Welsh Journals

whole British economy. In this book he expands this theme. He traces the emergence of political as well as economic power, showing how profits from Gwynedd's seaborne trade helped fuel the emergence of that north Wales Liberalism which gave impetus to the career of David Lloyd George. His early life was spent in such maritime communities and coloured his thinking when president of the Board of Trade. In this world there was constant tension between safety and profit. The difficulties and dangers of voyages, around Cape Horn, to Australia or in hazardous European waters, were not appreciated by all owners and managers. Eames writes movingly of these dangers, the losses of men and ships and of the hard-driving policies which often gave rise to them. But he also makes clear the need for quick profitable voyages in a harshly competitive world. Though many sailing ships still operated into the First World War, where they met with heavy losses, the great days of sail were already over, forced to succumb to steam power once the efficiency of the triple expansion engine had been proved in the early 1880s. Individual chapters examine the ships, shipowners and captains. The ships ranged from the wooden Porthmadog-built coastal schooners, through the iron, full rigged ships of the Welsh shipping companies to the lovely four-master steel barques, the pride of the Welsh shipping managers of Liverpool. The shipowners were a tough, profit-conscious breed, pillars of the Welsh religious establishment, concerned about satisfying their shareholders and obsessed with the need for a quick turn-round. Classic examples of the Protestant work ethic, some of them made fortunes in the process, investing in land and politics. The captains of these ships were not only expert seamen, often sailing in inadequately manned ships in unfamiliar waters, but frequently shrewd businessmen too, sometimes becoming managers and owners themselves. The varied careers of the ship managers reveal increasing prosperity as they moved from rural Gwynedd to Liverpool and from modest beginnings to affluence. The chapter on Mutual Ship Insurance clubs illustrates their part in the success of the Welsh shipping companies. The list of shareholders in the firm of William Thomas (p. 220) is revealing in its social and geographical spread, with a solid core of small Welsh investors, shopowners, quarrymen, teachers, ministers, mariners and farmers, top dressed with bankers and merchants from Manchester and Liverpool. Four detailed appendices list examples of charter parties, of Welsh shipping companies and of Gwynedd-owned ships, with full details, of value to future historians. The author also examines the careers of four particular ships, representative in their building, investment pattern, cargoes (as evocative as those in Masefield's poem), careers and ultimate loss, of that maritime world which flourished in mid-nineteenth-century Gwynedd. This is a handsomely produced book, aptly illustrated by contemporary photographs. The cover illustration is of the archetypal sailing merchantman, the beautiful steel barque, Beeswing, built in 1893 for Pritchard Bros. and Co., sunk by a German submarine in 1917. She typifies this remote world whose history Aled Eames has revealed in this excellent book. There is one fault. There is no index, a