Sjæklen

33.

Mette Guldberg: Grådyb gennem 500 år.

Sjæk’len 2000.

Årbog for Fiskeri- og Søfartsmuseet, Saltvandsakvariet i Es-

bjerg

2001, p. 15-25.

34.

Monrad Møller: op. cit., 1981, p. 31.

35.

Guldberg: op. cit, 2013.

Summary

Preserved shipping lists from the custom house in Varde,

the northernmost harbour in the Wadden Sea area, make it

possible to gain a picture of the merchant fleet and its devel-

opment in the period 1672 to 1798: how many vessels there

were, how big they were and of which type, where they were

built, and how old they were.

Varde market town had two major ports, Hjerting and

Ho, where the custom house’s ships were based. The traf-

fic from Varde custom house went mainly to Norway, the

Netherlands, Elven, Altona and Hamburg. Fish, agricultural

products and partly processed goods were exported, and

wood and iron were imported from Norway and groceries,

salt, wine, building materials and luxury products were im-

ported from the south. Some ships also hunted for seals in

the North Atlantic in the 1700s. Towards the end of the cen-

tury, the traffic went only to Altona. But in the intervening

years, the expanding fleet at Fanø had come under the cus-

tom house and had largely taken over the Varde fleet’s traffic

patterns, sailing to Norway and the Netherlands.

There were between 15 and 19 vessels from 1671 to the

1730s. The number was down to 12 in 1761, from which

it fell to 7 in 1798. As the ships grew in size during the

period, the total tonnage at the custom house still grew af-

ter the number of vessels fell, but in 1798 the tonnage had

fallen to the same low level as in 1682. But when the fleet at

Fanø is included, there was a growth which was greater than

that at national level. The average size of the vessels was

6.76 tonnes in 1671, 36.73 tonnes when it peaked in 1763,

and 14.82 tonnes in 1798. The types of ship in the 1600s

were boats, smacks and small craft, but more types appeared

throughout the 1700s. Twelve different types appeared in

the period. Several of them were specially adapted for sail-

ing in the Wadden Sea and showed clear Dutch influence.

There was also the ewer, which was developed at the Elbe

and the Schleswig Holstein Wadden Sea coast, and which

gained acceptance at the end of the 1700s.

Several of the custom house vessels were built in the

Netherlands and Friesland at the beginning of the period,

but the great majority were built in Altona in the 1760s. The

custom house vessels were mainly built locally in 1798.

This was because the island of Fanø had meanwhile built

up a shipbuilding tradition with the aid of skilled tradesmen

fromAltona. The average age of vessels at the custom house

was more or less on a par with the national average.

The home fleet at Varde custom house must be seen

against the background of developments in navigation at

Fanø, which was on the other side of the Grådyb channel.

The number of vessels here grew at the end of the 1700s,

and the Fanø fleet took over a large number of the functions

which the Varde fleet had previously overlooked. The ship-

ping thrived. It had merely moved its base from the main-

land to the island of Fanø.

The article questions the degree to which ship techno-

logy was influenced by the maritime nation the Nether-

lands, and whether the shifting of the centre of gravity in the

custom house’s patterns of contact in the period from the

Netherlands to Altona/Hamburg can be read in the ships

and the shipbuilding in the same way as can be done in the

trade (which was the topic of an article in last year’s edi-

tion of Sjæk’len). As was shown, some ships were fetched

in the Netherlands and Friesland in the 1730s, and it can be

surmised that the local shipbuilding tradition was also af-

fected by the type of ship construction which thus became

known. The local shipbuilding tradition disappeared in the

middle of the century, and Altona was the dominant place

for the building of ships. When local shipbuilding reap-

peared, it was with a transfer of skills from Altona rather

than the Netherlands. It also follows that the change in the

contact pattern in the 1760s from the Netherlands to Altona

is reflected in the shipbuilding almost even more strongly

than in the trade patterns.