In my mining book collection there is a two volume work by J.U. Nef Ph.D. (Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago) titled 'The Rise of the British Coal Industry' published 1932
This book is also on-line somewhere partly digitised by Google.
Chapter 1 is 'The Principal Coal producing Regions' with a subdivision for 'Durham and Northumberland'. In this section is a map of the area showing Collieries 'about 1635'. For our neck of the woods he has marked: Bilton, Shilbottle, Amble and Coquet Island. (all collieries with a probable output of less that 5,000 tons per annum).
He also says this about our area:
"………… But, in Northumberland, outcrops were found along the strip of coastline between the rivers Tyne and Coquet, and during the reigns of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts a number of ambitious attempts were made to work coal at various points in this district for shipment from Amble, Blyth, Hartley, and Whitley.
They were all failures. Until after the Restoration the shipments of coal from the Northumberland coast never appear to have exceeded 5,000 tons in any one year. A contract made in 1618, with a view to the development of the coal and salt industries near Amble, was terminated in 1620 because of a dispute between the contracting parties over the costs of financing the scheme ; and there is no evidence that either coal or salt was shipped from this port. At Blyth enterprise was less easily discouraged. After the dissolution of the monasteries, coal pits and salt pans at Bebside and Cowpen were frequently leased by the Crown, and early in Elizabeth's reign certain lessees received encouragement from the Percys. In 1595, nine salt pans are said to have been in working order ; but, by the end of the sixteenth century, the operation of pits and pans alike had been practically discontinued. Not more than 800 tons of coal appear to have been shipped from Blyth in the year 1609, ......"
So we nearly had a coal port in the times of James I
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