North-East England, 1850–1914: The Dynamics of a Maritime-Industrial Region (review)

Graeme J. Milne has written a wide ranging study of the maritime industrial heartland of north-eastern England. North East England is a work that should be of interest of scholars working well beyond the shores of British maritime history. Indeed, useful parallels could be drawn between the North East of England and the American automotive heartland.

The author's geographic focus runs from the southern limits of urban Teeside to the northern edge of the Northumberland coalfield, and from the North Sea in the east to the western limits of the Durham coalfield. The volume is divided into eight chapters with the middle six chapters providing the heart of Milne's analysis. The first chapter introduces the author's main theme that the "North East" was not a single monolithic region, but rather a series of overlapping communities of interest in a diversified geographical setting. For Milne, these communities are best studied from a tripartite view point. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the North East from a geographic angle. Chapters 4 and 5 narrow the view to that of the urban riparian developments on the Tyne, Tees, and Wear Rivers. Chapters 6 and 7 limit the field of analysis to that of maritime-oriented business. Unstated, but running through the author's presentation, is the argument that regionalism is much a state of mind as it is a geographical fact. For many of the nineteenth-century business and community leaders in Newcastle or Middlesboro, their field of view was smaller but more complex than the all encompassing "North East" label might suggest.

Central to any definition of the North East in the pre-1914 world was coal. By 1913, more than 35 million tons of coal was shipped annually from the North East. The fuel of the first industrial revolution was sent for the most part to London and to European ports from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The lynch pins of the North East economy were its ports where the commodity transfers between land and sea took place. Ports such as Newcastle served the essential function of tying the coalfield to its market. Sometimes the link between colliery and port was direct, other times it was a complex path. While the coal docks had hinterlands tied to various coalfields, other commodities had different hinterlands. For Baltic timber, the hinterland was abroad with the market being most of northern England.

Development in the industrial North East was dependent on the three major rivers. In what way these rivers were managed and who had access to them was fundamental to economic growth. The traditional governance structure of England with its reliance on counties and towns as the means of controlling local affairs was ill suited to managing riparian rights. For example, old political antagonisms, as between Newscastle and Gateshead, lead to organizational inefficiencies. On the other hand, new bodies, such as the Tyne Improvement Commission, were able to effect necessary navigational improvements to their respective rivers. Without the dredging and other riparian engineering works, the riverine ports of North East would have withered and died.

Within the ports themselves, businesses developed on the basis of shipping and shipbuilding. These linkages were perhaps more prominent in shipbuilding where the industry's demand for specialized outfits led to niche firms producing everything from reciprocating engines to rope. Intimate relationships were developed between major suppliers and shipbuilders such as with the engine builder, Wallsend Slipway & Engineering Works, which sold more than 75 percent of its output to just two shipbuilders, Swan Hunter and Armstrong. All three firms were justly renowned in the pre-1914 maritime world. However, such close relationships presented problems if market for ships turned sour. In Chapter 6, Milne provides an overview of how shipowning developed from the traditional form of sixty-fourths to larger joint stock companies as the vessels themselves grew...