Trade in 1791 - essentials and home comforts

Greenock's shipbuilding and sugar refining industries relied heavily on imported goods.  Shipbuilding required timber, much of which was imported from Canada.  Sugar was imported from the West Indies and refined here.  However the Greenock ships which brought back these valuable cargoes did not make their outward journey empty.  They supplied invaluable commodities which the settlers and traders in these far away lands could not easily obtain.

This advertisement (I've reproduced part of it here) from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1791 shows what goods were being exported from Britain by ships belonging to Greenock merchants.  Among the items being offered for sale were:-

Food - refined sugar, Cheshire cheese, salad oil

Clothing - shoes, stockings, hats

Fabric - Irish linen, printed cotton in fashionable patterns, corduroys, woollens, embroidered serge

Metal goods - nails, ships anchors, German steel,

Household essentials - earthenware, frying pans, kettles, window glass, candles

Toiletries - soap, hair power

Other items included - tobacco, paint and oil, fishing nets, sail cloth guns, powder and shot.

It is so interesting to see the sorts of things that were traded then.  Obviously it was not just the working essentials that were important to settlers, they also required some home comforts and luxury goods.  Many local merchants had branches of their business on both sides of the Atlantic in order to make the most of the trading opportunities available.  William Forsyth, who is named in the advertisement, was an important merchant in Nova Scotia with trading partners in Greenock.  There will be more about William Forsyth and his family in future posts.