ABSTRACT
One of the most important contributors to the overseas trade from Newcastle and the Tyne during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the Baltic trade. Throughout this period, there was a regular traffic of ships from the Tyne to Norway and through The Sound of Denmark into the Baltic, usually carrying cargoes of coal, salt and glass to the Baltic ports. Having become a flourishing port stimulated by the dynamic coal trade, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Newcastle had developed a thriving community of merchants and tradesmen. The financial mechanisms of the Baltic trade were complex, and depended on bills of exchange often drawn upon at Amsterdam or Rotterdam, the entire trade being a tri-partite arrangement financed largely by Dutch money, which was then repaid by English merchants. The range of general cargoes carried out of the Tyne was very wide and was taken to a very wide range of coastal ports in addition to London.
