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Safety at Sea during the Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2021

Morgan Kelly Open the ORCID record for Morgan Kelly [Opens in a new window] ,
Cormac Ó Gráda  and
Peter M. Solar
Morgan Kelly
Affiliation:
Professor at the School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: Morgan.Kelly@ucd.ie.
Cormac Ó Gráda
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus at the School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: cormac.ograda@ucd.ie.
Peter M. Solar
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus at CEREC, Université Saint-Louis—Bruxelles, Boulevard du Jardin botanique, 43, 1000 Brussels, Belgium and Associate Member at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, George Street, Oxford OX1 2RL, United Kingdom. E-mail: psolar@vub.ac.be.
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Abstract

Shipping, central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, was an extremely hazardous activity. Between the 1780s and 1820s, a safety revolution occurred that saw shipping losses and insurance rates on oceanic routes almost halved thanks to steady improvements in shipbuilding and navigation. Copper sheathing, iron reinforcing, and flush decks were the major innovations in shipbuilding. Navigation improved, not through chronometers, which remained too expensive and unreliable for general use, but through radically improved charts, accessible manuals of basic navigational techniques, and improved shore-based navigational aids.

“Curse thee, thou quadrant!” dashing it to the deck, “no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea.”

Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Ch. CXIII

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Article
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 239 - 275
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2021

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Footnotes

We are grateful to Richard Dunn, Aidan Kane, and Adrian Leonard for helpful comments on earlier versions; to Adrian Leonard for sharing data with us; and to Ian Buxton and Nicholas Rodger for advice. As ever, the editors and referees of this Journal helped sharpen the arguments and presentation.

References

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