ABSTRACT
In considering the merchant ship of the Napoleonic era there are certain facts which we must remember in order to get our perspective right. The first of these is the smallness of everything compared to the present day, the smallness of the known world, of the man-power of different nations, and above all of the long-voyage merchant ship. If we examine the registrar's figures for 1800 and compare them with the present day, we find that in 1800 the average tonnage of ships registered in Great Britain and Ireland was 113 tons, compared to over 3,000 in the year 1938. Yet there were over three times as many British ships sailing the seas in 1800 as there were in 1938, the exact figures being 14,363 ships in 1800, as compared with 4,405 ships in 1938.
