Maritime Trade

Introduction: A Brief History of Bridgwater’s Overseas Trade

(Condensed from the VCH Somerset, Vol 6 with additions)

Bridgwater already used the river for trade by the eleventh century, and various duties and tolls were collected from trade on the river in the next two centuries. The town provided sailors for Edward I’s campaign in Wales in 1277, and sent ships on military expeditions on at least 13 occasions between 1301 and 1417, to Ireland, Scotland, France, and Spain.

By 1300 Bridgwater merchants were trading in wine with Bordeaux, and in 1330 the port was a centre for victualling for the same destination. Bridgwater as a collecting port for wool exports in the 1340s, and Bridgwater merchants were involved in the export of agricultural products to southern France, northern Spain, Wales, and Ireland.

Bridgwater, a separate port from 1402, exported more than 100 cloths in each of 11 years up to 1450, and more than 200 in 1415-16 and 1422-3. For 75 years from 1472 the number of cloths leaving the port (which included creeks – the ‘pills’ outside the town) never fell below 100 a year, and from 1488 to 1506 never below 300: In the period 1549- 83 trade was said to be increasing, making the port the busiest in the county. The number of ships belonging to the port, however, was only 5 in 1508-9, ‘few’ in 1570, and in James I’s reign only 4, compared with 37 belonging to Bristol and 16 to Barnstaple.

Bridgwater’s cloth exports in the later 15th and early 16th century were principally to San Sebastian, Fuenterrabia (Spain), Bayonne, Andalusia, Bilbao, Bordeaux, and the Irish ports,  and trade continued there in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Agricultural products were the other main export to both international and regional markets in the later Middle Ages. Half was to the Irish ports of Wexford, Waterford, Youghal, Galway, Limerick, and Rosse, and was mostly beans. In 1519 a consignment of wheat and rye destined for Cork or Kinsale was landed at Tenby. Several export licences were issued in the sixteenth century for beans, malt, or pulse, and Leland reported that Bridgwater became a kind of staple for beans when corn was dear overseas. Edward Dyer was licensed in 1568 to export 1,000 qr. of wheat and beans from Bridgwater and Minehead to any friendly country, and in 1571 Bridgwater was one of the ports for grain, butter, and cheese exports to Ireland.

Hides were exported in varying quantities in Henry VIII’s reign. In the later fifteenth century annual wine imports averaged 102 tuns (25,704 gallons), but figures fluctuated between 366 tuns in 1475-6 and none in 1470. In 1504-5 just over 285 tuns were unloaded, including small amounts of sweet white wine in Gascon and Breton ships. Average annual wine imports in Henry VIII’s reign amounted to just over 79 tuns and still, as in the 15th century, came from La Rochelle, the Bordeaux region, Portugal, and southern Spain.

In the 1470s a picard of Wexford took beans from Bridgwater and returned with red herring, salmon, conger eels, and barrels. Coastal trade extended from the Bristol Channel ports around the south-west peninsula to Dartmouth, Exmouth, Melcombe Regis, and Dorchester, and there were frequent links with Bristol and London merchants.

Millstones and grindstones, imported from the Forest of Dean by 1503-4, were distributed from the 1550s in Devon and almost as far as the Dorset coast. During the period 1562-73 the corporation established a monopoly on their import and resale. At the end of 1572 it held a stock of 38 millstones, 45 grindstones, 19 cornstones, 4 mustard mills, and 1 horsemill stone, and in 1590-1 it sold 76 stones.

About 1600 general trade improved considerably. In the 1590s imports had been erratic and depressed, hardly paying the fees of the customs collector, and only one large ship belonged to the port. Export licences for trade to Ireland and resumed business with France, Spain, and Portugal, doubled the amount of customable trade from c. 1603,  but there was far more coastal traffic than a century earlier and direct trade with France and Spain was rare. In 1603-4 red, white, and canary wine and sack came via Bristol, salt via Barnstaple, iron via Cardiff, and iron and train oil on a Weymouth barque. Other commodities in that year included Spanish wool, raisins, sugar, and sumach. In 1614-15 the range of imports was narrower, but included metheglin, probably from Wales, block wood, tombstones, copperas, and campecha, presumably Campeachy wood. In 1639-40 roughly the same amount of goods was imported, involving 189 vessels of which 153 were local ones plying the Bristol Channel. Coal and salt were then the principal commodities, together with building materials such as cases of glass, laths and other timber, nails and iron rods, besides cloth known as Manchester ware.

In the 1620s and 1630s licences to export grain and other goods to Ireland further stimulated cross-channel trade,  but restrictions on Irish trade were imposed during the rebellion there in 1649-50.  In 1656 Bridgwater tried to revive the trade in millstones, imported from South Wales. Piracy sometimes caused disruption, and in 1666 trade was said to be ‘at a stand’ except for foreign ships which could afford escorts.  Bridgwater was in 1661 asked to support an escort vessel for the Newfoundland fishing fleet.  The increase in trade which peace brought had only a limited effect on Bridgwater, the largest ships turning to foreign business such as salt and lime from La Rochelle and neglecting coal and cloth. In 1669 a ship from Virginia was at Minehead bound for Bridgwater. Bridgwater vessels were involved in French-Irish and English-Dutch trade in the 1670s and operated direct links with Spain, Ireland, and other English ports. William Alloway, a general merchant of Bridgwater, between 1695 and 1704 traded in salt, tallow, Irish wool, and West Indian tobacco, and his ships visited London, Liverpool, Waterford, Cork, Dublin, Minehead, Port Isaac (Cornwall), and Barbados.

Throughout the eighteenth century the port supported c. 1,000 tons of shipping, in 1701 made up of 33 vessels employing 171 men. Foreign trade accounted for one third or less of the tonnage until the middle of the century, but thereafter for two thirds. It included ‘very good’ wheat exported via Bristol to Madeira, illegal rum imported from Gallipoli and Leghorn, and unspecified trade with Newfoundland. About 1760 the principal foreign imports were deal boards, small masts, pipestaves, coal, and culm. Coasters brought in beer and cider, bottles, bricks, cheese, bacon, and wood hoops. Corn went outwards to Bristol. Quantities of salt were also imported from Droitwich. By the 1770s trade was said to be chiefly with Portugal and Newfoundland, but traders had contacts with Gibraltar, Virginia, and the West Indies, and dealt in large quantities of Irish wool.

There were 32 vessels registered in the port in 1789, trading largely in coal from Wales, wool from Ireland, and timber from the Baltic and North America, and in the 1820s around 60 vessels came regularly.  The growth of the brick and tile industry increased tonnage after the 1850s. Trade doubled between the 1820s and 1870s: for1870-3 reaching an average of 204,809 tons a year carried in 3,793 vessels. The peak year was 1878 with 233,039 tons. During the same period there were 145 ships registered in the port totalling 8,943 tons.

Four companies, Stuckey & Bagehot; Haviland; Axford; and Sully dominated business in the port in the nineteenth century.

• The Havilands had a fleet of small vessels in the coal, culm, and limestone business
• The Axfords owned the London and Bridgwater Shipping Co. between 1825 and 1847, and were coastal traders with fast schooners;
• Stuckey and Bagehot had larger vessels which used Combwich quay until the dock was built
• The Sullys were coal and culm merchants, mostly engaged in coastal trade but occasionally sailing to Scotland, Ireland, and France.

In 1851 at least 199 people in the parish were directly involved in overseas trade as mariners, pilots, sailors, or seamen, and a further 28 were engaged in shipbuilding.

Between the 1870s and 1904 trade fluctuated, ultimately declining following the construction of the Severn Railway Tunnel in 1886, which lessened the need for coastal trade, which was compounded by the active discouragement of the railway company which owned Bridgwater docks. However, some strength came through exports of tiles to Australia and New Zealand and of tiles and Bath brick to Canada, the United States, Spain, France, and Germany, which resulted in the construction of a new quay in 1903-4. In the opposite direction, before 1914 linseed was imported for cattle feed manufacture and foreign timber for the building trades. Total trading nevertheless declined, and on one day in 1911 only one vessel was moored in the river. 

Technical advances in brick and tile manufacture abroad after the First World War reduced exports, and coal came increasingly by rail. In 1937 the number of vessels nearly halved in the port as a whole and there was further decline in the following year. The last sailing vessel to berth commercially at the quay came in 1934. In 1953 the telescopic bridge opened for the last time to allow commercial ships to berth at the riverside quays. The whole port, exporting an average of 5,000 tons in the 1930s, exported none in 1968. The docks, their future already uncertain, took no more coal after 1966 and were closed in 1971.

Today, following the closure of the town’s wharves and the docks, Dunball is the main wharf of the port of Bridgwater, were Amey plc operate the main berth, handling aggregates imports. AG Watts Shipping lease the second berth handling agricultural imports/exports, building materials and the occasional passenger vessel, most often the PS Waverley and MV Balmoral on their annual summer visit. Dunball wharf was built in 1844 by Bridgwater coal merchants and was formerly linked to the Bristol and Exeter Railway by a rail track which crossed the present A38. by a horse-drawn tramway. The Dunball Steam Pottery & Brick & Tile Works was built in 1875 adjacent to the wharf.

Combwich Pill, a small creek nearer the mouth of the river, had been used for shipping since the 14th century. From the 1830s, with the development of the brick and tile industry in the Combwich area, the wharf was used by two local brickyards to import coal and export tiles to Wales and parts of Gloucestershire. This traffic ceased in the 1930s; and in the late 1950s the wharf was taken over and upgraded by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) to bring in heavy materials for the Hinkley Point A and later Hinkley Point B nuclear power stations.

Mariners