The Journey of Cotton to Carlisle's Cotton Mills - The Trade Triangle - 1st May, 2019
raw cotton Cotton comes from a plant which is grown in a hot climate. Today we traced its journey from the Americas in 18th century to Britain and in particular to the Port of Whitehaven. We learned that Whitehaven, once a small fishing port, had been developed by the Lowther family into busy shipping port, exporting coal from the Lowther's mines to Ireland. During the 1700s Whitehaven became a major trading port, its tobacco trade being only second to London. Whitehaven Harbour 1700 This map shows what was traded from Britain during this time, in particular Liverpool, Whitehaven and Bristol - described as the trading triangle. This showed that ships sailed from Britain loaded with textiles, firearms, weapons, gunpowder and metal goods to trade with dealers in West African countries. The second leg - the middle passage - saw West Africans, who had been kidnapped, sold and packed into the ships for an eight week journey to the Caribbean and North America t...