Cargo Book featuring the ROYAL CHARTER

Description

The image shows a cargo book from Liverpool, listing some of the cargo placed onto the Royal Charter, which was bound for Melbourne Australia. Butter, Cotswold Rams, and Yarmouth Bloaters were all placed on-board the ship to be taken to Australia and their value noted on the right hand side of the page. Such records were kept to keep a track of what had been loaded onto what ships, where, when and what the value of the good was.
Yarmouth bloaters were a type of herring, smoked and slated, very popular in the 19th century, though not so popular today. A cargo such as this would probably have been to feed the crew and passengers of the Royal Charter, rather than being intended for Australia.
Cotswold Rams were a particular breed of sheep from the Cotswold region of England. They were a popular breed of ship, favoured by sheep farmers for they produced excellent wool, and were also valuable for their meat. Sheep farming in Australia was very important to the colony's economy. Many areas of Australia were not very well suited to traditional agriculture and the growing of crops, the environment could be very hostile and the fertility of the soil could be very poor. However there were very large areas suitable for the grazing of animals, particularly the rearing of sheep. Large areas of forest and scrubland were cleared by colonists by the 1850's and converted into prized grazing land for their herds. The establishment of Port Phillip in Victoria encouraged the spread of sheep farming in the area. The quests for more lands for pasture lead to a greater exploration of the coastal areas and internal areas of Australia and encouraged settlement in those areas. Wool became a major export for Australia, it was a prominent part of its economy and soon there were millions of sheep roaming the land. Australia is still one of the world's largest exporters of wool today. The need to import high quality Cotswold sheep would have been very useful in the expanding wool and sheep farming industries. As the population of Australia grew following the various Gold Rushes of the mid-19th century, the meat that could be produced from sheep farming became important in helping to feed the nation.
Ships like the Royal Charter were also responsible for carrying mail to Australia. Communication with the colonies was very important, but located on the other side of the globe, means of communication were quite slow and it could take several months for news to travel from Britain to Australia and back again. Mail had been carried by the ships of the East India Company until 1833, but after that their monopoly ended and the British Government came to rely on either the Royal Navy or it contracted individual ships to transport mail. Ships like the Royal Charter, which could make the passage from Britain to Australia in about 60 days, increased the rate of communication greatly. A passenger aboard the Royal Charter, a Reverend William Scoresby, noted that upon arrival in Melbourne mail from the ship was offloaded into another ship headed for Sydney, and another heading for Launceston within a couple of hours. This distribution of mail was the only way to communicate with Australia and around the continent for quite some time. In the 1870's a telegraph line stretching across the continent from North to South would be established, allowing for quicker communications and the spreading of news and information.
Gold was loaded onto the ships for the return from Australia. The discovery of gold in the region about Melbourne in 1851 created a gold rush, with hundreds of thousands of people flocking to the region to seek their fortune. The gold that was mined there by the State Government was then minted into gold sovereigns or gold bars and then shipped back to Britain. Individuals who had also made their fortune would load their wealth onto the ships to be taken home to Britain as well. The gold would be taken under armed guard from the banks to the docks, where it would then be taxed by the customs authorities, then loaded onto ships in strong wooden boxes with the owners mark, and placed into secure strong rooms aboard the ships. The key to these rooms were kept by the captains of the ships, for once it was on board it became their responsibility. The Royal Charter had been loaded with over £320,000 (1859 value) of gold when it set out for Liverpool in August 1859.
What sort of cargoes would be needed in Australia, what was useful and what was not? How much could a ship like the Royal Charter carry? What sorts of things were exported from Australia other than wool? What are the effects of introducing a new species to the environment?
For more information on the history of communication with Australia see,
http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/publications/commission/books/linking-a-nation/chapter-7.html
http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/publications/commission/books/linking-a-nation/chapter-2.html
For more on Australian farming see,
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-farms-and-farming-communities