By Christopher Kingston

As the most important port in New England, colonial Boston was a major hub for maritime trade. Its vessels sailed to Britain, Europe and the West Indies, carrying cargoes of furs, dried fish, whale oil, flour, lumber and livestock, and returning with sugar, molasses and other goods from the West Indies and manufactured goods and textiles from Britain. They faced a multitude of dangers, including storms, leaks, fire, ice, hidden shoals and rocks— and in wartime, the danger of capture by enemy naval vessels and privateers. By enabling merchants to pursue high-return trading opportunities that they might otherwise have foregone, marine insurance played a vital role in the expansion of trade and the colonial economy.

At the start of the 18th century, if American merchants obtained insurance at all, they did so through their correspondents in Britain, especially London, where the concentration of brokers and underwriters created a wellcapitalized, well-informed and competitive marine insurance market. However, insuring in Britain was inconvenient. American merchants had to trust that their insurance would be secured at the lowest possible premium, and with the most reputable and financially secure underwriters— two goals which were frequently incongruent. The time taken for information to cross the Atlantic— often several months— and the fact that plans regarding cargoes, routes and dates of sailing were often highly fluid, increased the potential for misunderstanding.

When a vessel was preparing to sail, orders for insurance were usually sent by several other vessels in an effort to ensure that they would arrive in good time. But occasionally, these orders might be outpaced by news of a vessel’ s loss, leaving the merchant uninsured. Further, when losses occurred, the slow speed of communication with London and the difficulty of producing documentation to support a claim sometimes meant that insured merchants had to wait years for their money, particularly if a claim was disputed.

In the early 1740s, for example, Boston merchant Benjamin Dolbeare regularly obtained insurance in London on voyages between Boston and the West Indies. However, when the sloop Tryall was captured by the Spanish in 1739 on a voyage from Curacao to Boston, it took over a year to obtain payment from London. In 1742, Dolbeare wrote for insurance on the Friendship, which was to sail to Antigua, and then— if a war with France had not broken out— to Guadeloupe. Otherwise, it would sail to the English or Dutch Leeward

Islands, and if markets there were unfavorable, to Jamaica, before returning to Boston. However, the vessel went no farther than Antigua, and Dolbeare spent the next two years trying to prove this in order to obtain a partial return of premium, apparently without success. In March 1745, he settled his account with his London agent, and subsequently rarely obtained insurance in London except on transatlantic voyages. Most likely, he had begun to insure his West Indies ventures locally.

While attempts were made to establish insurance brokerages in America as early as the 1720s, the earliest clear record of an active brokerage in America is of that established in 1739 by Benjamin Pollard of Boston, at the outset of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, which later merged into a broader conflict known in America as King George’ s War.

Premiums on one-way voyages between New England and ports in the West Indies or Surinam insured in Benjamin Pollard’ s office, Boston, 1743 – 1745

24 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring / Summer 2026 | www. MoAF. org