Author: NICK COLLINS

Maritime trade is uniquely important in history. Technical and commercial challenges encourage inventiveness. Shipbuilders, painters, stevedores, ship-chandlers, lawyers, agents, repairers and the associated industries created employment. This, in turn, promoted economic growth, technical innovation, literacy, numeracy, and independent thinking. That is why most of the greatest cities in history were either ports or, like Rome’s Ostia and Greece’s Piraeus, had one attached. Of the “Seven Wonders of the World”, the Pharos at Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes were designed to guide ships into port, a vital element of the ancient Mediterranean economy. Today too, the most important countries tend…