This class consists of volumes of accounts, disbursements and memoranda relating to shipping and trade, seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Of the seventeenth-century volumes one is the account book of Thomas Pye, cloth merchant in the Levant trade, 1657 to 1661; another is an abstract of the 'Inspector-General's accounts of import and export, 1697 to 1698'. Of the eighteenth-century volumes, the earliest is a volume relating to the packet contract of Edward Dummer (d.1713), and the subsequent enquiry into it, 1702 to 1713. There is also a volume containing the names and salaries of the Commissioner and officers of the Customs, 1711; the day book of the CASTLE of Bristol, 1727 to 1728, in which accounts of the Africans purchased in kind were entered together with a list of those who died, with the causes; an account book showing the profit and loss of the collier GEORGE, 1737; the account book of the whaler HENRIETTA of Whitby, 1777 to 1820, and that of the privateer GEORGE of Bristol, 1779 to 1782. The nineteenth-century volumes include the freight book of three ships which plied between Liverpool and Londonderry; they were the ISABELLA NAPIER, 1835 to 1840, the ROBERT NAPIER, 1847 to 1848 and the MAIDEN CITY, 1847 to 1848. There are two account books of insurance underwriters, 1836 and 1884, Baltic and Mediterranean trades; the wages account book of the GRESHAM, 1865 to 1871, together with a collection of wages forms, and the COLDSTREAM, 1872 to 1874, in the Australian trade; voyage expenses of the RYDAL HALL, 1871 to 1875, and of the barque EARL GRANVILLE, 1895 to 1903.

Administrative / biographical background
Merchant Shipping: Administration - volumes