It Is Very Remarkable, That Though Ships Of 500
Ton May, Upon A Spring Tide, Come Up Very Near This
Town, and many
ships of that burthen have been built there, yet the river is not
navigable any farther than
The town itself, or but very little; no,
not for the smallest beats; nor does the tide, which rises
sometimes thirteen or fourteen feet, and gives them twenty-four
feet water very near the town, flow much farther up the river than
the town, or not so much as to make it worth speaking of.
He took little notice of the town, or at least of that part of
Ipswich, who published in his wild observations on it that ships of
200 ton are built there. I affirm, that I have seen a ship of 400
ton launched at the building-yard, close to the town; and I appeal
to the Ipswich colliers (those few that remain) belonging to this
town, if several of them carrying seventeen score of coals, which
must be upward of 400 ton, have not formerly been built here; but
superficial observers must be superficial writers, if they write at
all; and to this day, at John's Ness, within a mile and a half of
the town itself, ships of any burthen may be built and launched
even at neap tides.
I am much mistaken, too, if since the Revolution some very good
ships have not been built at this town, and particularly the
Melford or Milford galley, a ship of forty guns; as the Greyhound
frigate, a man-of-war of thirty-six to forty guns, was at John's
Ness. But what is this towards lessening the town of Ipswich, any
more than it would be to say, they do not build men-of-war, or East
India ships, or ships of five hundred ton burden at St. Catherines,
or at Battle Bridge in the Thames? when we know that a mile or two
lower, viz., at Radcliffe, Limehouse, or Deptford, they build ships
of a thousand ton, and might build first-rate men-of-war too, if
there was occasion; and the like might be done in this river of
Ipswich, within about two or three miles of the town; so that it
would not be at all an out-of-the-way speaking to say, such a ship
was built at Ipswich, any more than it is to say, as they do, that
the Royal Prince, the great ship lately built for the South Sea
Company, was London built, because she was built at Limehouse.
And why then is not Ipswich capable of building and receiving the
greatest ships in the navy, seeing they may be built and brought up
again laden, within a mile and half of the town?
But the neighbourhood of London, which sucks the vitals of trade in
this island to itself, is the chief reason of any decay of business
in this place; and I shall, in the course of these observations,
hint at it, where many good seaports and large towns, though
farther off than Ipswich, and as well fitted for commerce, are yet
swallowed up by the immense indraft of trade to the City of London;
and more decayed beyond all comparison than Ipswich is supposed to
be: as Southampton, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and several others which
I shall speak to in their order; and if it be otherwise at this
time, with some other towns, which are lately increased in trade
and navigation, wealth, and people, while their neighbours decay,
it is because they have some particular trade, or accident to
trade, which is a kind of nostrum to them, inseparable to the
place, and which fixes there by the nature of the thing; as the
herring-fishery to Yarmouth; the coal trade to Newcastle; the Leeds
clothing trade; the export of butter and lead, and the great corn
trade for Holland, is to Hull; the Virginia and West India trade at
Liverpool; the Irish trade at Bristol, and the like. Thus the war
has brought a flux of business and people, and consequently of
wealth, to several places, as well as to Portsmouth, Chatham,
Plymouth, Falmouth, and others; and were any wars like those, to
continue twenty years with the Dutch, or any nation whose fleets
lay that way, as the Dutch do, it would be the like perhaps at
Ipswich in a few years, and at other places on the same coast.
But at this present time an occasion offers to speak in favour of
this port; namely, the Greenland fishery, lately proposed to be
carried on by the South Sea Company. On which account I may freely
advance this, without any compliment to the town of Ipswich, no
place in Britain is equally qualified like Ipswich; whether we
respect the cheapness of building and fitting out their ships and
shallops; also furnishing, victualling, and providing them with all
kinds of stores; convenience for laying up the ships after the
voyage, room for erecting their magazines, warehouses, rope walks,
cooperages, etc., on the easiest terms; and especially for the
noisome cookery, which attends the boiling their blubber, which may
be on this river (as it ought to be) remote from any places of
resort. Then their nearness to the market for the oil when it is
made, and which, above all, ought to be the chief thing considered
in that trade, the easiness of their putting out to sea when they
begin their voyage, in which the same wind that carries them from
the mouth of the haven, is fair to the very seas of Greenland.
I could say much more to this point if it were needful, and in few
words could easily prove, that Ipswich must have the preference of
all the port towns of Britain, for being the best centre of the
Greenland trade, if ever that trade fall into the management of
such a people as perfectly understand, and have a due honest regard
to its being managed with the best husbandry, and to the prosperity
of the undertaking in general.
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