CAMPBELTOWN'S AMERICAN TRADE
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Susan MacDonald.
Fifty years after Union, Campbeltown began to develop a trade with the American colonies and the West Indies. England's Navigation Laws had always reserved trading rights with her Colonies for English merchants only; after 1707 Scottish merchants, too, could import colonial tobacco, coffee, tea, rum, muscavado sugar, and cotton wool, and sell these items to Dutch, French, Irish and other European merchants.
However, Scottish traders only gradually developed the means and facilities to take advantage of these trading rights. By the mid-eighteenth century Bristol and Whitehaven tobacco houses were complaining that Glasgow merchants had usurped their trade. The Glasgow tobacco lords did successfully establish their trade with the colonies by the 1760's and families ljke the Cunninghams and the Spiers built fortunes on the tobacco trade.(1)
Campbeltown never competed in selling tobacco, but the merchants did establish a moderate exchange with the West Indies and North America as the records of the port show. Campbeltown customs letters from 1743, customs debentures from 1745, and the customs accounts from 1749 are in the Register House, Edinburgh, and are the source of this study.(2)
The first recorded transatlantic cargo from Campbeltown went to Kingston, Jamaica, in 1745 in the Prince Charles of Belfast. William McKinlay, Campbeltown merchant and one-time provost, exported the twenty-five hunderweight soap, candles, tallow and shoes for Johnson Legg and Company of Belfast. A similar cargo followed the next year, but Francis Farquharson, another local merchant with extensive shares in herring busses, handled the exporting transactions. An interesting cargo of linen and five copper stills was sent to Cape Fear, North Carolina, in 1752. Cape Fear was the location of Campbeltown and later to gain fame through Flora MacDonald.(3) The next year linen, tartans, handkerchiefs, threads, and aprons were exported to Pennsylvania, and in 1754 two cargoes with passengers and their stores sailed for Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The Pennsylvania ship returned with flax seed and oak.
The trade continued in this sporadic fashion with one or two ships a year carrying out passengers or manufactured items to North America and returning with timber or flax. Only one ship in 1758 brought back tobacco from Virginia. Ships to the West Indies took herring, linen manufactures, and tallow products and returned with sugar from St. Christophers or St. Kitts. Almost all of these ventures were handled solely by Campbeltown men.
Beginning in 1756, a different pattern to the trade emerges. That year two cargoes with colonial rum were landed in Campbeltown and re-exported to Ireland. Charles McNeill imported for Messrs. Gallon and Thomson of Belfast and Robert Orr for Thomas Gregg also of Belfast. The next year there were three such cargoes, all bound ultimately for Ireland. By 1767 the re-export trade was well established with eight cargoes. Campbeltown agents were Robert Orr and William Finlay. The vessels used were all Irish and eventually landed their cargoes which were rum in every case in Londonderry, Newry and Belfast. Cargoes of staves, potash and wood still arrived in Campbeltown from Boston, Philadelphia, the Carolinas or New York. In 1767 the Monfield and the Endeavour even brought oil, blubber and fish from Newfoundland. But the centre of the trade after 1765 was in the West Indies and the desired cargo rum.
Campbeltown merchants appear to have made a place for themselves as agents in the rum trade to Ireland. Glasgow merchants handled colonial tobacco and later re-exported the high-duty item to trading companies in Europe; in a similar way but on a smaller scale, Campbeltown men imported rum or sometimes sugar or cotton wool for the Irish trading houses. The relatively sudden inception of the re-exports in 1765 coincides with the British Government's purchase of the Isle of Man from the Duke of Atholl for £70,000. This island previously had its own laws and low duties and was a centre of an illicit trade, particularly with Ireland. When it came under the jurisdiction of the British Parliament in 1765, Ireland lost a valuable link in transatlantic trade.(4) It would appear that Campbeltown merchants as agents filled the gap to some extent.
A 1769 debenture provides a sample of the activity. Colin McNeill and Robert Orr, Campbeltown merchants, landed 164 puncheons of rum or 17,846 gallons rum from British Plantations on 19 August, 1768. The rum was landed in the ship Sally of Newry. Duties were paid by McNeill and he too oath that:
the goods mentioned in this debenture are really and truly exported
on the account
and risque of Arthur Hughes of Newry merchant for whom the deponent acted
by
commission and had the direction of the voyage and not landed, nor intended
to be
relanded in any part of Great Britain, Isle of Man or the Island of
Faro.(5)
The quantity was re-shipped on 24 August, 1768, to Newry. Included with the debenture is a certificate to say that Arthur Hughes landed the rum in Newry on 8 October, 1768. Thereafter there is no way of knowing what happened to the goods. A considerable quantity would probably be smuggled back into Britain to satisfy the demands of a population suffering under the high duties of a revenue-seeking government.
It is difficult to ascertain how much of the responsibility and risk was borne by the local merchants. In most cases the customs debentures state that the responsibility fell upon the Irish trading houses and they appear to have sponsored the ventures. There is evidence, however, that the Campbeltown merchants shouldered an increasing amount of the trade. In 1769 the Campbeltown ship the Neptune imported rum and re-shipped it under the risk of the local merchant Charles McNeill. John Montgomery landed it for him in Larne. Later that year another Campbeltown ship Rubie was employed. In a peak year of the trade 1770, sixteen cargoes were re-exported to Ireland. Charles McNeill handled two for himself and Ronald Campbell, one; two Campbeltown ships, Neptune and Bell were used. It is also interesting to note that the names of several merchants landing rum in Ireland - John Campbell, John Montgomery, William Stewart, and James Mcvicar - are the names of Campbeltown men trading at approximately the same time. Perhaps these were local men who went to Ireland to carry on that end of the business. The scarcity of eighteenth-century records as well as the illicit and secretive nature of much of the trade make such problems speculative.
The year 1772 showed a sharp reduction of the re-export cargoes. That year customs laws were changed forbidding rum to be re-imported into Britain after having been landed in Ireland. Even in that roundabout way, rum had still been cheaper in Britain than by direct purchase owing to a loophole in the customs laws. Enforcement was also tightened. These changes, however, increased the risks in illicit trade and lessened the rewards. In 1772 there was only one re-export cargo - a sharp contrast to the previous years. Thereafter ships still sailed, but less frequently and they carried only sugar and cotton wool. The West Indian trade really ceased in 1772 as a result of legal changes; the outbreak of the American rebellion in 1775 and the dangerous war-time seas that were a consequence finished the transatlantic trade for Campbeltown. In 1778 Irish merchants risked the import of three cargoes of sugar. That was the last of the colonial-Irish re-export trade that passed through Campbeltown. By 1785 the American colonies had free trade.
Campbeltown was in its heyday from 1765 to 1771, the busiest years the quay had known. Campbeltown merchants were in the right place at the right time and took advantage of the economic opportunity. Although the transatlantic trade ended in the 1770's, a spirit of enterprise remained and the merchants eventually found an outlet in distilling as well as in continuing the herring buss fishing.
Footnotes:
1. T.M.Devine, The Tobacco Lords, John Donald Publications 1975.
2. Campbeltown Customs Letters (CE 82/1): Campbeltown Quarterly Accounts (E504/8); Campbeltown Customs Debentures (E512). These manuscripts are not paginated and reference is made by date only. Before the Campbeltown customs letters were removed to Edinburgh, the late Father James A. Webb made a comprehensive transcript of the letters. His work was invaluable to me in this study.
3. Andrew McKerral says in a letter to Father Webb included with the Customs letters transcript: "It was in this locality that the Kintyre emigrants founded the town of Campbeltown, later Fayetteville, about 1740, to which Flora MacDonald and her husband went, sailing in the ship Baliol from Campbeltown in 1774." Letter of 29 November 1954.
4. L. M. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade, 1660-1800, Manchester University Press, 1968, pp. 148-151.
5:. Campbeltown Customs Debentures, E512/141, 19Aug. 1768.
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