° Chester ° Bristol ° Dartmouth ° Falmouth ° Harwich
° Hull ° Liverpool ° London (Billingsgate)
° Newcastle-upon-Tyne ° Plymouth ° Portsmouth
° Weymouth
Bristol
Bristol in south-western England is on the River Avon. The river traditionally marked the border between Gloucestershire and Somerset. In 1373, Edward III of England proclaimed "that the said town of Bristol be a County by itself and called the county of Bristol for ever," but maps usually instead show it as part of Gloucestershire. As the city spilled south of the river, it took the county with it. Bristol was the starting point of John Cabot's voyage to North America in 1497.
Renewed growth came with the 17th Century rise of England's American colonies and the rapid 18th Century expansion of England's part in the Atlantic trade in Africans taken for slavery in the Americas. Bristol, along with Liverpool, became a significant centre for the slave trade although few slaves were brought to Britain. During the height of the slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2000 slaving ships were fitted out at Bristol, carrying a estimated half a million people from Africa to the Americas and slavery.
Competition from Liverpool from c.1760, the disruption of maritime commerce through war with France (1793) and the abolition of the slave trade (1807) contributed to the city's failure to keep pace with the newer manufacturing centres of the north and midlands. The long passage up the heavily tidal Avon Gorge, which had made the port highly secure during the middle ages, had become a liability which the construction of a new "Floating Harbour" (designed by William Jessop) in 1804-9 failed to overcome. Nevertheless, Bristol's population (66,000 in 1801) quintupled during the 19th Century, supported by new industries and growing commerce.
It was particularly associated with the leading engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the Great Western Railway between Bristol and London, two pioneering Bristol-built steamships, including The Great Britain, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Steam-powered cotton factories enabled Victorian Britain to produce more than half the world's supply of cotton. Coal-mining around Newcastle also expanded rapidly to meet demand. With the upsurge in railway construction, moving goods to shipping ports became easy, while ship-building itself went forward at a rapid pace.
Falmouth
In 1840, Messrs Brodie McGhie Willcox & Arthur Anderson, firm of London merchants, and Captain Richard Bourne, R.N., founded Peninsular Company and begain providing monthly service between Falmouth and Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon and Gibraltar.Newcastle
Tyneside,
in northern England, covers part of the area of Tyne and Wear. It includes
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, Jarrow, North Shields, and South Shields -
all settlements on the banks of the River Tyne.While Newcastle-upon-Tyne had been an important local centre since Roman times, and was a major local market town from the Middle Ages, the development of Newcastle and Tyneside is owed to coal mining. Coal was first known to be dug in Tyneside from superficial seams in around 1200, but there is some evidence that it may have been dug as early as 800 AD. Coal was dug from from local drift mines and bell pits, and although initially only used locally, it was exported from the port of Newcastle from the mid 1300s onward.
The valley of the River Derwent, a major tributary of the Tyne that rises in County Durham, saw the development of the steel industry from around 1600 onwards. The combination of coal and steel industries in the area was the catalyst for further major industrial development in the nineteenth century, including the shipbuilding industry – at its peak, the Tyneside shipyards were the biggest and best centre of shipbuilding in the world, and built an entire navy for Japan in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Weymouth
Weymouth is situated on the south coast of England and Weymouth Bay is part of the English Channel. In 1794 a packet steamer service was launched to operate between Weymouth and the Channel Islands. Subsequent services allowed for the "emigration" of several Dorset families to the islands.The East Indiaman, The Earl of Abergavenny, Weymouth's most well known shipwreck, sank in Weymouth Bay in 1805 with the loss of 261 lives.