THE RATHER LIMITED MODERN LITERATURE on English shipping is somewhat ambivalent on its importance in the development process leading to the Industrial Revolution. One of the best known authorities on the subject, Ralph Davis, thought its effects on the process “cannot easily be disentangled from those of trade,” and concluded: “The shipping industry was an important part of the English economy, both before and after the decisive decades of the Industrial Revolution, but it cannot be said to have made a contribution of a special character to the transition.” Robert Craig, another leading authority, viewing the relationship apparently from a different consideration, is more optimistic: “There can be little doubt,” he says, “that the capital invested in shipping represented one of the most important forms of fixed … capital in Britain in the period of industrialization.” The ambiguity in the literature probably arises from a consideration of shipping in isolation from the shipbuilding industry. Of course, conceptually the separation makes good sectoral sense, for shipping is a service industry, while shipbuilding produces a physical product and, therefore, belongs to manufacturing. However, for purposes of a more accurate assessment of the contribution of the shipping trade to the industrialization process, under the conditions of the mercantilist world of 1650–1850, it makes more practical sense to take the shipping and shipbuilding trades together.