what I have mentioned of the former state of this town; but the
present state is my proper work; I therefore return to my voyage up
the river.
The sight of these ships thus laid up in the river, as I have said,
was very agreeable to me in my passage from Harwich, about five and
thirty years before the present journey; and it was in its
proportion equally melancholy to hear that there were now scarce
forty sail of good colliers that belonged to the whole town.
In a creek in this river, called Lavington Creek, we saw at low
water such shoals, or hills rather, of mussels, that great boats
might have loaded with them, and no miss have been made of them.
Near this creek, Sir Samuel Barnadiston had a very fine seat, as,
also, a decoy for wild ducks, and a very noble estate; but it is
divided into many branches since the death of the ancient
possessor. But I proceed to the town, which is the first in the
county of Suffolk of any note this way.
Ipswich is seated, at the distance of twelve miles from Harwich,
upon the edge of the river, which, taking a short turn to the west,
the town forms, there, a kind of semicircle, or half moon, upon the
bank of the river. It is very remarkable, that though ships of 500
ton may, upon a spring tide, come up very near this town, and many
ships of that burthen have been built there, yet the river is not
navigable any farther than the town itself, or but very little; no,
not for the smallest beats; nor does the tide, which rises
sometimes thirteen or fourteen feet, and gives them twenty-four
feet water very near the town, flow much farther up the river than
the town, or not so much as to make it worth speaking of.
He took little notice of the town, or at least of that part of
Ipswich, who published in his wild observations on it that ships of
200 ton are built there. I affirm, that I have seen a ship of 400
ton launched at the building-yard, close to the town; and I appeal
to the Ipswich colliers (those few that remain) belonging to this
town, if several of them carrying seventeen score of coals, which
must be upward of 400 ton, have not formerly been built here; but
superficial observers must be superficial writers, if they write at
all; and to this day, at John’s Ness, within a mile and a half of
the town itself, ships of any burthen may be built and launched
even at neap tides.
I am much mistaken, too, if since the Revolution some very good
ships have not been built at this town, and particularly the
MELFORD or MILFORD galley, a ship of forty guns; as the GREYHOUND
frigate, a man-of-war of thirty-six to forty guns, was at John’s
Ness. But what is this towards lessening the town of Ipswich, any
more than it would be to say, they do not build men-of-war, or East
India ships, or ships of five hundred ton burden at St. Catherines,
or at Battle Bridge in the Thames? when we know that a mile or two
lower, viz., at Radcliffe, Limehouse, or Deptford, they build ships
of a thousand ton, and might build first-rate men-of-war too, if
there was occasion; and the like might be done in this river of
Ipswich, within about two or three miles of the town; so that it
would not be at all an out-of-the-way speaking to say, such a ship
was built at Ipswich, any more than it is to say, as they do, that
the ROYAL PRINCE, the great ship lately built for the South Sea
Company, was London built, because she was built at Limehouse.
And why then is not Ipswich capable of building and receiving the
greatest ships in the navy, seeing they may be built and brought up
again laden, within a mile and half of the town?
But the neighbourhood of London, which sucks the vitals of trade in
this island to itself, is the chief reason of any decay of business