Title: The Ulster Port Books
Date: 1612-1615
Description: This database includes the names of merchants and captains of ships found in the Ulster port books for 1612-15. It covers the ports of Londonderry, Coleraine, Carrickfergus and the Lecale ports in County Down.
The early seventeenth-century port books are an underrated source which have been underutilised by historians of the early seventeenth century. As Robert Hunter himself highlighted, they can be used to establish the character of the merchant class of the emerging plantation towns and the incipient commercialisation which was one of the characteristics of plantation. They can also be used, as names are gradually identified, to indicate the hinterlands of the Ulster ports, for example, Strabane merchants trading through Derry.
The commodities exported illuminate the plantation economy; the enormous range of imports indicates that Ulster participated in the contemporary consumer society. The port books also provide fairly accurate information about the places of origin of the ships that traded with Ulster and indicate the size of local Ulster merchant fleets.
Source: The Ulster Port Books 1612-15
Compiled by: R.J. Hunter and Brendan Scott