The Finances and Fortunes of Yorkshire Coast Harbours in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Bridlington Quay, Scarborough and Whitby have long possessed harbours. Scarborough and Whitby in particular were the bases for a range of maritime activities that for a period attained a degree of national and even international significance in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, overland transport difficulties constrained their abilities to service the growing inland industrial areas. All three harbours were largely reconstructed during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the aid of passing tolls paid by vessels engaged in the coal trade from the North-East. In the mid nineteenth century these tolls were abolished and the harbour authorities had to look for other sources of revenue. This paper seeks to examine how these harbours adapted to changing circumstances as their traditional maritime activities and sources of income declined and even disappeared during the nineteenth century. All three were increasingly marginalised in terms of maritime activity whilst their larger neighbours on the Tyne, Tees and Humber continued to expand.