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The provision of capital is generally recognized to be one of the main problems of countries undergoing the process of industrialization. This is true also of the special case of Great Britain, the first country to experience an industrial revolution. In the British case, however, it is important to note that much capital had been accumulated even before the 1760's, the decade when industrial growth began to accelerate and to change its direction. Most of this earlier capital was invested in commerce, in finance, in farming, and in stocks of manufactured goods and raw materials, and what was noteworthy in the next two generations was, not so much the absolute (and probably also relative) growth in the quantity of capital, but a change in its composition: the emergence, for the first time, of large concentrations of fixed capital.

The relative stagnation of British industry during what has been called the climacteric of the 1890's did not extend to shipbuilding, though that industry, producing capital goods and depending on a substantial foreign market, shared many of the characteristics of the industries most affected by foreign competition. The purpose of this article is to discuss the comparative success of British shipbuilding. In the first two sections, the conditions of shipbuilding in Britain and in the countries that rivaled her are briefly described, and in the remainder of the paper the factors influencing comparative costs are examined.