This blog was written by Emily Rowe, a PHD student engaged on the ‘Northern Bridge – Carr-Ellison Project’. The aim of the project is to explore the records and histories of international trade and maritime transnational links between north-east England and the wider world through the records of Cotesworth, Carr and Ellison families held at Northumberland Archives and Tyne & Wear Archives.
“…a Merchant has the most anxious time which can never be lessened while he thinks it worth following…[I] often had the Mortification of seeing the very best concerted plans Overturned by a Variety of Untoward Accidents”
– Ralph Carr
Ralph Carr (1711-1806) was a successful businessman in eighteenth-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was a merchant adventurer, exporting local resources such as corn and coal, and dealing with commodities from iron and timber to wine and whale-oil. He had contacts all over Northern Europe, with his mercantile activities stretching from Amsterdam to St Petersburg. Around 1750, Ralph Carr extended his reach even further as he began to trade with New York and Boston.
Carr’s Atlantic dealings likely started off as a favour. He had merchant friends in Amsterdam looking for a convenient route through British customs. Cargo from Europe to America needed to stop in Britain and pay taxes. Ralph Carr facilitated this for his Dutch friends and filled the boats with ballast – heavy cargo such as grindstones and coal that provided stability for the ship to make its long journey east. Carr’s profit from this agreement was small…so he began to try to sell goods of his own to the American merchants.
In a 1750 letter to a Boston merchant, a copy of which is at Northumberland Archives, Carr tries to convince the merchant to purchase goods from the north-east:
‘‘We have many articles than answer well with you, & yearly ship great quantities for my friends in Boston and all parts of America as they are cheaper here than in any part of England…Lead, Shott, sheet Lead, Grindstones…& every sort of Glassware & Earthenwares…Cloth, Blanketts, Rugs, & all kings of Woolen Goods, we have also bought.”
Carr sent many letters of this sort to his contacts in America. He stressed the variety of goods the North of England had to offer and promised that they came cheaper than anywhere else in England and Europe. But the response was disappointing. American merchants were not interested in most of the goods Carr offered them – they only wanted cheap ballast and sometimes earthenware. One Boston merchant did put in some orders for glassware, lead, and linens, but never paid Carr and the dispute went on for years. Carr wrote to the merchant in 1752:
“I am really quite tired out with writing to you year after year upon this same disagreeable subject and am sorry for your repeated promises which only pass for words of course, however, I shall wait until the Fall for their accomplishment and no longer.”
Despite his many successes as a merchant, Carr was never able to crack the American market. Lack of interest in his wares and caution on Carr’s side over selling to Americans on credit rather than cash meant that despite his connections, Carr’s dealings with American trade were frustrating and had very modest profits. In a 1756 letter, Carr wrote to two New York merchants, “I absolutely refused to be concern’d with any ships [to New York] save such as Enter’d every pennyworth of their goods fairly and above board”. By 1765, however, the Newcastle-America trade came to a grinding halt when the British government demanded bonds of £2000 from all merchants trading with America and the Newcastle merchants refused to comply. British-imposed taxes on shipped goods to and from America were a source of growing resentment on both sides and the escalation of these frustrations, just twenty years after Carr attempted to trade with Boston, led to the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
Sources
Digital copy of portrait of Ralph Carr, Northumberland Archives, ref: ZCE/F/4/1/2/9.
Copy letter from Ralph Carr, Newcastle upon Tyne, to Benjamin Tenouil Esq. [at Boston, America] (1750), Northumberland Archives, ref: ZCE/E/3/5/1/14/1033.
Note by Ralph Carr, Newcastle upon Tyne, to William Fletcher [at Boston, America] (1752), Northumberland Archives, ref: ZCE/E/3/5/1/14/1133.
Copy letter from Ralph Carr & Co., Newcastle upon Tyne, to Messrs Philip and John Livingston and David Provost [at New York, America] (1756), ZCE/E/3/5/1/14/1214.
A. W. Purdue, Merchants and Gentry in North-East England 1650-1830: The Carrs and the Ellisons (University of Sunderland Press, 1999), pp. 141-86.
William I. Roberts, III, ‘Ralph Carr: A Newcastle Merchant and the American Colonial Trade’, The Business History Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1968), pp. 271-287
Very interesting, Emily.
But about the comments on heavy goods as ballast – this is a misunderstanding of the nature of the term ballast. Ideally a ship’s master managed a cargo of sufficient weight not to need ballast, which was added to a ship when its cargo was of insufficient weight to give the ship stability, and jettisoned when the ship arrived at port. It was always a low-value material such as gravel, but even so, it took time and money to obtain, and to load and unload, so It was undesirable. Most ships travelling to and from Europe didn’t need ballast as they took grindstones, coal &c and brought back timber, iron &c. However, it was often used by Newcastle colliers on their way back from London because it was impossible to find enough cargo to fill every ship returning to Newcastle.
Thank you for your comment.