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MERCANTILE SHIPBUILDING ACTIVITY IN SOUTH-WEST WALES, 1740-1829 THE history of the coastal shipping industries of the south-west of Wales in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is still largely unwritten, though there are a few pioneering works, by such as F. Green, D. Trevor Williams,2 R. Craig3 and B. J. George.4 In the main, these have tended to focus on particular aspects of the maritime history of the region, and until now no quantitative assessment of the size and importance of mercantile shipbuilding activity in the economy of south-west Wales during the period of the Industrial Revolution has been forthcoming. The crucial role of coastal trading in the shaping of patterns of economic development in Wales during the eighteenth century (more especially in the period prior to the massive expansion of the iron and coal industries in Glamorgan), while often inferred in more general 1 Francis Green, 'Dewisland Coasters in 1751', Historical Society of West Wales Transactions, V (1915). 2 D. Trevor Williams, 'The port books of Swansea and Neath, 1709-19', Archaelogia Cambrensis, xcv (1940). 3 R. Craig, 'The emergence of a shipowning community at Llanelly, 1800-50', Carmarthenshire Antiquary, 3, part 1 (1959); idem, Notes on the shipping of South Burry pts. 1 and 2', Gower, vol. IX (1956), and vol. X (1957); idem, 'W H. Nevill and the Uanelly Iron Shipping Co. National Library of Wales Journal, 10 (1957-8). 4 B. J. George, 'Pembrokeshire sea-trading before 1900', Field Studies, vol. 1 (ii) (1964). For works on English merchant shipping in general and coastal shipping in particular for this period, see the outstanding contributions made by R. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry (1962), T. S. Willan, The English Coasting Trade, 1600-1750 (Manchester, 1938), and J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry, vol. 2 (1932). More recent work in north Wales by A. Eames and L. Lloyd has begun to reveal the extent and importance of shipping to the economies of coastal Wales. See for example: A. Eames, Ships and Seamen of Anglesey, 1558-1918 (Anglesey Antiq. Soc., 1973), and L. Lloyd, Pwllheli. The Port and Market of Llyn (Caernarfon, 1991).