The maintenance, repair and construction of ships in the French Empire during the eighteenth century (I).
David Plouviez Université de Nantes, France
In France, the historiography of maritime exchanges is very rich for the modern period.
Characterised by European expansion in the world, this period has been the subject of a great deal of work to reconstruct the flows of a worldwide commerce that continued to grow between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Under the influence of the Annales, the major studies produced after the Second World War adopted a serial and quantitative methodology in response to the need for analysis of thousands of economic facts. After a ‘Golden Age’ that lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s, this historiography experienced a temporary lull until the 1990s, when the study of maritime exchanges restarted, aided by digital tools and the financing of European and worldwide research programmes.
The contribution of this historiography has been fundamental to a renewed approach to this economic process, but it has to be said that the methodology adopted by these studies has tended to focus less on a qualitative approach, notably to the infrastructures.
While the studies of this period may not have ignored the material elements of world trade – ships, ports etc. – their treatment of questions relating to the repair and construction of ships has appeared perfunctory. And yet, this issue is central to a better under- standing of this earliest globalisation of exchanges, at the confluence of economic history, social history and technological history. Based on current research and a drawing-together of scattered studies, this article represents an attempt to identify some problematic way-markers rather than a definitive synthesis of the subject, a task that would require collective endeavour.
Networks of ports of call and infrastructure for the maintenance and repair of ships
Where could French captains find maintenance facilities for their ships outside Europe?
The answer to that simple question is complex in so far as it relies upon the analysis of numerous sources – ships’ logs, correspondence between captains and the owners of their vessels, and letters between merchants and dealers, as well as the archives of the various commercial companies.
Around the Atlantic, where the maritime routes were common to all European nations, French captains preferred to use the same bases as their foreign counterparts. Before leaving Europe for the Antilles, the Canaries and Madeira were popular ports of call, as were the islands of Cape Verde on the route down to the Gulf of Guinea and the Dutch base on the Cape before entering the Indian Ocean. These places appear regularly in ships’ logs as ports of call approved by all navigators, permitting the resupply of water and provisions as well as maintenance of the vessel. This frequenting of foreign ports of call did not prevent the establishment of French trading posts and colonial ports, with the development of the slave trade, the plantations in the Antilles and cod-fishing in North America. These activities entailed the existence of operational bases whose geographical distribution spread rapidly from the 1630s until the end of the seventeenth century. In Africa, the French established themselves on the coasts of Senegal and The Gambia, building several trading posts on the islands of Arguin, Gorée, Rufisque and Saint-Louis, all of which came under the authority of the Compagnie du Sénégal, which was created in 1679. The African coasts are difficult to access due to the bores in the estuaries and deltas and these trading posts facilitated different commercial operations. The Répertoire des expéditions négrières françaises au XVIIIe siècle, the various accounts of travellers, and the work of the Compagnie du Sénégal, show that these trading posts were able to repair ships, but only in emergencies, as they were generally ill-equipped and only able to accept large tonnage with difficulty, as in the case of the Aurore, a slaver forced to stop at Gorée for repairs in 1712. On the other side of the Atlantic, the most important French ports developed rapidly, the most notable being Basse-Terre on Guadaloupe, Fort-Royal and Saint-Pierre on Martinique, Le Carénage on Sainte-Lucie, Cap-Français, Léogane – which was supplanted by Port-au-Prince in 1750 – and Cayes on Saint-Domingue. For large vessels, ports in Louisiana, such as New Orleans, were difficult, if not impossible, to access. In North America, Louisbourg soon offered an opportunity for shelter and the repair of ships, a stopping-off point before the ports of the St Lawrence River in New France.
But this inventory is misleading in that it does not take account of the numerous possible places for maintenance and repair. If one considers the Antilles alone, the coastline surveys made by the builders of fortifications revealed numerous bays, coves or break- waters where ships over-wintered and, if necessary, hulls were careened. Some of these places evolved into ports, while others remained as sheltered moorings only for those in the know. Toponymy reveals the initial usages. Thus, the port of Castries on the island of Sainte-Lucie was not so named until 1785. Until then, it was the ‘Petit Cul-de-sac’ [Little Dead-end] or equally the ‘port du Carénage’ [port of Careening], such were the opportunities for the maintenance and repair of hulls offered by the site.
The networks of ports of call in the Indian Ocean, and on the route to China, were more complicated to establish, France having come belatedly to the region. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the French arrived in a world where, after more than a century of Portuguese domination, the Dutch and the English were already largely installed. In fact, in establishing ports of call, the French administrators hesitated between the English and Dutch models, the first structured around the two large trading centres of Madras and Bombay, and the second relying on scattered trading posts around Batavia. The French agents were not in possession of a sufficiently accurate political and economic mapping, or a knowledge of the climatic and sanitary conditions, to be able to propose a reasoned strategy for the establishment of French ports of call in the Indian Ocean. However, the Dutch model won the day. The officials of the French East India Madagascar in 1668, but the project was quickly abandoned. Against this background, the company officials advised their ships to sail directly after a port of call at Cape Verde on the way out and in Brazil on the way back. But under these conditions, the wear and tear of ships posed substantial problems, especially on the Europe-India leg in so far as the trading posts were not always able to provide maintenance and repair. The network of ports of call was not really fixed until the beginning of the eighteenth century. These settlements took account of the places of production of Indian commodities, of the best location in the geography of trade and of the ability to take advantage of the flows of intra-Asiatic commerce, a complex equation. Within this context, three regional subspaces emerged, slowly: the Mascarene Islands – Île Bourbon and Île de France; the Indian trading posts organised around the three poles of Pondicherry, Chandernagore and Mahé; and, finally, the trading post of Canton, but in this last case it was the mooring of Whampoa that served as a port of call for the French. In 1719, the French East India Company had tried to establish itself at Poulo Condor, which would have been an ideal naval base for the ships on the China route, as well as being strategically placed with control of the straits of Malacca, Banka and Sunda. The cost of the infrastructure, however, was so high that the project was abandoned in 1721.
With regard to their capacity for the maintenance and repair of ships, these ports of call were of varying utility. The available infrastructure at the Indian trading posts and those in China barely allowed major repairs. In contrast, Île de France and Port-Louis became, after their enhancement by Mahé de La Bourdonnais in 1735, the port of call for all French ships in the Indian Ocean. Following the example of businesses at trading posts where the infrastructure was poor, it was a colonial business modelled on the economics of the plantations of the Antilles that developed in the Mascarenes. Demographic growth was high between 1735 and 1788, from 8,509 inhabitants to 45,800 for the Île Bourbon and from 1501 to 42,828 for the Île de France, and was accompanied by growth in infrastructure, notably in harbours.
The development of a network of ports of call was the first step in the plan to establish and defend militarily trade routes, but had to be followed by the setting up of the necessary infrastructure and the organisation of a system for supplying basic materials. On the appearance of colonial ports, we have very little information. The urban history of the French empire has bypassed the harbour districts of the towns and it is very difficult to find an inventory of the infrastructure (quays, workshops, warehouses) and of the available equipment (cranes, capstans etc.) used for the maintenance and the building of commercial vessels or warships. But this acknowledgement is not necessarily due to a historiographical deficiency. If historians are so little interested in the infrastructure of colonial harbours in the modern period, it is partly because it was very under-developed before the end of the eighteenth century.
Company wanted to create a ‘French Batavia’ with the foundation of Fort-Dauphin in Madagascar in 1668, but the project was quickly abandoned. Against this background, the company officials advised their ships to sail directly after a port of call at Cape Verde on the way out and in Brazil on the way back. But under these conditions, the wear and tear of ships posed substantial problems, especially on the Europe-India leg in so far as the trading posts were not always able to provide maintenance and repair. The network of ports of call was not really fixed until the beginning of the eighteenth century. These settlements took account of the places of production of Indian commodities, of the best location in the geography of trade and of the ability to take advantage of the flows of intra-Asiatic commerce, a complex equation. Within this context, three regional subspaces emerged, slowly: the Mascarene Islands – Île Bourbon and Île de France; the Indian trading posts organised around the three poles of Pondicherry, Chandernagore and Mahé; and, finally, the trading post of Canton, but in this last case it was the mooring of Whampoa that served as a port of call for the French. In 1719, the French East India Company had tried to establish itself at Poulo Condor, which would have been an ideal naval base for the ships on the China route, as well as being strategically placed with control of the straits of Malacca, Banka and Sunda. The cost of the infrastructure, however, was so high that the project was abandoned in 1721.
With regard to their capacity for the maintenance and repair of ships, these ports of call were of varying utility. The available infrastructure at the Indian trading posts and those in China barely allowed major repairs. In contrast, Île de France and Port-Louis became, after their enhancement by Mahé de La Bourdonnais in 1735, the port of call for all French ships in the Indian Ocean.
Following the example of businesses at trading posts where the infrastructure was poor, it was a colonial business modelled on the economics of the plantations of the Antilles that developed in the Mascarenes. Demographic growth was high between 1735 and 1788, from 8,509 inhabitants to 45,800 for the Île Bourbon and from 1501 to 42,828 for the Île de France, and was accompanied by growth in infrastructure, notably in harbours. The development of a network of ports of call was the first step in the plan to establish and defend militarily trade routes, but had to be followed by the setting up of the necessary infrastructure and the organisation of a system for supplying basic materials. On the appearance of colonial ports, we have very little information. The urban history of the French empire has bypassed the harbour districts of the towns and it is very difficult to find an inventory of the infrastructure (quays, workshops, warehouses) and of the available equipment (cranes, capstans etc.) used for the maintenance and the building of commercial vessels or warships. But this acknowledgement is not necessarily due to a historiographical deficiency. If historians are so little interested in the infrastructure of colonial harbours in the modern period, it is partly because it was very under-developed before the end of the eighteenth century.
In any event, the development of overseas ports must be interpreted within the terms of the colonial politics of France. Without exception, and even if it became more and more permissive in the eighteenth century, the Exclusif colonial prevented a steady development of ports in the empire. The monarchy had not developed an imperial mindset and if it measured the importance of protecting commerce, this awareness manifested itself in the building of defences rather than harbour equipment. At Louisbourg, which was nevertheless a strategic port of call for cod-fishing and the France-Canada and Canada-Antilles routes, the port had no wharfs – important facilities for the careening of ships – before 1740. The bulk of the financial support agreed for the improvement of this town was for its fortification rather than the improvement of the harbour. The same was true in the Antilles. The shallow waters around Point-à-Pitré on Guadaloupe only permitted the careening of small vessels, larger ships being careened further out in the bay from floating pontoons brought alongside the ships.
In the busy colonial ports, the building of infrastructure came no earlier. Although Cap Français was the most important destination in the Antilles from France – approximately 320 ships were sent there from France in 1788 – the first careening basin was not opened until 1781.
One generally had to wait until the end of the eighteenth century for such facilities to be built throughout the Antilles, one by one. The view of the dockyard of the ‘Cul-de-Sac’ on Martinique by Nicolas Ozanne gives a glimpse of the harbour equipment available at the end of the Ancien Régime (see Figure 1). The drawing of 1780 shows a ship undergoing maintenance, firmly tethered to the quay, and floating pontoons equipped with treadwheel cranes used for caulking and dismasting as well as the handling of heavy loads.
Only Port-Louis and Quebec benefitted from a broad and partly coordinated plan for development. The French East India Company and the Navy were the sponsors of this infrastructure, which they envisaged for their own use, even if it also benefitted commercial vessels. These two installations were contemporaneous as the first works at Port-Louis began in 1735 while the reopening of the royal shipyards took place in 1738.
Without going into the details of the different development plans, they concerned ‘complete’ harbours, capable of simultaneously maintaining and repairing ships but equally of constructing vessels. The two projects enjoyed very different histories, however. On the route to the Indies, the ships had two bases at which to carry out extensive refits, France and Port-Louis on Île-de-France, and this port of call continued to be equipped throughout the eighteenth century. In Quebec, the development of the royal shipyards was more chaotic. After initial development at the Palais yard, which was used continuously by private constructors, the tonnage of ships projected by the Navy necessitated the building of a second shipyard at the ‘Cul-de-Sac’ on the Île d’Orléans. In both cases, the overwintering and big refits of vessels were difficult, but the state infrastructure benefitted the Canadians.
Beyond these two installations, a lack of maritime infrastructure was evident and the term ‘harbour’ could be understood as little more than a mooring point given how little maritime equipment was available on the coasts. However, this fact was even more evident on the African coast or in the Indian Ocean, where it was a question of an archipelago of trading posts supported by an urban port. The Indian trading posts were unable to carry out major work on large commercial vessels. Chandernagore, built in the Ganges delta, was situated 35 leagues from its mouth on the Hooghly, one of its tributaries, where the outer harbour of Balasore was established. For a long time, Chandernagore was considered a graveyard for ships because of the difficulties of navigation. Merchandise was transferred onto vessels of between 20 and 100 tons at Balasore and then taken upstream to the trading post. From 1728 onwards, a pilot service was put in place to allow large merchant ships to sail upstream to Chandernagore, but the navigation was still difficult. Situated on a low sandy slope, Pondicherry was a no more welcoming trading post for the ships that had to make do with a port without shelter, making perilous any repair work.
How can this lack of harbour infrastructure be explained, even at those ports of call that were vital to commerce? The world of trade and merchants had an interest in owning the infrastructure to repair their vessels, the principal tool of their trade, but the cost of construction of these installations was off-putting. However, this investment quickly proved itself profitable in reducing the time taken for maintenance. Beyond the costs, Anne Pérotin-Dumon points to disputes about jurisdiction on the coast to explain the lack of development. The coastline was open to public access, but the colonial authorities were able to grant a part of it in the form of concessions that allowed traders or journey- men to set themselves up. At any moment, these concessions could be legally revoked by the sovereign power, which limited the attempts by the economic players to build lasting infrastructure. In this context, only state powers could undertake works, which then had to be of use to the state. Consequently, it was not by chance that many careening docks were built in the Antilles from the 1770s onwards. The taking of Martinique and Guadeloupe by the British Navy during the Seven Years War had been made possible by its ability to dock on a long-term basis in the Antilles, a facility not available to the French navy, due to the lack of equipment in the ports. The building of docks and careening basins was therefore due in part to this realisation by the French maritime and colonial administrations.
The shortage of harbour infrastructure was accentuated by the difficulties colonial ports had in obtaining sufficient basic materials for re-exchange. The cry of alarm from Clugny, intendant of Saint-Domingue in 1762, reveals the situation:
Qu’il me soit permis de vous dire un mot sur la manière dont on arme dans les ports de France les bâtiments destinés pour les colonies. On retranche autant qu’on peut sur les objets les plus nécessaires et les plus indispensables […] Un bâtiment arrive dans un port de Saint-Domingue ses voiles en mauvais état, ses manœuvres hors de service, ses vergues rompues sans en avoir de rechange, ses approvisionnements épuisés et enfin hors d’état d’entreprendre le voyage d’Europe si on ne lui fournit tous les remplacements dont il besoin. Le Roy n’ayant point de magasins remplis, point d’argent et peu de crédit pour faire ces remplacements […] je vois avec douleur que tous les vaisseaux qui arrivent en France sont dans le même état.
[Let me inform you of the manner in which ships destined for the colonies are supplied in the ports of France. The most basic and necessary things are cut back on as much as possible […] A ship arrives in the port of Saint-Domingue with its sails in poor condition, its rigging out of service, its yards broken without having been replaced, its supplies exhausted and in no state to make the crossing to Europe without being supplied with all the replacements it needs. As the King has no well-supplied depots, no money and little credit to make these replacements […] I am sad to see that all the vessels arriving in France are in a similar state.] The dependence of the French colonies on mainland France prevented the setting-up of networks of provisioning within America and India. For basic materials, the colonial hinterlands were not worked systematically, with the exception of New France where forest visits and tree-marking were organised. In the Antilles, the French ports were regularly subject to a lack of wood, due to the failure to establish lines of supply and develop commercial relations with the other French colonies and neighbouring empires. A trade in wood existed between North America (New France, the Thirteen Colonies) and the Antilles but it was neither heavy nor regular. At the same time, the Spanish were exploiting American forests to supply their colonial ports and those of the mother country, while the English were doing the same with their resources in New England, South Carolina and Georgia to feed their islands in the Antilles.
Such networks of supply did not exist in the French empire of the eighteenth century. From the 1630s–50s until the end of the Ancien Régime, the home country played a dominant role in the supply of strategic provisioning. The supply of tools, essential for the industry of naval construction, was typical because it depended almost entirely on products from the home country.
The ironworks of Saint-Maurice in New France, with several smelting furnaces, was the only large metallurgical company in the empire, but was far from being able to supply local needs. The make-up of the various cargoes that left France show that the colony was still very dependent on iron and tools made in the businesses run by Pierre Babaud de la Chaussade in the Nivernais and Leblanc de Marnaval in Berry.
This initial assessment of the capacity of overseas ports to maintain and repair ships appears poor. Apart from undertaking these operations in foreign ports, not necessarily better equipped, French captains found it difficult to provide the optimum maintenance of their vessels. One of the consequences could have been the overall dilapidation of French ships. It is very difficult to document this accurately, but the officials of the French East India Company and the Navy sometimes indicated in their correspondence the inability of certain ships to put to sea again. They were then sold privately to be repaired or stripped down for their materials and parts. On this point, the official documentation could be complemented by the reports of captains to their vessels’ owners.
These features open up areas of research into the market for second-hand ships and the economics of recycling in the empires, two exciting component themes of the general problem of the construction and maintenance of ships overseas. If a tally of the ships unable to put to sea again is difficult, a look at those that traded from Bordeaux and Nantes would provide a good idea of the phenomenon. During the period 1730–1789, per cent of ships engaged in trade were not able to put to sea again in the Antilles, condemned by the maritime authorities, which represents 86 vessels descending into the second-hand or scrap market (see Table 1). To this number should be added the slavetrade ships whose captains had doubtless anticipated their condemnation by the marine authorities. In 1734, the crew of the Saint-Michel contested the decision of their captain ‘d’avoir vendu le navire 90 sterling à la Jamaïque alors qu’il n’était pas condamné’ [to sell the ship for £90 to Jamaica when it hadn’t been condemned].
These facts are not unimportant and question the general state of ships engaged in other commercial circuits (direct trade between France and her colonies, cabotage etc.).
Table 1 raises other reasons for reflection: between 1730 and 1789, the proportion of ships that were condemned reduced significantly. What is the explanation for this? The use of a newer fleet is one hypothesis, but this decrease in condemnations took place in the 1770s and 1780s, a period during which colonial ports equipped themselves with the tools necessary for the maintenance of ships. Some correlation between these two facts seems possible.
The construction of ships overseas
The history of shipbuilding in France’s overseas territories remains to be written. Wherever the French installed themselves, there existed locally-built fleets. Generally small – few being more than 80–100 tons – these ships were used for local commercial operations across the numerous regional trading routes in America, along the coasts of Africa and in the Indian Ocean. In this last area, for example, the directors of the trading posts built a fleet that was able to distribute merchandise along the coasts and up the rivers. However, this shipbuilding is very difficult to document. Administrative correspondence is largely silent on the subject and only a detailed analysis of notarial archives would perhaps identify the players, constructors as well as purchasers, and the places where they practised their craft. But unlike the maintenance and repair of ships, which required specific infrastructure that acted as a marker in the colonial space, shipbuilding was a technical process that required a small space on the shore, modest tools and a small labour force for a relatively short period of time. It needed neither a permanent location nor significant productive resources. The need for a coastal shipping capacity quickly surfaced in the colonies. Commercial companies establishing settlements in America sent from the motherland small, prefabricated boats. This was the case in Guadeloupe, which received its first ‘kit’ of a small craft built at Dieppe in 1640 and then a second in 1642. A century later, the Compagnie du Sénégal had hulls built in France and escorted by a vessel to their trading posts. Such circumstances either represented the beginnings of colonisation or else occurred in regions where shipbuilding was difficult. Elsewhere, the French adopted local boats, the Caribbean pirogue, to travel between islands, in the Americas. The size and range of local fleets is difficult to assess, but it is a factor that must be taken into account.
In Asia, maritime connections existed long before the arrival of the Europeans, and afterwards local fleets continued to develop while adapting to the new players present in the region. The work of Om Prakash reveals the extent to which the flow of movement within Asia increased between the arrival of the Portuguese and English colonisation, rendering essential the establishment of an Indian shipbuilding industry. The French trading posts in India therefore soon relied heavily on the local industry, complemented with ships built in the Mascarenes from the 1740s onwards. However, we have no details of the relationship between the French underwriters and the Indian builders. Did the French buy ships already built to Indian standards? Did technical decisions result from exchanges between French and Indian shipbuilders?
Shipbuilding in the settlement colonies followed a different trajectory. From the seventeenth century on, the State had wished to encourage shipbuilding overseas but had run up against its own contradictions. Apart from the problem of manual labour considered below, the development of this industry was as difficult as the organisation of adequate maintenance of vessels within the constraints of the Exclusif colonial. The shortage of basic materials and absence of sustainable metal- and canvas-making capacity were obstacles. In 1705, Raudot, a merchant based in Quebec, wrote to the king about the opportunities for encouraging shipbuilding in Canada:
[…] Il ne faut pas songer à construire des vaisseaux dans la colonie, parce que tout, à part le bois, y était d’une extrême cherté […] Les marchands qui s’y étaient livrés s’étaient ruinés. A l’avenir, si les mines de fer des Trois-Rivières s’ouvrent, que l’on fasse dans le pays des cordages et de la toile à voile, tout le monde se mettra à construire et il n’y a que le temps qui puisse faire cet effet.
[One must not think of building vessels in the colony, because everything, except wood, is extremely expensive there […] The merchants who have bought there have been ruined. In the future, if the foundries at Trois-Rivières open, and rope and canvas are made in the country, everyone will begin to build but only time can bring that about.]
This account illustrates the situation in which all French colonies found themselves at the time. The trafficking of merchandise, legal and illegal, between the French colonies and their foreign counterparts, notably English and Spanish, did not permit regular construction to be maintained. The need for ships was dictated by a binary second-hand market, as previously discussed, that of basic and worked materials reused in new constructions, and that of ships from the motherland sold locally. Also important was the purchase of new ships in foreign colonies, notably New England, which was an important centre of shipbuilding in North America.
Despite Raudot’s words, Canada was without doubt the French colony, with the Mascarenes, that had the best developed shipbuilding industry, but it is also the colony where the contradictions of mercantile politics were most evident. Jean Talon, the first intendant to go to New France, noted during his stays from 1665 to 1668 and from 1669 to 1672 the opportunity and need to support this sector. Of all the French territories, New France was the only one to have at its disposal such a distinguished inheritance. Jean Talon imported the same measures to help commercial shipbuilding that Colbert had simultaneously put in place in France. The Canadians therefore were able get 4 livres per ton in the case of buying a ship or 6 livres per tonne for those building locally. It is very difficult to assess the effects of this incentive, particularly as Talon’s successors did not continue his measures. There was a small shipbuilding industry until the 1710s, but it appears to have been limited. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, several merchants from Quebec got together to restart shipbuilding. Between the connections with the Antilles, France and navigation of the Saint Lawrence River, the needs were great. Once again, a tally is impossible but the initiatives were numerous: in 1713, Lefèvre launched a 200-ton vessel; in the same year, Lamarque and Gamelin built two others, one of which was 150 tons, on the island of Montreal. At the same time, Acadia and the Île Royale became a major shipbuilding site, even if the number of ships bought in New England always exceeded the number of those built locally.
To reduce foreign purchases, the system of subsidies was reintroduced by the intendant Hocquart from 1732 onwards: 3 livres per ton for ships between 40 and 60 tons, 4 livres for those between 60 and 90 tons and 5 livres for those of more than 90 tons. Initially this expensive measure appeared efficient, but it occurred in parallel with the building of the royal shipyards in the same year (see Table 2).
French ambition to make Canada a colony with both military and civil shipyards was a dead-end given its socio-economic composition. From the time of Jean Talon and the merchant Raudot, the fur trade predominated and very little capital was invested in the mills, forges and numerous other industrial activities necessary for shipbuilding. The royal shipyards stifled private construction to the point that the latter had to abandon its projects. In 1743, a group of Quebec merchants and the intendant of Martinique proposed building five or six large vessels and 25–30 to service trade in the Antilles, but the shipyard was abandoned.
Royal shipbuilding consumed most of the colony’s materials and employed her entire workforce. The year 1743 marks a break in the construction of commercial vessels. Under French control, shipbuilding in New France never recommenced, but became a very dynamic activity under British rule.
TO BE FOLLOWED