Shipping Management and the Role of the Master
Shipping Management and the Role of the Master
This chapter examines British shipping management in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular focus on the role of the shipmaster. It identifies several of the problems in ship management and the consequences that came from joint-stock ownership. It also explores how ships advertised business and employment, and the decision making-process behind the chartering of ships. It determines the duties of shipmasters and how they varied based on the level of involvement of the ship’s managing owner. Using contemporary correspondence to further illustrate the life of the shipmaster, it attempts to define the scope of his authority. It concludes that despite the level of autonomy a shipmaster might attain, ultimately the crucial decisions that ensured a ship’s success lay with the shipowners: purchase of the ship, how to deploy it, and indeed the choice of shipmaster.
Keywords: British Shipmasters, Shipowning, Joint-Stock Shipowners, Shipping Advertisements, Shipmaster Correspondence
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
