SCARBOROUGH ship captains came to know the Baltic Sea well. John Tindall's "Free Briton" sailed for Russia in 1762-63 calling at St Petersburg. The mates were paid two to three shillings a day and the deck hands a shilling. Thomas Kendall master of the "Content" called there in 1766 . Captain Enoch Harrison took the "Commerce" into the Baltic in 1764. Robert Duesbery became a "Russia merchant", in partnership with Hugh Atkins of London and Jacob Regail of St Petersburg. He borrowed £4000 from his father but was able to repay it by 1769. Robert Burn in the "Exchange" and George Hopper in the "Ada" were Baltic traders in 1770. Master Thomas Davison took the "Holmpson" to Riga in 1779 and James Tindall was with the "Fortitude" in the Baltic in 1783. It should be noted that although the most productive fisheries in the world were upon the coasts of the British islands; yet at this time, the Dutch sent to the four great towns on the Baltic—Konigsberg, Elbing, Stettin, and Danzig—620,000l. worth of herrings every year, England exported to those places none at all,  nor any to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, or the

ports of Riga, Revel, Narva, and other parts of Livonia, even though sending ships to deal with the flax and hemp from those ports.

  Yorkshire was hungry for Baltic goods in the 18th century. Flax was imported for the linen industry, that extended from Pickering Vale to Scarborough men entered the Eastland trade in the sixties. Twenty years later, this had become a major branch of east coast trade. S. K. Jones has listed Baltic shipping through the Sound in 1784 as Hull 358, London 342, Whitby 311, Newcastle 280, Lynn116, Scarborough 103 and Liverpool 102 ships.