The Beaulieu River: its Rise and Fall as a Commercial Waterway

Abstract

The Beaulieu River is of little commercial importance now but the Middle Ages saw the regular import of food and wine for the monastery as well as the export of timber. A solitary naval vessel was built and launched on the river in 1689. But it was a (failed) Caribbean plantation venture of the second Lord Montagu in the 1720s which prompted the construction of an infrastructure at Buckler’s Hard, thereby facilitating what became a thriving naval shipbuilding industry, producing 43 men-of-war in the second half of the eighteenth century. Shipbuilding on the river slowly declined after 1810.

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Filed under: Medieval | Other (Early Modern) | Other (Twentieth C) | Other (Nineteenth C) | Other (Eighteenth C) | Internal Waterways
Subjects include: Harbours & Dockyards | Leisure & Small Craft | Shipbuilding & Design