The Background
The modern history of the Fossdyke dates from an Act of 1670/1 which allowed the City of Lincoln to declare itself the undertaker and to levy tolls. The Corporation found it convenient to grant a lease of one-third of the profits to Samuel Fortrey (1622-81) in exchange for his supervising the reconstruction and meeting one-third of the expenses beyond a certain threshold.[1] In July 1714, this lease was purchased by a Lincoln attorney, Robert Peart (1684-1732)[2] who took on the management of the navigation.
Because the corporation was entitled to two-thirds of the profits, Peart needed to account for the tolls received and the volume which forms the basis of this publication was the means by which he did so. It passed in due course into the corporation’s muniments and is now preserved in Lincolnshire Archives (LAO) as Lincoln City / L1/4/8.
Description of the Document
Peart drew up the accounts under the ancient Charge / Discharge system. The first category consisted of tolls that he was entitled to receive (whether or not he had yet received them). The second category covered expenditure, principally repairs and maintenance. At the end of each year, the total Discharge was subtracted from the total Charge, to calculate the year’s profit. Of this, two-thirds was due to the Corporation.
Only the Charge section is reproduced here. The major operators of boats are each given their own section, in which tolls due are listed in date order; smaller operators are lumped together as ‘other persons’ or ‘the country people’. Each section starts on a fresh page (or in 1714-15 a fresh column). If the entries reached the bottom of the page, a continuation page was started, normally the next unused page in the volume. Thus a year’s entries for the biggest operators extend over two or more pages. From 1718, Peart started to leave extra pages so that the year’s tolls for the biggest operators could appear all in one block.
In its fullest possible extent an entry takes the following form:
May 3rd John Parker 8 tons coles from the Trent (by-clause) (out of-clause) … 8s.
The operator’s name only appears for the smaller operators; for the larger operators it is given at the top of the page. The tonnage and commodity are straightforward enough. The next entry is usually ‘from the Trent’ or ‘to the Trent’; occasionally ‘from Lincoln’ is stated instead of ‘to the Trent’. A fuller description was needed for the relatively few trips that did not extend the full length of the Fossdyke. The two clauses that follow are uncommon and are described later in this account. Entries for the smaller operators were initialled when payment was made. If they were written off (as a surprising proportion were) a finger symbol was placed next to them.
How Tolls were Assessed
Even though Peart was based in Lincoln, the recording of tolls due must have taken place at Torksey, close to the junction with the Trent. This is where the locks were situated, so it would be a convenient spot for examining boats. The task will have been undertaken by the lock-keeper: there is an entry in the 1714-5 expenses for a reame of printed papers for ye Sluce keeper to make out his bills by. This is confirmed by the occasional mention of transshipment that must have occurred at the Trent. Also, whereas journeys to Torksey from intermediate points on the navigation are mentioned in the accounts in the normal way, those (very few) from intermediate points to Lincoln are for most of the period added in later, having been recorded by some other means.
The amount to be charged had been laid down in 1671 by commissioners set up under the Act: basically one shilling per ton. For short journeys – those not passing through Saxilby – the toll was sixpence. Grain and seed of any sort were to be charged by volume: a shilling for 6 quarters of oats or 4 quarters of any other grain, and smaller quantities pro rata.[3]
This distinction meant that a ton of grain was charged at a slightly higher rate than anything else. It was common practice elsewhere – in later years at least – to charge a higher toll for higher-value goods, but this seems not to have been the thinking of the commissioners. Quite possibly they thought that a commodity that travelled in sacks of a standard size might most easily be assessed by counting the sacks.
This leads on to the question of how, fifty years after the commissioners had set these tolls, the lock-keeper at Torksey decided what toll ought to be charged. If the cargo was purely of grain, he could count the sacks. If there were bills of lading, he could obtain the weight from these. Certainly bills of lading were made compulsory a century later, and there are indications – notably a statement of 3 March 1720: vide ye bill – that bills of lading were sometimes carried. But we have to explain how most of the larger operators managed to claim when they paid at the end of the year that they had been overcharged and to have something knocked off their bill. In its most explicit form (eg John Hawkshaw, 1718), the discount is explained as “abated for being overcharged & charged for wh[at] he never had – £1 14s”. The outright denial of the second part is actually explicable by the practice of sub-contracting – described under the by-clause – but the first part implies something else. Indeed, there are cases where the abatement does not correspond in value to any set of toll entries, so it cannot be explained as a denial of liability. What might explain it would be the practice of gauging boats, which had become normal on the Trent by the end of the century: boats were gauged by loading them with known weights and recording their displacement; lock-keepers were supplied with the data for each boat and by measuring the displacement they could estimate its load. As the later Trent Gauging Books noted, boats in use tended to take on water and the wood might become water-logged, so the displacement at a given loading would tend to increase. So perhaps some of these adjustments are caused by a fresh gauging of boats – or some of them – at the end of the year. Yet another possibility is that the allegation of over-charging was merely a pretext for obtaining a discount. It is striking that in many instances the adjusted figure is a round sum.
Whatever the method used to assess the weight of a cargo, the results were almost always a whole number of tons.[4] The lock-keeper at Torksey must often have found himself having to decide whether to round up or round down, sometimes with the man who would be paying the bill looking over his shoulder. Was there any mechanism to keep him honest? There is perhaps an acknowledgement of the difficulty in a clause in the agreement the Corporation and Robert Peart drew up with the Lord of the Manor of Torksey but never executed:[5] no keeper or surveyor of locks was to keep a Public House in Torksey without the consent of the said Lord. It was in the interests of the Corporation and Robert Peart that the lock-keeper should not be exposed to the temptation of favouring good customers of his establishment.
The Final Years
After 1723-4 there is a gap, in which we only have summary accounts for each year. Detailed accounts are resumed immediately after Robert Peart’s death in 1732. Each operator now has his own section, and the sum owing may be calculated – and invoices no doubt sent out – more often than once a year.
THE ACCOUNTS
- 1714–1715
- 1715–1716 (Reconstruction)
- 1716–1717
- 1717–1718
- 1718–1719
- 1719–1720
- 1720–1721
- 1721–1722
- 1722–1723
- 1723–1724
- 1732–1735
- 1735–1736
- 1736–1737
Format used in spreadsheets
Column A
A reference number added for users’ convenience, of the form pppnnn where ppp is the page number in the volume, nnn is the entry number within the page. Where a page has two columns, entries in the second column should start at 501.
Columns B, C
Dates are converted to New Style and advanced 200 years. Thus 24 March 1715 in the accounts is treated as 24 March 1916 in the spreadsheet but will normally be formatted so that only the last two digits of the year are visible; 25 March 1716 in the accounts becomes 25 March 1916 in the spreadsheet. The reason for the shift of 200 years is that Excel cannot accept dates before 1900 other than as text. Calculations of the difference between two dates (within the range being used) will be correct but functions that return the day of the week will give an incorrect answer. Column B (hidden) has the proper dates (eg 1714 rather than 1914) but these were only entered for the earlier part of the accounts.
Note that because the dates are in the Julian calendar, the seasons are early: the winter solstice occurs about 10 December, the spring equinox about 11 March.
Column D
The person liable to payment of toll (referred to here as the boat operator) is listed each year as spelled in that year, except that later variants of spelling within a year have been silently altered to the form first encountered. Common Christian names are silently abbreviated to standard forms, Jn being used for John, Jon for Jonathan,
Column E
This is the total tonnage for a consignment. Wheat, malt & corn are actually measured in qtrs, charged at 4 qtrs to a ton (6 qtrs for oats) unless the contrary is noted; the figure given for these commodities is a nominal tonnage.
Column F
Toll in shillings. In order to allow estimates to be made of annual totals, where two commodities are lumped together, 60% of the amount is assigned to the first commodity, 40% to the second; where 3 items, in the ratio 4:3:2.
Column G
The commodity is listed with original spelling in most cases, except that consistency within each year has been imposed for the convenience of sorting.
Column H gives the journey charged.
fm/to = from/to Trent
“from Lincolne” is silently converted to “to [Trent]”
DT = from Drinsey to Trent
DL = from Drinsey to Lincoln
HL = from Hardwick Lane to Lincoln
HT = from Hardwick Lane to Trent
LSx= Lincoln to Saxilby
SWL = Skellingthorpe Wath to Lincoln
SWT= Skellingthorpe Wath to Trent
SxL= Saxilby to Lincoln. Normally the destination is unstated but the load appears not to have passed Torksey.
SxT = Saxilby to Trent
StX = from Stump Cross (full toll). This location has not been identified.
TD = from Trent to Drinsey
TSx = from Trent to Saxilby
TMrS = from Trent to Mr Stowe’s Wath. Location not identified.
Column I is a code used when there are multiple commodities in a single entry.
m = multiple items, with the quantity of each specified.
c = continuation line for entry above.
u = multiple commodities with the quantity of each unstated.
Column J gives the name of the person listed in a ‘by-clause’.
Column K is used for notes. This includes abatements and a summary of entries on the Charge side which are not related to individual consignments. Sub-totals and totals are given insofar as they seemed useful.
The 1715-16 accounts
Most of the pages for this year’s Charge are partly torn away. Where part of a word remains it is often possible to deduce the whole word; this has been done silently. Names of operators (when allocated a dedicated page) are sometimes lost but can be restored from a later page where the totals from each page are brought forward. The totals at the foot of each page normally survive and in some cases allow lost toll amounts – and hence the quantities – to be deduced. It was normal practice in transcribing the records to compute a sub-total within the spreadsheet to check against the sub-totals in the accounts; whereas for other years these check-sums were computed and immediately deleted, for this year they have been left in the spreadsheet; they can be recognised by not having a line number in column A.
This leaves a certain number of trips where information – typically the commodity – is not recoverable. Because each operator has his own characteristic mix of traffic, this has been addressed on a statistical basis, so that the resultant figures for the total of each commodity is unbiased. The method for each operator is explained at Annex A. This best estimate is presented in the spreadsheet of commodity totals by year.
The purpose has been to allow estimates to be made of the commodities carried in this year, which can stand alongside figures for other years, Likewise the seasonal patterns of trade and the activities of individual operators can be reconstructed to a sufficient degree to allow comparison with other years. Uncertainty (eg in dates) is noted within the spreadsheet in the form of comments. It is left to those contemplating any analysis that includes this year to consider whether the method of reconstruction used is sufficiently reliable to support that analysis.
1732-5
After 1724, there are numerous blank pages, as though Robert Peart – or, more probably, his son – contemplated writing up the accounts retrospectively. The accounts resume from August 1732, which is probably immediately after Robert Peart’s death. The ‘country people’ are no longer treated separately: each operator has his own section in the ledger; when that is full a new section is started. Amounts owing are totalled at the end of April each year, though intermediate totals are occasionally entered. The totals are entered in the spreadsheet when they seemed useful as a check-sum; where only a few lines were totalled, they have been omitted.
From this, it appears that the accounting year now runs from 1 May instead of from Michaelmas. With the total at 1 May 1733, there is usually an entry ‘owing at my father’s death’. Thus we have annual totals for each operator in the year 1732-3, but we only have detailed entries from 30 July. For the following two years, detailed accounts survive for the whole year.
In three cases, the ledger continues beyond 30 April 1735, the total covering the extended year. It is unclear why this overrun occurred. Because of these complications, the period from 3 August 1732 to 30 April 1735 and beyond is presented as a single spreadsheet. Please refer to: 1732–1735
1735-7
For the remaining two years, there are two sources. First, the main ledger continues to present a summary of the sum due from each operator. Secondly, for each year there are detailed accounts for a very few operators.
They seem to be copies of the bills sent to them.[6] They agree with the figures from the accounts but both exclude the overrun from 1734-5. For the year 1735-6, this overrun has been added back in in the spreadsheet of operator bills (in shillings) for these years.
If such overruns occurred in 1736 or 1737 we would have no way of knowing about them. So far as total traffic is concerned, they need not concern us greatly, but, from the case of Mark Mowbrey in 1735, it is clear that figures for a single operator can be seriously distorted: more than half of Mowbrey’s 1735-6 trade is in the overrun from 1734-5.
George Durance’s tonnage is omitted from all the summaries in the ledger. The implication is that he was refusing to pay or was unable to pay. When Joshua Peart set out to value the Fossdyke, he added in £108 13s 9d for 5 years’ tolls due from Durance.[7] For the years 1732/3 to 1734/5, the sums due from him can be extracted from the detailed entries in the ledger; that makes it possible to calculate the sum he owed for the last two years combined. For convenience, this has been split equally between these two years.
ANALYSIS
It will be convenient to start the analysis of the accounts by addressing topics relating to the manner in which the navigation was used: stoppages, subcontracting, transshipment, and the characteristics of the boats. These may seem peripheral matters but will clear the way to a consideration of the tonnage carried of the different commodities.
That is followed by notes on the main boat operators; then come figures for receipts, not just for 1714-24 but for most of the period 1680-1832, in order to set the period of the accounts in context.
Stoppages
In 1714/5 there were 391 trips recorded, a little more than one per day. If movements were entirely random, then about 1 day in 3 would see no movements. The chance of having seven successive days with no movements would be about 0.055%, which can be regarded as negligible. Thus, when there are seven days in succession with no traffic, it is assumed there is some impediment.
In the period 1714-1724, such periods are:
1714: 1-19 Oct, 9-26 Dec.
1715: 1-12 Jan, 26-31 Dec.
1716: 1Jan -14 Feb, 2 June-28 Sep, 7-21 Dec.
1717: 30 June -8 Oct.
1718: 7-15 Jan, 25 May -17 June, 25 June – 12 Oct, 5-16 Nov, 19-27 Dec.
1719: 31 May -10 Nov, 3-13 Dec.
1720: 29 Jul – 5 Aug, 1-7 Dec.
1721: 31 Jan – 22 Feb, 2-8 Dec.
1722: 24 Aug – 5 Sep, 12-31 Oct, 27 Nov – 4 Dec, 7-14 Dec, 18-27 Dec.
1723: 28 Apr – 16 Dec.
1724: No closures until Michaelmas, when accounts stop.
Records resume 3 Aug 1732.
1732: 6 Sep -10 Oct, 18-27 Nov, 10-19 Dec.
1733: 28 May – 20 Nov, 28 Nov -7 Dec.
1734: 5-26 Jan, 1-15 May.
1735: No closures before 1 May, when accounts stop.
It will be seen that such periods are either in the depth of winter, of a duration that might plausibly attributed to the navigation being impassable because of ice, or they are in summer/autumn, presumably caused by lack of water. The latter ones are marked above in blue. It will be apparent that the navigation was closed for at least a couple of months in most summers (and for an astonishing 7½ months in 1723); only in two summers were there no closures at all.
The ‘By’ clause
From the perspective of an operator with multiple boats checking the account that Peart presented him with, there is an absence of detail: unless the cargo was memorable in some way, all he has to go on is the date. The modern reader would wish for the name of the boat, but this is never given. What was done for much of 1719 was to give what appears to be the name of the person in charge of the boat, in the form of a clause ‘by NAME’.
This is only given for a handful of operators, including the largest. Quite possibly in the other cases the operator himself was on board. Usually, only a surname is given. One notable exception to this are the entries for John Durance expanded as ‘by his son George’.
The table below breaks down the men who appear in ‘by’ entries according to the number of trips recorded by each. There are two rows: the first is for men who undertake trips for multiple operators or who are themselves operators (invariably of the smaller sort); the second row is for men working for a single master and who do not appear in their own right in 1718-19.
| No of trips | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | >4 |
| multiple masters | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| single master | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
The bottom row shows a striking dichotomy between the 5 men who appear in a single entry and the six men who appear 3 or more times (these being marked in red). One is inclined to regard these six men as ’employees’ in some sense. They might have been casuals, paid on a per trip basis; but they do appear to have been in some form of stable relationship with a particular operator. As it happens, for the men undertaking 4 or more trips, the ’employer’ was Alderman John Durance, who was by far the biggest operator; for the man who undertook 3 trips, it was Mark Mowbrey, who was the second largest.
In contrast, the men in the first row seem likely to be sub-contractors, carrying loads for some other operator under terms whereby the latter remained responsible for payment of tolls. As for the 5 men who each made a single trips and do not appear as operators in their own right, there is insufficient information to form a view on their status.
Transshipment at Torksey
The accounts refer to eighteen occasions when goods were transshipped at Torksey. Five of these were in January or February 1719. The others are spread out from January 1721 to January 1723, and all but one of this second group relate to John Hawkshaw. We need to consider whether there were indeed just 18 instances of transshipment in the fourteen years for which detailed accounts survive, or whether there was some particular reason that caused these eighteen instances to be recorded.
All these instances involve coal; fifteen are straightforward. Looking at the consignment sizes in these straightforward cases, we find four instances of 16 tons, eight of 14 tons, and one each of 12, 8, and 6 tons.
Consider now the three instances of transshipment which are less straightforward. On 28 January 1719, John Hawkshaw took 7 tons of coal out of Sooby’s boat; on the same day, John Durance took 7 tons of coal, and a ton of pots out of Sooby’s boat. One presumes that the donor boat was the same. This is the only record of a load being split; it is also the only direct record of a commodity other than coal being transshipped. On 10 March 1721, we have a merger, rather than a split: John Durance took 20 tons of coal “out of Fenton’s boat and his own great boat”. It would be interesting to know just how many Fossdyke boats were needed to take this load.
The third more complicated instance was on 2 February 1719. John Hawkshaw took 16 tons of coal “out of John Boyes boate”. On the same day, John Boyes brought in 16 tons of coal, but no toll was charged because “It is charged to Mr Hawkshawe”. The only interpretation that can be placed on this is that it is the same 16 tons: the coal was transshipped to Hawkshaw’s Fossdyke boats and Boyes’ Trent boat then came through empty. Was this for repairs? Was it because Boyes needed to transfer the boat to his Witham trade? We may even question whether the boat was entirely empty: perhaps Hawkshaw had only transshipped the greater part of the 16 tons, but was nevertheless responsible both for the coal in his Fossdyke boat(s) and for that remaining in Boyes’. At any rate, we can deduce that the size of the Torksey locks was sufficient for a 16-ton Trent boat to pass the Fossdyke empty.
The table below gives the number of loads recorded as transshipped, broken down by size-bracket; it should be observed that loads assessed as fractional numbers of tons are unusual. A similar breakdown is given for all loads which included coal in the years 1719 to 1721. Most of these loads were of coal alone; most of the combined loads were coal and coke.
| Load (tons) | 1-4 | 5-6 | 7-8.5 | 9-10.5 | 11-12 | 13-14 | 15-16 | >16 | total |
| transshipped | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 18 | ||
| all | 24 | 48 | 54 | 52 | 25 | 40 | 41 | 21 | 305 |
It is immediately apparent that transshipped loads are unrepresentative, being concentrated in the 13-16 ton brackets. The only transshipped load greater than 16 tons involved two Trent boats. In one instance already described (John Boyes on 2 February 1719) we know that the Trent boat was carrying 16 tons precisely; we do not know that this represented a full load but it seems likely. Overall it would appear that 13-16 tons was the standard size of Trent boats: they sailed from Nottingham[8] to Torksey fully-laden and they generally transferred their entire load to Fossdyke boats there.
There seems no reason to suppose that the other 67 loads recorded in the 13-16 ton bracket were any different: the mention of transshipment in the accounts seems to be the result of special instructions to the lock-keeper. The first period of recording corresponds to the main run of entries with ‘by X’, which appear to have been introduced to resolve ambiguity about who was responsible for paying the toll. When, say, coal was brought into the Fossdyke by Hawkshaw in his own boats but had been offloaded from another man’s Trent keel, a similar ambiguity might arise. The lock-keeper seems to have lost interest in recording transshipment even sooner than he dropped the ‘by X’ entries. Their revival in 1721 is probably a consequence of a disagreement on 8 February 1721, when Hawkshaw obtained an abatement of £2 on a bill of £12 4s for the previous year; even then, he only paid £10 of the remainder. This was not the largest abatement that year – John Durance had £2 6s 3d knocked off his bill for £34 odd – but it was proportionally the greatest. After 26 February, eight out of nine of Hawkshaw’s coal consignments have a transshipment note against them. These were all of 14 or 16 tons; he also brought in a 6-ton load for which there is no transshipment note. In contrast, in the period up to 26 February, Hawkshaw brought in six consignments of coal, for only one of which is transshipment recorded; that was in January, perhaps entered from memory. It does rather look as though special measures were directed against Hawkshaw.
Hawkshaw’s shipments of coal after 26 February that year provide the only sample that can be used to examine what proportion of an operator’s shipments came from his own Trent boat and what proportion from others’. In Hawkshaw’s case, just two shipments came ‘Out of his owne greate Boate’ or ‘Out of his owne Boate’; the remaining seven instances involved Trent boats of four different operators. Of course, we do not know how representative Hawkshaw was in this regard.
Trent boats and Fossdyke Boats
The Trent boats are variously referred to in these entries as keels, great boats, or simply boats. There is nothing to suggest that any distinction is implied: ‘great boat’ tends to be used as a contrast to the size of boat used on the Fossdyke, and the consignments that come from ‘keels’ seem no different from the others.
Establishing the normal size of Fossdyke boats is more difficult. We can be confident that it was significantly less than that of the ‘great boats’. The toll agreement required that the Fossdyke should be passable in summer by 5-ton boats; it is plausible that improved boat designs since 1671 allowed a slightly greater load to be carried. In two instances, the accounts for 1732-5 state how many boats a load was divided between: 15 tons of packs (of wool) divided between 3 boats; 8 tons of packs divided between 2 boats. The density of packs of wool is relatively low, so a boat that could carry 5 tons of packs could probably take a greater load of coal, but would then require a greater depth of water. Looking at the distribution of loads, one might perhaps hope to see a peak at (say) 5 tons, matched by another at double that value, matched by another, perhaps, at three times the value. The table above shows that this simply does not happen, even when looking at a commodity where it might be supposed that quantities would be arranged for greatest efficiency. There would seem to be two reasons for this: firstly that quantities were driven by the need for efficient transport on the Trent rather than the Fossdyke, and secondly, perhaps, that the load each Fossdyke boat could take was adjusted to the water conditions at the time.
The confusing pattern of load sizes is often very much simpler if one looks at individual operators. For example, John Bartle in 1720-1 brought in 9 loads:
5 were 14-ton loads of coal;
4 were 12- or 13-ton loads of coal and coke.
It looks as though all these arrived in a 14-ton Trent keel. When part of the load was coke, the reduced density meant that the load was limited by volume rather than weight, so the tonnage was slightly lower.
To take another example, Mark Mowbrey in 1721-2 brought in 23 loads:
6 were 16-ton loads of coal;
8 were 10- or 11-ton loads of coal;
8 were 6-ton loads of coal;
1 was an 8-ton load of coke.
Leaving aside the load of coke, which was almost certainly volume-limited, it would appear that he was employing three different Trent boats, carrying 16 tons, 10 tons (in one instance loaded with an extra ton) and 6 tons.
The 6-ton boat was probably capable of passing the Fossdyke. There is an illustration in Throsby’s History of Nottingham of 1795 showing a square-rigged open boat which appears able to carry about six tons and this may well be the type of boat used. The 10-ton boat is more of a problem. It is unlikely that it could pass the Fossdyke fully laden, but there are no references to transshipment of 10-ton loads (nor even of 11-ton loads). A hint of the answer can perhaps be found in the 1671 Act’s reference to boats and lyters. ‘Lighters’ were often understood in the modern era to mean open boats of any sort, but the root meaning was a craft used to lighten a larger boat by taking some of its load. The boat and its accompanying lighter or lighters would then travel together until the latter were no longer needed. The evidence given at the hearings on the abortive 1736 Witham Bill[9] refers to this practice being in use on the Witham. So perhaps the 10-ton boats would normally transfer some of their load to lighters at Torksey and continue to Lincoln in company with those lighters. The toll accounts would record this as a single load. Moreover, since the Trent boat continued with some of its cargo to Lincoln there would be no ambiguity as to responsibility for tolls; hence there would never be any need to record this sort of partial transshipment.
This raises the question of why the most efficient size of boat had not supplanted the other sizes. The labour of transshipment was relatively modest: modern experience suggests that, employing baskets and derricks, coal could be transshipped at a rate of about 2 tons per man-hour.[10] Whatever assumption one makes about journey times from Nottingham the total man-hours per ton would be less for a 14- or 16-ton boat than for the smaller sizes. Perhaps the real difficulty was not the transshipment itself but the organisation needed to have a lighter waiting at Torksey – or three lighters if the contents of a 14-ton keel were to be transshipped. Because the journey time from Nottingham depended so much on the wind, it would be difficult to arrange a rendezvous at Torksey without one party or the other having to wait as much as a day or two; that could negate any advantage in productivity gained from the use of larger keels. Even as late as 1826, when the scale of traffic was such that lighters could be kept at Torksey on the mere expectation of business, there were complaints by boat operators of the inconvenience of having to wait until a lighter was available. How much worse this would be in the early eighteenth century when movements were less frequent!
Operations when Fossdyke was barely passable
In October 1718, no traffic had used the Fossdyke since June. Boats start to pass again on 14 October, but it appears that loads were very constrained. The following table shows the first few loads from the Trent. All loads are of coal unless followed by a ‘g’ to indicate goods. The figures in red are to draw attention to the manner in which the pattern of the first five loads is repeated three days later.
| Date (October 1718) | 14th | 15 | 17 | 18 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| M Mowbray | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 | |||
| W Poyntell | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | ||||
| Jn Durance | 5g | 8g | 10 | |||||
| N Atkinson | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| T Boyes | 4 | 9 | 6 | |||||
| W Bubb | 4g | |||||||
| J Hawkshawe | 9 | 7 | 9 | 3 | ||||
| J Boyes | 6 |
Of these, Nicholas Atkinson’s 2-ton load is particularly striking: Atkinson had a Trent keel and occasionally brought loads through the Fossdyke but he did not normally deal in such small quantities. The most likely explanation is that he had brought 4 tons of coal to Torksey but the water depth was such that lighters could only carry 2 tons and only a single lighter was available. Under normal conditions one might expect that the lighter could do the round trip to Lincoln and back in two days but in this case perhaps certain sections were so difficult that the round trip would take three days. A similar explanation might equally apply to all these first five loads; on that basis, Mowbray required 2 lighters, as did Poyntell, while Durance might have had 3. By the time the first batch of lighters had returned, water conditions seem to be better and it looks as though lighters could take 3 tons each on the 17th and perhaps more still on the 18th. This was of no help to Atkinson who appears to have brought only 4 tons in total.
If this interpretation is correct, it would seem that a total of only 10 lighters was available on 14th/15th. More – at least another three – seem to have been available by 17th/18th. Perhaps owners were reluctant to have their boats dragged through mud in the most marginal conditions for fear of sustaining damage.
A similar pattern appears in November 1719, when the navigation had seen no traffic since May.
| Date (Nov 1719) | 11th | 12 | 14 | 16 |
| J Durance | 5 | 3+6g | ||
| J Hawkshawe | 4 | 6 | 6 | |
| T Boyes | 2 | 1 | ||
| M Mowbray | 3 |
Durance and Hawkshawe took coal through on the 11th but it appears they had to split their loads, waiting three days for the lighters to return. Boyes and Mowbray each turned up on the 12th with 3 tons of coal; Mowbray was able to transship his whole load, while Boyes could only pass 2 tons and had to wait until the 14th for his final ton. By that stage conditions seem to have improved rapidly; note that Boyes’s lighter appears to able to make the round trip in two days.
If we assume that lighters were limited to 2 tons on 11th/12th, that would seem to indicate that only eight were available. But it is of course possible that there were 14 lighters, each only able to carry 1 ton.
The pattern in 1719 is not as tidy as that of the previous year but does serve to confirm the general conclusions. None of the other periods following a summer closure were like this: in some instances, very large loads were passed just a day or so after the navigation had re-opened. Perhaps heavy rain had brought a copious supply of water; or perhaps the closure was caused by maintenance as well as by lack of water.
Tonnage Carried 1714-24 and 1734-5
The spreadsheet at Commodities gives the total tonnage carried each year, broken down by commodity and trip. Also, for reasons that will become apparent, it gives the number of days when the navigation appeared to be closed in each accounting year. For 1714-24, the accounts run from Michaelmas to Michaelmas; for 1734-5 from May day to May day. Figures for 1733-4 have not been extracted because of the exceptionally long summer stoppage. Three totals are provided for each year: a grand total of tonnage, the total tonnage from the Trent to Lincoln, and the total tonnage from Lincoln to the Trent. No separate totals are given for the various trips that covered less than the full length of the Fossdyke.
Particular Commodities
Coal
As for most inland waterways, coal was the principal commodity carried. The size of the trade makes it possible to address questions about its nature, in particular whether there were cartels such as characterised the London coal trade.[11]
The first question that needed to be addressed is where the coal came from. It may be useful to explain that the Trent below Gainsborough was passable by sea-going vessels; furthermore the currents – especially at Trent Falls – were such that the smaller craft from the upper river generally did not venture below Gainsborough. Coal from Yorkshire – or, for that matter, sea-coal – would probably need to be transshipped at Gainsborough. In that case, it would make sense for Fossdyke boats to collect it from there, sailing with the tide in each direction. We would not expect to find it transshipped at Gainsborough and again at Torksey. Thus, the size of boats used and the pattern of transshipment point firmly to the coal having come down the Trent. Coal will not have been loaded below Nottingham; the Fossdyke evidence will not distinguish between coal loaded at Trent Bridge and that loaded at wharfs above Nottingham
Next, we must consider why the quantity carried fluctuated so much from year to year. From the Commodities table it is easy to show that coal carried is highly correlated with the number of days the navigation was open. Indeed, one can fit a linear relationship:
Coal carried (from Trent to Lincoln) = 399 tons + 3.39 tons x (days open).
Over the period 1716/7 to 1722/3, this is accurate to within 51 tons (1 standard deviation) – about 4% of the annual figure. Coal carried in the first two years falls short of this prediction by 385 tons (1714-5), 203 tons (1715-6); it looks as though there is a delay before the trade takes full advantage of the improvements made in 1715. The figure for 1734-5 exceeds this prediction by 125 tons, which may be explicable by a modest (perhaps 8%) growth in demand.
One obtains a different perspective by examining monthly figures during periods when the results are not affected by closures. Traffic from January to April runs at around 200 tons/month; from May to September it is generally below 100 tons. When there is a winter closure (which is almost certainly caused by ice so is associated with a cold snap) there is a peak in traffic two months later. For example, the navigation is closed for much of February 1721, and coal traffic in April rises to 252 tons. These perspectives can be reconciled if we assume that coal users tended to replenish their stocks with a delay of about two months and that orders were normally placed for pit-coal via the Fossdyke, but sea-coal from Boston was substituted when the Fossdyke was closed. If that is the case, the total demand for coal in Lincoln in an average year will have been 1637 tons. Of course, we must remember that coal is not actually a single commodity: there were different grades and for certain uses sea-coal will have been preferable[12]. So the figure of 1637 tons only applies to that part of the market where pit-coal was the preferred option.
In a typical year, some 90% of the coal is transported by about 9 operators. In fact, if one looks at the loads of 12 tons and upwards – those which appear to be transshipped at Torksey – the proportion is closer to 95%. It is instructive to look at the other 5%. To take as an example 1720/1, this 5% was made up of loads of just two other men: John Knott and Mr Fenton. The status of the latter is indicated by the ‘Mr’; indeed we do not know his Christian name. He is known to have had at least one Trent boat and this is the only load on the Fossdyke in the entire period for which he takes responsibility. John Knott, in contrast, has many of the characteristics of a major operator; most of his trade is usually in large loads of coal, but he also appears to look for business in woodland products and occasionally carries corn. This year he only brought in two loads of coal, with wood amounting to the other 50% of his tonnage. We have no idea what occasioned the unusual behaviour by these two operators; but we can say that neither of them are of the group who might be characterised as ‘small men’. Nevertheless, their behaviour is uncharacteristic of a cartel: with such an arrangement the profitable nature of the trade discourages even partial dropping out, and the entry of new men will be resisted.
Let us now turn to the loads of 8 tons or less. The table below gives the number of loads which include coal (most are of coal alone) broken down by the size of load (to the nearest ton).
| 0-2t | 3t | 4t | 5t | 6t | 7t | 8t | total | |
| 1719-21 all | 7 | 8 | 9 | 18 | 30 | 22 | 31 | 125 |
| ditto, small men | 6 | 8 | 7 | 4 | 25 | |||
| 1721/2, all | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 18 | 9 | 2 | 37 |
| ditto, small men | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
The first line gives all loads for the two years 1719/20 and 1720/1in order to establish an initial baseline. About one quarter are of 6 tons and one quarter of 8 tons. Loads by the small men are shown in the second line. they form about one fifth of the total and are concentrated in the range of 5 to 7 tons. The next two lines give the corresponding figures for the year 1721/2. This was a record year for coal moved, though the previous years had been good ones too – that was part of the reason for choosing these years. However, small loads have fallen considerably pro rata, and almost half are of 6 tons. The small men have been banished, as it were, to the loads of 5 tons or less, a type of business in which the bigger men have no interest.
Some of the features in this changing pattern stem from the activities of individual operators. The smaller-load sector of the coal market seems particularly prone to these effects. One of the individuals influencing the pattern is William Poyntell. From the total quantity of coal he carries and the fact that some of it is in large loads, we must characterise him as one of the bigger operators; unlike most of the big operators he appears to target the small-load sector.
His activities are summarised in the table below.
| Load (t) | 1717/8 | 1718/9 | 1719/20 | 1720/1 | 1721/2 |
| 2 | 2 | ||||
| 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 4 | 3 | 1 | |||
| 5 | 1 | 1 | |||
| 7 | 1 | 1 | |||
| 8 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 5 | |
| 9 | 1 | 1 | |||
| 11 | 2 | ||||
| 12 | 1 | ||||
| 13 | 1 | 1 | |||
| 14 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | |
| 15 | 2 | 2 | |||
| 16 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Coal trips | 8 | 13 | 20 | 14 | 0 |
| All trips | 11 | 27 | 45 | 31 | 1 |
Table: Trips predominantly of coal, by William Poyntell
He appears in 1717/8, looking much like other coal-importers, and probably taking coal at Torksey from a 14-ton boat and an 8-ton boat. The following year sees expansion into other commodities – poles, for example – and an unusual diversity of loads of coal. 1720/1 sees a further increase but now most loads are of 8 tons or more. At the same time, Poyntell is moving other commodities in loads of an unusually large size. For example, in May to July 1720 he brings in three 15-ton (60-quarter) cargoes of corn. And then his fall is as rapid: a reduction in scale (and the virtual disappearance of small loads of coal) in 1720/1, and nothing but a single load of packs in 1721/2. Perhaps he found the business less profitable than he had supposed.
Poyntell’s activities cause some of the small operators – eg William Bubb, Thomas & William Hurton- to abandon the coal business. His disappearance brings the Hurtons back, but then George Patricke appears, another major operator with an interest in the smaller-load sector of the coal market, and the Hurtons virtually drop out again.
What seems to emerge from this account is that these smaller cargoes of coal represent a separate market sector. Quite possibly an 8-ton Trent boat is less efficient than a 16-ton boat, but if the customer wants just 8 tons of coal, and he cannot conveniently be combined with another shipment, then the loss of efficiency is irrelevant. The type of customer who needs a delivery of this size must be a consumer who is by-passing the coal merchants: a whole variety of waterside premises in Lincoln could easily take direct loads in this way. But as a proportion of the overall market it seems to be declining. Possibly the customers are increasing the size of their coal cellars, or perhaps the trade is getting better at aggregating two small deliveries to form a single large load.
The movement of operators in and out of the trade is a good indication of an efficient market in the shipping of coal, even if for the final leg the coal merchants were taking advantage of an oligopoly. That the market may have been cosier at the start of our period is perhaps indicated by the activities of Richard Ruxton. For each of the first three years of the accounts, the man is given a full column in the accounts, along with all the major operators. Each year he brings in just a single load, of 10 tons of coal. We know quite a lot about Ruxton from the Discharge section of the accounts: he is a Lincoln man who assists Robert Peart in the superintendence of the Fossdyke. There is no indication that he owned a boat: almost certainly he is contracting a genuine waterman to carry his coal. Ten tons seems too much for his own domestic use: perhaps he shares it with Robert Peart. One can see why the major operators are so very helpful: Peart and Ruxton are the men who each year agree to round down their bills for alleged over-charging. But there are no other isolated loads of this size: Ruxton is unique. That Ruxton finds it worthwhile to arrange this, suggests that the margins in 1714-7 were generous; that the practice ceases after 1717 suggests that margins may have narrowed.
Coke and Cinders
Coke at this date was produced by burning heaps of coal with a limited supply of air in a similar manner to charcoal. The main consumers were maltsters, who sought a cheaper fuel than wood but found that coal imparted an unacceptable taste to the resulting beer.
Because so much of the coke arrived in combined loads with coal, there is significant uncertainty in the overall quantities derived from the toll accounts, which may be in error by up to 10% or so, but that cannot explain the remarkable fluctuation from year to year. As it happens, cinders are also subject to such fluctuations. But if one adds together coke and cinders one sees much less variation – a level of around 90 tons per year until the sudden increase in coke quantities to 200 tons from 1720-1. The explanation is that cinders at this date normally refers to coal that has been partly burned to drive off the volatile components and then covered over to halt combustion. The two products were alternatives to wood for drying malt.
Some contemporary writers treat the terms coke and cinders as interchangeable and, nationally, the one does appear to have merged into the other according as the type of coal used and the methods of burning and quenching it varied; but the essential difference is that coke has been transformed into a spongy mass and so is less dense. The coke used at Derby appears to have been of especially low density – 15 lbs/cu ft, as opposed to 40 for cinders[13] – so it would not be surprising if the lock-keeper at Torksey distinguished the two products.
It appears that coke was preferred – a few pieces of smoky coal left in among cinders could greatly affect the malt – but its supply seems to have been erratic until around 1720-1. This may be because only one or two mines were producing coal with the correct characteristics for making coke; at this date it was common for mines to produce intermittently. The increase in quantity that took place about then is curious. It may indicate the temporary capture of the Boston market: in earlier years the Boston boat had made two trips to collect cinders, suggesting that the supply from the North-East of these specialist fuels may have been unsatisfactory at times.
One-third of the trips to collect cinders were made by Thomas Boyes; John Durance stayed out of this trade but carried plenty of coke. Does that imply different commercial arrangements for the two commodities?
Pots
Pottery was often imported in combined loads with coal, so was probably brought from Nottingham. At this date, Nottingham stonewares were still being sold throughout the East Midlands, some even being sent down the Trent and shipped to London.[14] Alternatively, the pottery may come from further afield: Ticknall, or even Staffordshire.
Stone
Approximately 120 tons of stone moves from Lincoln to the Trent in 1715-6, and 236 tons in January-April 1717. Nothing is recorded at any other time. In 1715-6 there are a number of carriers; in 1717 everything is taken by William White, who employs subcontractors for some of the loads. This looks like a big contract, implying that the stone is for a single customer.
It seems unlikely that anything but quality ashlar would justify carriage from Lincoln to the Trent valley. It has been suggested that this might be Ancaster stone, brought down the River Slea during the winter and taken up the Witham from Chapel Hill. The quantity would be sufficient for a major country house (assuming that more local stone was used for the interior of the walls). It may be noted that Sir Willoughby Hickman of Gainsborough bought the Thonock estate in 1714.[15] It is plausible that he started to build there shortly after, and Gainsborough is a destination where Ancaster stone might have been competitive. Unfortunately, nothing is known of what preceded the late-18th century Thonock Hall.
It may be worth observing that a small quantity of stone moves in the opposite direction in 1715-6. There is wood in the load too; it perhaps represents the recycling of a redundant building. At any rate it appears to have nothing to do with the stone moving to the Trent. Occasional loads of ‘stones’ seem to be a different commodity altogether.
Goods
By the nineteenth century, there was a clear division on inland waterways between what one might term the general-carrier business and the movement of commodities in bulk. Those engaged in the former business needed to maintain warehouses for receiving goods and holding them on arrival; they usually ran their boats to a timetable. In contrast, those engaged in the movement of commodities often owned just a single boat; they ran to no timetable; and typically their next trip was determined by whatever jobs might be on offer at the time.
Some elements of this division are already apparent from the Fossdyke accounts. When trade is light, the carriage of goods is a natural monopoly: he who has the largest share of the traffic can offer the most frequent trips and the widest connections, so tends to gain an even larger market share. It is therefore no surprise to find the trade in goods dominated by a single operator, John Durance. One suspects that he dominated goods traffic on the Witham too, for if there was another operator carrying significant quantities of goods from Boston to Lincoln, one might expect him to extend at least some of his trips to Gainsborough, and there is no evidence of this.
Yet John Durance does not run his boats to a timetable, and he seems prepared to mix goods with bulk commodities, even with coal. One respect in which goods are different is that no attempt is made to transship outbound goods at Torksey: if a boat passes to the Trent with goods, it never seems to come back on the same day. Boats carrying goods are probably bound for Gainsborough or Nottingham.
Interpreting the statistics needs care. The dichotomy between goods and bulk commodities is not absolute: a customer wanting a 1-ton load moved might well shop around for other operators willing to take it as a part load rather than deliver it to Durance’s warehouse to be shipped at parcel rates; and Durance himself probably found it expedient to offer reasonably competitive rates for such traffic. At Torksey, the lock-keeper was not privy to the commercial arrangement that had been entered into; rather he recorded what he saw. A boat filled with anonymous boxes or barrels would probably be entered as carrying goods, even though it might be wholly filled with some commodity. Thus the solitary appearance of wine in 1718-9, is unlikely to represent the only wine carried. Quite a few of the entries in the spreadsheet listing commodities should probably be regarded as ‘borderline goods’ – products which are sometimes entered explicitly but often pass anonymously as goods.
This shipment of wine (bound for the Trent) had presumably come from abroad via Boston. One wonders what proportion of the goods bound for the Trent had actually come by ship to Boston. If one had a ship-load bound for destinations on the Trent, then to take it via the Fossdyke rather than using a Humber port would be more costly even when the total distance was shorter. However, there must have been many cases where Boston as a port best matched the mix of destinations of the goods carried; under these circumstances, onward shipment via Lincoln and the Fossdyke would make commercial sense.
Wool and Packs
Wool in the commodities table is remarkably erratic; so is packs. Adding the two together gives more consistent behaviour. It is presumed that wool refers to bulk shipments intended for sale at a northern market, probably Doncaster[16], whereas packs are the results of advance purchases by Yorkshire merchants and are already prepared for onward shipment to the customer. The earliest accounts give the number of packs as well as the weight. Up to 1719 wool dominates, thereafter packs. This may mark the changeover to a system of advance purchases by agents described by Hill[17]. Generally packs weighted 2 cwt; departures from this appear to come from rounding or, in one case, an error.
Looking at 1722-3 – deliberately chosen because the navigation remained open all summer – one sees shipments of around 8 tons/month from January to June, rising to 20 tons from July to October. This is presumably because the roads were more easily passable in the latter period. One consequence of this seasonal pattern is that the trade was easily lost in a dry summer. Perhaps in these circumstances road transport was used from Lincoln to the Trent. Because of this seasonality, any estimate of the total magnitude of the trade needs to concentrate on years when summer closures were least: 1719-20, and the following two years. That suggests an average shipment of about 120 tons.
If one reckons on 10s per tod (28lbs) as a rough indication of value, that is equivalent to £40 per ton, so 120 tons was worth £4800; wool was by far the most valuable export. In contrast the value of the coal being imported – by far the largest commodity by weight – was about £1600.
The wool trade was divided between a number of operators but Mark Mowbrey’s share seems to have steadily increased over the years. Some indication of how he achieved that can perhaps be seen by looking at who was the first operator to force a passage after a period of closure: in October 1714 it was Mowbrey with 2 tons of wool; in December of that year (after a cold snap, presumably) it was Mowbrey again with 3 tons of packs. It would seem that, if merchants were impatient for deliveries, Mowbrey was willing to do his utmost – even at the risk of damage to his boat – to get a load through.
By 1735-6, the quantity of packs has risen to 328 tons (with 16 tons of wool not in packs). This is more than double the quantity moved in any year previously. It is hardly possible that the number of sheep has doubled, so it must be that significant quantities of wool were previously leaving the county by routes other than the Fossdyke, even in a year when the Fossdyke was open all summer.
Corn and other Grains
‘Corn’ may mean wheat or barley, both of which are explicitly mentioned very occasionally. Whereas a century later, Lincolnshire was sending large quantities of grain to the industrial areas of the north, at this date the county is seen to be a net importer, except in respect of oats, in which there was a large export trade through Boston. (There was little or no export of corn through Boston.)[18]
The operators bringing corn in fall into two classes. First there are Thomas Whiteley and John Wilson, who bring corn on a Thursday, presumably to sell at the Friday Lincoln market. These are regular traders but quantities are often small. Secondly, there are the major boat operators, especially John Durance, who appear only when there are large amounts to be moved. These follow no weekly pattern, so are probably selling direct to millers rather than through the market.
Malt
Like corn, malt moves in both directions. Quantities are very much smaller than for corn and there is not much correlation between the two: it is as though the malt trade is driven by local problems faced by particular maltsters.
Some malt moves in conjunction with goods and it is possible that some of it travels under that category, even though it ought to pay toll by volume. Whereas the movement of malt from Lincoln to the Trent is dominated by the major operators, that moving the other way is more often in the hands of smaller men: possibly it depended on local contacts in the places from which the malt was obtained.
Ale
Whereas malt moved both ways, ale invariably moved from Lincoln to the Trent, up to 30 tons in a good year. John Durance carried a large share of the trade, which suggests that ale may count as ‘borderline goods’; in that case, the total quantity might have been somewhat greater than 30 tons. For Lincoln ale to sell along the Trent, notwithstanding its extra transport costs, it must have been thought superior to that produced at Newark or Gainsborough, assuming that there were breweries in those towns. Burton ales were of course famous from an early date but were primarily directed at an international market.
Oyle
The practice of crushing linseed and rape seed to produce oil was already well-established. Deering mentions ‘oyls’ as one of the products that reached Nottingham via the Trent. Lincoln – or southern Lincolnshire – seems to have entered this business, shipping some 11 tons in 1717/8 and 1718/9. Thereafter, the trade seems to have died away.
Hemp
Hemp and hemp-seed are another minor agricultural export. Again, Deering describes hemp (presumably for use in rope-making) as one of the products reaching Nottingham by the Trent. The boat operators carrying hemp and hemp-seed on the Fossdyke are men rarely seen in any other context. This might be explicable by the hemp being grown in the fens around Boston and carried by local men who had no other reason to venture beyond Lincoln.
Cheese
Deering records that cheese was sent down the Trent from Cheshire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Significant quantities of this continued down the Fossdyke; quantities are erratic but appear to decline with time. Possibly what is happening is that a greater proportion of the trade is mixed with other groceries and appears under ‘goods’.
Wood
The biggest export commodity – by weight rather than value – was wood in its various forms. Christ’s Hospital of London owned extensive woods at Skellingthorpe, a mile or two south of Saxilby. Wood bound for the Trent was generally taken by road to Drinsey Nook, west of Saxilby (so it only paid half-toll); wood bound for Lincoln was generally taken to Skellingthorpe Wath, between Saxilby and Lincoln. This latter quantity is cursorily treated in the toll accounts, usually appearing as a combined sum with the ‘Saxelby boat’. It is presumed that this Saxilby boat served to take villagers and their goods to and from Lincoln market.
The wood trade from Skellingthorpe never exceeded 25 tons in a year. In contrast, the trade from Drinsey amounts to 194 tons in 1714-5, 205 tons in 1719-20, 382 tons in 1720-21. Other years see very much lower figures; this must reflect the way the Hospital was managing the coppicing cycle.
One of the odd features of these bumper seasons is that the great majority of the trade is taken by a single operator: Charles Robinson in 1714-5, William White in 1719-20, James Crooke and partner in 1720-1. As with the stone moved in 1716 and 1717, this seems to indicate a large contract for a major customer. It is probably no coincidence that William White, whom we encountered moving stone, won the wood contract for the 1719-20 season; he seems to have been agile in bidding for this sort of work.
Robinson moves the wood in small loads at frequent intervals. White makes much use of loads between 12 and 16 tons and shows some evidence of working to a 13-day cycle. This may suggest that the wood was transferred to a keel at Torksey and shipped up the Trent, perhaps right up to Burton. Crooke also favours larger loads, but the intervals between loads show no pattern.
Poles
The product from Skellingthorpe is described simply as ‘wood’. Certain other products are described more specifically, and poles are the most important: they constitute the biggest export product by weight. These are generally conveyed in loads of no more than 5 tons. February to April are the busiest months. They are moved predominantly by operators who transport little else, though occasionally some of the bigger operators – Hawkshawe and Poyntell, for example – move a few loads. Many of these small operators move just a couple of loads in the course of a year; some of them only appear in one particular year and then vanish. The Hurton family is more consistently active than most, and the accounts do tell us that William Hurton (or more probably one of two William Hurtons) was from Branston.
The poles, with one small exception, are charged full toll, from Lincoln to the Trent, and may come from the woods flanking the flood plain of the Witham below Lincoln – they can hardly originate from Lincoln itself. We know that there were ‘market boats’ and it seems plausible that these were maintained by parishes below Lincoln, just as Saxilby did. We may speculate that residents of those parishes engaged in coppicing alder poles were accustomed to hire their local boat and use it to ship their poles (which were used for scaffolding) to Boston, to Lincoln and (the only trips we see) to the Trent. One piece of evidence in support of this is that trips on a Friday (Lincoln market day) are uncommon: in 1717-8, the busiest year for poles, there are 70 loads of poles recorded, only 3 of which move on a Friday. Likewise, of the 60 trips in 1719-20, the second-busiest year, just 3 loads move on a Friday.
Of the other days, there is a peak on Tuesday, which may indicate a preference for starting the journey on a Monday, passing the lock at Torksey the following day. If market boats were indeed being used, it would be difficult to continue to Gainsborough and return in time for the boat to be used by all and sundry on the Friday; it therefore seems likely that most of the poles were transshipped to keels at Torksey.
Stoups
From 1717 to 1721 there are references to a commodity variously described as stulpes or stoopes. Other contemporary sources[19] spell them as stoups and make it clear that they are posts for gates or fences, worth about a shilling each. The greatest part of this commodity – 208 tons – is shipped from Saxilby to Lincoln in the year 1719/20. A number of operators are involved, but it is Thomas Browne who, at 52 tons, moves the largest quantity.
This sudden burst of timber extraction – for these stoups must come from standard trees rather than coppicing – seems to be driven by an exceptional requirement, perhaps enclosure going on somewhere. This is before the era of Parliamentary enclosure but could well be enclosure by agreement.
If we knew more about Thomas Browne, it might help to identify the destination for these stoups. He is important enough to be referred to as Mr Thomas Browne (a dignity accorded to the larger boat operators). He is not recorded before 1719/20 but reappears in the following year with a small load of flax and hemp and a large consignment of hemp seed bound for the Trent; later that year his widow is recorded as bringing a load of coke southwards. The link to hemp is an interesting one: the commodity is often moved by men who are otherwise unknown, which may indicate that it comes from south of Boston. That is perhaps where we should look for the destination of these stoups.
Bark
A woodland product which appears only in one year is bark. Used in tanning, it is found moving from Drinsey to the Trent. Presumably the Lincoln tanners were supplied from the woods south east of Lincoln.
Deales
Deals are softwood planks and will have been brought across the North Sea. References to ‘planks’ may be the same commodity.
Operators on the Fossdyke
Over a hundred men are mentioned in the accounts as having incurred a liability to pay tolls, but only forty or so appear in any one year. Some of these are ‘operators’ in a very limited sense: they neither own a boat, nor does the carriage of goods appear to be their principal business. At the other end of the scale, there are men who own boats, not just on the Fossdyke but on the Witham or Trent. The boundary between these groups is uncertain: a man from one of the villages below Lincoln whose boats regularly trade between Lincoln and Boston and who occasionally takes a load of poles to the Trent is difficult to distinguish from a woodman who occasionally uses a parish boat to transport his poles to a customer.
The list that follows concentrates on those known to have operated Trent boats or about whom additional information has been found.
Nicholas Atkinson had a Trent keel. From 1717/8 to 1721/2, he made a few Fossdyke trips each year, bringing coal and returning with poles.
John Boyes was a Lincoln man of yeoman status, dead by 1745[20]. He had property in Lincoln which included a warehouse. He is recorded moving a 16-ton boat from the Trent to the Witham.
Thomas Boyes was granted a city lease on Waterside for a warehouse adjacent to his dwelling house, 1730.
John Durance
Carriage of general goods is completely dominated by John Durance, which suggests that he was dominant too on the Witham to Boston. He appears as master of a Lincoln duddle[21] in the 1707-8 Boston port books; he is known from the Fossdyke accounts to have had a boat on the Trent which he used for the carriage of coal. He died 1729[22], an alderman of Lincoln, owning much property, with two warehouses on Witham bank in the parish of St Swithin – ie east of High Bridge. He left two sons, John and George; the latter inherited the warehouse and continued the carrying business.
Mr Fenton had a Trent boat but only appears once on the Fossdyke, bringing a load of coal in 1720/1.
John Hye is unusual in that he brought in coal by the keel-load occasionally but much of his business consisted of small loads of minor commodities. He was elected Sheriff 1719-20 but died in office, being buried 26 October 1719 in St Swithin’s parish. His probate inventory[23] shows him to have been a man of some status: his house had a hall, and there were two maps on the walls of his parlour. His boats – one great boat and four smaller ones – were valued at £106-10s out of a total valuation of £314-14-7d.
Mark Mowbrey (or Mowbray) appears as master of a Lincoln duddle in the 1707-8 Boston port books, taking malt and soap to Spalding, and served as Chamberlain in 1713-14 . In the Fossdyke accounts, he starts as the biggest carrier of coal, and steadily increases his share of the wool traffic. He appears as a witness to John Durance’s will. If he is the man of that name who wrote the letter at LAO MON 25/2/54, he appears to be part of the Monson patronage network.
Thomas Neesby had a Trent boat and became quite active on the Fossdyke in 1716/7 but his interest in the Fossdyke died away again.
Thomas Whiteley carries relatively small loads, chiefly corn for Lincoln market. In 1721/2 he appears in partnership with William Whiteley. The following year, William is listed alone and Thomas has vanished. William carries such pathetically small loads that it is difficult to see how his business can be viable.
Annual Receipts and Commercial Viability
It is important to distinguish between gross tonnage and gross receipts. The latter can be seen at Fossdyke Receipts. They include a certain number of trips paying half-toll and will reflect abatements made to the larger operators, nominally on the basis of disputed entries. They are not affected by the writing off of tolls due from some of the smallest operators as too troublesome to collect, as this was entered on the Discharge side of the accounts.
Column A in the table gives the end-date of the period covered: M indicates Michaelmas, MD May day. The next three columns give pounds, shillings, and pence; column E expresses the sum in shillings (being roughly equivalent to total tonnage). Figures to 1712 are taken from a damaged volume of Fortrey papers[24]. The start-date for the first period is unknown. Figures from 1715 to 1737 come from the toll account ledger. Here, ‘paid’ indicates a settlement between Peart and the City; often the amount due was simply accumulated from one year to the next,
In the earliest years it is difficult to make sense of a series of sums corresponding to periods of different lengths; however, conversion to receipts per annum is made more awkward by the presumption that summer traffic was lighter (not least because the navigation might be closed for lack of water). Accordingly, the accounting dates for the early years were converted to decimal years (since 1600) in Column F, on the basis that months from June to September only count as 0.05 of a year, the other months being 0.1 of a year. Column G gives the duration of each accounting period on this basis, and Column H expresses the receipts from Column E on a per annum basis.
It is immediately apparent that it was quite a few years before the reconstruction authorized by the 1671 Act was producing a useful revenue. Traffic increased steadily to 1686 and then remained on a plateau of about 800 shillings/year. From 1708 there is a step change to about 1550 shillings/year, and then another increase to an average of 2623 shillings in the period 1716-22. The most likely reason for the second increase will be increased depth of water as a result of improved locks at Torksey. Unfortunately, the documentary evidence for the locks is confusing. The City entered into an agreement in 1698 for the construction of ‘two new locks or sluices’.[25], The Discharge for 1714-5 includes expenditure on the ‘new sluices’ at Torksey in terms which are consistent with new construction. So perhaps the 1698 agreement was implemented in two stages, with the old lock being reconstructed in 1707 and the second lock, needed to ensure access at all states of the tide, only being built in 1715. But it may be that the change between 1707 and 1708 is driven more by changes in the organisation, and taxation, of the trade in sea-coal than by anything to do with the Fossdyke.
Figures for 1732-7 are taken from the spreadsheet of tonnage due from each operator. They differ from the figures given in Hill, which come indirectly from the summaries in the ledger. Reasons for the discrepancy are as follows:
- The ledger includes house rent due from Francis Mawre. This has been removed to leave toll receipts alone.
- A couple of operators, when paying their accounts for 1734-5 actually settled to a later date; thus the ledger includes some 1735-6 income under 1734-5.
- Tonnage due from George Durance is omitted from the totals in the ledger.
Figures from 1746 onwards are taken from Hill[26] and are included to demonstrate the scale of the increase in trade after the Fossdyke was reconstructed under the Ellisons. It did not seem useful to give the net receipts here; they have already been published by Hill. Expenditure is perturbed by occasional large items. However, they were usually covered by income, and by the 1730s the navigation was in profit to the tune of about £50 per year.
These figures are important, because in 1738 Joshua Peart, Robert’s son, sold his lease of one-third of the navigation to James Humberstone, a London lawyer with Lincoln connections; that is why the Fossdyke accounts stop in 1737. In 1740, the Corporation assigned its two-thirds (and undertook to assign Humberstone’s one third also) to Richard Ellison of Thorne. The preamble to the lease declares that the locks and other works were ruinous and in bad condition and the channel silted up, and this is often cited as evidence that the navigation had been neglected under Peart. In fact, replacement of lock gates, rebuilding of lock walls and the clearance of silt were regular activities throughout the time that Peart and his son were managing the navigation. Its condition was less than satisfactory, but the steady increase in traffic shows that the navigation was hardly being neglected – at least up to 1737. That the rent payable to the Corporation under the terms of the lease was £75 may even suggest that profits rose further under Humberstone’s management.
So the dire description of the state of the works, though not actually untrue, is thoroughly misleading: its purpose is to justify the granting of the lease. The real problem was that a navigation capable of taking 5-ton boats, as conceived in 1670, was now seen as inadequate. Major investment was needed, and the Corporation could not afford it. Ellison was prepared to undertake that investment, a bold move as he bore all the costs himself rather than by sharing the risk through a consortium. After a difficult few years, traffic did increase to a level that justified the investment; but, regrettably, nothing is known about how that traffic was made up: Ellison had no need to account to anyone else for the receipts.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Philip Riden for drawing my attention to the inherent interest of these accounts and for sight of his unpublished work. Both he and David Stocker have provided stimulating ideas in the course of various discussions.
Footnotes
[1] For a fuller account see R C Wheeler, “The Fossdyke Navigation, 1670-1826”, Lincolnshire History & Archaeology (49 (2014), pp.37-58.). [Back to text]
[2] He was clerk to the Court of Sewers and was seen as a man of learning – Diana & Michael Honeybone, The Correspondence of William Stukeley and Maurice Johnson, 2014 (LRS 104) p99 n20. [Back to text]
[3] The commissioners also decreed a charge of a halfpenny per ton (or 6 qtrs of oats or 4 qtrs of other grains) for the short section of the Witham from Brayford Pool to High Bridge. If this toll was still being collected after 1714, it was accounted for in some other record. [Back to text]
[4] There is a clear preference for an even number of tons. This would be difficult to explain if tolls were generally assessed on bills of lading, but it might arise if Fossdyke boats often travelled in pairs with the load split evenly between the two boats, and each boat was gauged or otherwise assessed to the nearest ton. [Back to text]
[5] Lincolnshire Archives (henceforth LAO), Lincoln City Charters 668. [Back to text]
[6] LAO Lincoln City Charters 670. [Back to text]
[7] LAO Lincoln City Charters 670. [Back to top]
[8] At a later date, the coal might have come from Yorkshire via the Rivers Don, Aire or Calder. These three rivers were improved over the period we are interested in. The question of whether some of the coal arriving at Torksey might have come from these sources as early as 1724 will be addressed later. [Back to text]
[9] Journals of the House of Commons, 30 March 1736. [Back to text]
[10] Pers. com., Les Reid of the Newark Heritage Barge. [Back to text]
[11] John U Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry (London: Frank Cass, 1966) II, 78-108. [Back to text]
[12] Charles Deering, History of Nottingham, 1751, 87, notes that the local coal is ‘less durable’ than sea-coal so is ‘inferior for culinary use’. [Back to text]
[13] [R A Mott (ed)] The history of coke making and of the Coke Oven Managers’ Association, 1936, 255. [Back to text]
[14] John Beckett (ed), A centenary history of Nottingham, (Chichester: Phillimore, 2006) 157. [Back to text]
[15] LAO BACON, H. B. Hickman Esq, No 2 / 21(iv). [Back to text]
[16] David Hey, Packmen, Carriers and Packhorse Roads, 1980, 114, describes Doncaster as the market where West Riding clothiers bought Lincolnshire wool. [Back to text]
[17] Sir Francis Hill, Georgian Lincoln, (Cambridge : University Press, 1966) 105. [Back to text]
[18] I am grateful to Philip Riden for sight of a draft of a forthcoming work on trade on the Trent and associated waterways, in which his analysis of the Boston port books expands considerably on Willan’s earlier work. [Back to text]
[19] Eg LAO Branston Par 12/2 – Constables’ accounts. [Back to text]
[20] LAO Hill 4/4 [Back to text]
[21] The nature of a duddle is unclear but they seem to have been able to navigate the Witham to Lincoln and also to cross the Wash. [Back to text]
[22] LAO LCC WILLS 1729/i/110. [Back to text]
[23] LAO Wills ‘O’ 1564. [Back to text]
[24] BL Add MS 26082. [Back to text]
[25] LAO Lincoln City Charters 664 – agreement concerning “two new locks or sluices”. [Back to text]
[26] Sir Francis Hill, Georgian Lincoln, Cambridge : University Press, 1966, Appendix II. [Back to text]
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