The trade of Teignmouth and Torquay together, in the importation of paper-making materials and timber, and in the export of China-clay, chiefly with English ports, but also with France, Germany, Belgium, and Norway, amounts to £110,000 in the twelve-month.
Teignmouth
Plymouth which, as has been already pointed out, is the only large sea-port in the county, has four times as much trade, and is entered and cleared by four times as many vessels as all the other ports of Devonshire put together. Its chief imports are grain (£540,000), timber (£250,000), sugar (£135,000), guano and manures (£110,000), and petroleum (£52,000); and its principal export is £52,000 worth of clay. Its imports and exports taken together amount to 1 ¾ million pounds sterling, and it is entered and cleared by 1656 ships in a year. Its chief foreign trade is with France, but its commerce may truly be said to be world-wide. Thirteen lines of ocean steamers sail from or call at Plymouth, the principal of which are the White Star, American, Norddeutscher-Lloyd, and Hamburg-American for the United States; the Orient and Peninsular and Oriental for Australia; the latter and the British India for India; the Shaw-Savill and New Zealand SS. Co. for New Zealand; and the British and African for the West Coast of Africa. There are also regular sailings of steamers for France, Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Isles, and various home ports.
It is interesting to compare this sea-traffic with that of London, which is entered and cleared by 18,491 cargo-carrying ships in the course of twelve months, and has a total annual import and export trade of 333 millions of pounds sterling; which are respectively about 11 times, and about 190 times as large as the corresponding figures for Plymouth.
But although Plymouth is a place of considerable maritime trade, a busy fishing station and a port of call for ocean-going steamers, for whose accommodation are provided spacious docks and ample quays, its greatest importance and renown—remembering that we include with it its sister towns of Stonehouse and Devonport—rest upon its rank as a naval station, as an arsenal which is second only to that of Woolwich, and as a naval dockyard which is the largest in the kingdom.
The anchorage at the head of the Sound, once very much exposed and dangerous in southerly winds, is now protected by a stone breakwater nearly a mile long, designed to shelter ships of the Royal Navy. It was commenced in 1812 by Rennie, continued by his son, modified in the slope of its sides and improved in stability by violent storms, especially in 1817, and completed in 1840.