Neptune's Needle

City (1990 pop. 16,317; 2000 pop. 17,189), (cap.) Essex co., NE Mass., at the mouth of the Merrimack R. Its silverware industry dates from colonial times; textiles, scientific instruments, and electronic equip. are also made. Summer resort; antiques; fishing; whale watching.

An early shipbuilding, whaling, and shipping center, it declined after Jefferson’s embargo of 1808 and the War of 1812. Birthplace of U.S. Coast Guard and Plum Isl. Coast Guard Station. There are several historic and Located [41º31'N 71º16'W.] on the southern end of Aquidneck Island, in lower Narragansett Bay, Newport was first settled in 1638 by those families accompanying Anne Hutchinson following her banishment from Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was established two years after another Massachusetts reject, Roger Williams, founded Providence up at the head of Narragansett Bay.

Newporters quickly took to maritime commerce, becoming, by 1700, the port for all of southern New England, second only to Boston, a distinction it held down through the Revolution. Its location provided protection from the Atlantic Ocean but immediate access to it. Its merchants developed a network of contacts throughout Rhode Island, extending into Connecticut and central Massachusetts, as well as to parts of eastern Massachusetts blocked from easy access to Boston by Cape Cod. Nantucket was an important source of whale oil, which Newport merchants could sell directly to England. Most of the town's trading, however, involved the elaborate indirect moving of goods throughout the Atlantic trading world.

One early arrangement required the sale of Newfoundland fish to West Indies, in exchange for salt, which could then be sold on Nantucket for whale oil, which had a market in London, where Newporters turned to for luxury goods. A later and more notorious arrangement involved trading locally secured agricultural products for molasses in the West Indies, which was then brought back to Newport for distilling into rum, which was then used to purchase slaves on the coast of West Africa, which were then brought across the Atlantic and sold in the West Indies for cash and yet more molasses. All these transactions involved ships and crews homeported and provisioned in Newport and required of Newport merchants extensive contacts throughout the Atlantic world. By 1730 30% of all employed Newporters were engaged in shipping.

By the 1730s Newport was competing with Boston for some of its direct trade with England, even as it consolidated its position as an important regional port. Meanwhile, the town acquired a reputation for openness to ambitious newcomers, especially to Quakers and Jews, among the latter Aaron Lopez, who arrived in 1754 from Brazil. Newport had a cosmopolitan character not to be found in the smaller and more provincial Providence. That much of its wealth came from slaving and liquor seems not to have bothered the town's leading families unduly.

Even into the 1760s Providence's deeper hinterland-- plus the entrepreneurial energies and political astuteness of the Brown family -- had only begun to present Newport with local competition for the maritime carrying trade. In 1775 Newport's population was twice that of Providence, making it the 5th largest town in British North America.

The Revolution, which Newporters entered into reluctantly and only after resisting earlier efforts by the rest of Rhode Island to impose non-importation agreements, inflicted considerable damage on the town. A blockade of Narragansett Bay effectively shut down all its shipping, while an extended occupation by British forces (second only in duration to that of NYC) led to an emigration of many of the town's leading merchants (many openly Tory). Meanwhile, Providence escaped occupation and managed more successfully to keep a semblance of its pre-war trading network in operation. It also accelerated its shift into manufacturing, which Newporters disdained.

With the return of peace, a modest prosperity returned to Newport, as did its active engagement in the slave trade, even after slavery was abolished by Rhode Island in 1787. But its place as Rhode Island's first town and Southern New England's principal port were soon enough both lost to Providence, which by 1800, surpassed Newport on both counts. Since then, Newport's maritime heritage has been sustained through its ongoing connections with the sea as a navy town (once home of the Atlantic fleet and still home of the Naval War College) and one of the country's first beachside resorts and yachting centers.

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Compiler

Peter Richards