Shipping was central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, but an extremely hazardous activity: in the 1780s, roughly five per cent of British ships sailing in summer for the United States never returned. Against the widespread belief that shipping technology was stagnant before iron...

The tonnage of shipping entering and leaving Ireland grew rapidly from the late eighteenth century until the mid-1870s, after which there was a distinct slowdown. The mid-nineteenth century was notable for a five-fold increase in shipping per capita, an indicator of the Irish economys increasing...