I posted this last night on a ship in the Baltic Sea between Turku and Stockholm. In the last month I have been exploring maritime history between Jersey and the Baltic as part of my project Entrepôt. I’m on the last leg of my journey travelling to specific locations and sites in Sweden and Denmark before returning home to Jersey. There has been many twists and turns on this trip as new research and discoveries have been found. Often Jersey ships would arrive in port with luxury goods produced from slave plantations in the American colonies, or sail from ports in the Mediterranean with commodities exchanged as part of the lucrative triangular trade, without knowing exactly where to collect a freight for the return voyage. In archival records we have accounts from captains’ logbooks describing how they would sail from port to port over several weeks or sometimes months in an attempt to secure a good deal as frustrations mounted from the shipowners back in Jersey.

Image: Dining room on ‘Vestland’, a Norwegian vessel carrying dry bulk between ports in mainly Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

#entrepôt