Newcastle Coal Trade

The coastwise carriage of coal from the Tyne and Wear collieries to London and other English ports, the ‘sea-cole’ traffic that made ‘carrying coals to Newcastle’ proverbial. From the sixteenth century, flat-bottomed colliers (the cat-built barks James Cook learned his seamanship in were of this type) shuttled south; the trade was the largest single coastal traffic in England and a major nursery of merchant seamen. It peaked under steam in the nineteenth century before rail and oil eroded it.