Georgian Liverpool’s northern whaling trade reconsidered: Ranking, significance and geography

Abstract

This article re-appraises Liverpool’s involvement in the northern whaling trade c.1750-1823. It shows that the town ranked second amongst England’s whaling ports at different times during the 1750s, 1760s, 1770s, and again in 1794. This is much earlier and frequent than previously thought, and therefore has implications for our understanding of the geography of the nation’s whaling industry. Gordon Jackson famously asserted that all the major whaling ports were on the east coast. Whilst this article does not contest the broad thrust of Jackson’s thesis, it does suggest a slight modification. The ability of west coast Liverpool to achieve ‘second’ rank, even if this was for only brief periods, shows that the dominance of the east coast in whaling, though clearly strong, was not absolute.