They
Built, Also, There So Prodigious Strong, That It Was An Ordinary
Thing For An Ipswich Collier, If No Disaster Happened To Him, To
Reign (As Seamen Call It) Forty Or Fifty Years, And More.
In the town of Ipswich the masters of these ships generally dwelt,
and there were, as they then told
Me, above a hundred sail of them,
belonging to the town at one time, the least of which carried
fifteen score, as they compute it, that is, 300 chaldron of coals;
this was about the year 1668 (when I first knew the place). This
made the town be at that time so populous, for those masters, as
they had good ships at sea, so they had large families who lived
plentifully, and in very good houses in the town, and several
streets were chiefly inhabited by such.
The loss or decay of this trade accounts for the present pretended
decay of the town of Ipswich, of which I shall speak more
presently. The ships wore out, the masters died off, the trade
took a new turn; Dutch flyboats taken in the war, and made free
ships by Act of Parliament, thrust themselves into the coal-trade
for the interest of the captors, such as the Yarmouth and London
merchants, and others; and the Ipswich men dropped gradually out of
it, being discouraged by those Dutch flyboats. These Dutch
vessels, which cost nothing but the caption, were bought cheap,
carried great burthens, and the Ipswich building fell off for want
of price, and so the trade decayed, and the town with it.
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