Shipbuilding and Ship Owners

Walking along the Whitstable beaches it is difficult to find evidence of the substantial shipping industry that started in 1662 or even before. Wallace Harvey, in his book “The Merchant Ships of Whitstable” lists 73 ships built between 1775 and 1913, the largest being the Nellie S at 282 tons. These ships would have towered over the houses and provided work for many skilled shipwrights, smiths and sailmakers.

Whitstable people were also ship owners, 28 ships in the 17th century, 31 in the 18th, over 400 in the 19th, reducing to a handful in the 20th century. This world-wide trade involved the West Indies for sugar and tobacco, Africa for dates, Norway for ice and of course vast quantities of coal from Sunderland. Early imports to Whitstable included large quantities of copperas, used to make sulphuric acid which made Whitstable part of the early chemical industry.

Fascinating also was the building of ships in Prince Edward Island, sometimes constructed cheaply just to transport Canadian softwood to Europe. Over a hundred of these ships were purchased by Whitstable people, the wooden fastenings being replaced by iron and the bottoms coppered in Whitstable shipyards to comply with English regulations.

Ships require captains and crew. In 1870, the records show 100 master mariners in Whitstable, the surnames include Camburn, Gann, Gaskin, Greenfinch, Kemp, Rigden and Stroud. The harbour was built in 1832 and was the first in the world to serve a railway, taking coal and passengers to Canterbury.

From: The Merchant Ships of Whitstable, by Wallace Harvey, ISBN 1 871716 04 7

See also the article on copperas by Geoffrey Pike: www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba66/feat2.shtml