanics. However, because of the focus on technology, the broader social and cultural dimensions of early modern shipping are touched on only briefly. The chapters on merchants and seafarers, for example, deal more with questions of insurance, commodities and cargoes, the dangers of sea travel, and the use of nautical equipment and armaments than they do with daily life aboard such ships or the cultural associations and meanings that these ships possessed for their owners and those who traveled on them. These aspects are, perhaps, less directly connected to Reid's primary questions, but could nevertheless add extra layers to our understanding of this technology and its significance for early modern society. Notwithstanding this point, The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic will be an essential guide for anyone interested in shipping, trade, or the maritime world in the early modern period.
