Sjæklen 2018

119 Summary Shipping in the T ø nder area in the 18th century On the basis of sporadically preserved customs accounts from 1713 to 1779 this article draws a picture of the ship traffic at the Customs House of Tønder, one of three customs houses on the west coast of Schleswig, the others being Ribe and Varde. Due to embankments in the 16 th century, the town of Tønder was enclosed behind dikes, and instead Højer and later Emmerlev were used as harbour for the customs house. In the article, the year 1769 is taken as starting point, because this particular year can be compared to a preserved customs book from Varde from the same year. In 1769 the Customs House of Tønder was visited by 49 vessels with the average size of about 17 tonnes, the smallest being 1 tonne and the largest approx. 60 tons. 25 skippers came from the coastal areas of Schleswig, and 21 came from the kingdom part of the Wadden Sea coast. Three came from places south of the duchy of Schleswig. The maritime ac tivity area stretched from Amsterdam to the south to southern Norway to the north. Export goods were different kinds of farming products whereas imports were more excotic goods such as wine, tobacco, spices and dyes from the big cities and timber from Norway. In Varde in 1769 there were 71 active vessels with an average size of about 8.5 tons. Unlike Tønder, Varde had a well defined domestic fleet of nine vessels with an average size of roughly 25 tons. The activity area and the goods carried were to a large extent similar to that of Tønder. Differences was that two of the vessels of Varde took part in the hunting of seals off Greenland, and that Varde had an export of black pots, which were not found at Tønder. Also it can be seen that skippers from Varde frequently stopped by in Tønder, whereas skippers from Tønder did not come to Varde. Looking at Tønder over the period 1713-1779, the number of vessels was fluctuating from nearly 100 in 1713 to 14 as the lowest number in 1777. The traffic and origin of the skippers turned increasingly local during the period. In the beginning of the period there were many Dutch skippers, in 1769 many skip- pers came from the kingdom part of the Wadden Sea coast – not least from the island of Fanø - and in the 1770s the skippers exclusively came from small places in the vicinity of Tønder. Alongside the increasingly local traffic at the Customs House of Tønder, the area also was part of another maritime develop- ment as the North Frisian area provided thousands of sailors to the fleets of Amsterdam, Altona, Hamburg and Copenhagen.