Size and Profitability of English Colliers in the Eighteenth Century

Taking a fresh look at the factors bearing on profitability of carrying coal from Newcastle to London in the eighteenth century, Professor Hausman finds that average ship loads rose and technology improved during the period. He notes that this is consistent with Adam Smith's dictum that England's effort to monopolize the colonial carrying trade, through the Navigation Acts, would divert capital from domestic to colonial shipping, thereby raising rates of return in the former and lowering them in the latter.