page_title: Cherbourg-Octeville
section_title: Historic
hierarchical_section_title: Cherbourg-Octeville / Economy / Historic
caption_attribution_description: Cherbourg, France&#160;: Ancienne Criée de Cherbourg.
context_page_description: Cherbourg-Octeville is a city and former commune situated at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It is a subprefecture of its department, and was officially formed when the commune of Cherbourg absorbed Octeville on 28 February 2000. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin. The city is a Maritime prefecture and sub-prefecture of la Manche. Due to its union, it is the most populated city in its department with 37,121 inhabitants making it the first city of the department before the Saint-Lô prefecture and the second in the region after Caen.
  Cherbourg-en-Cotentin is protected by Cherbourg Harbour, between La Hague and Val de Saire, and the city has been a strategic position over the centuries, disputed between the English and French. Cited as one of the "keys to the kingdom" by Vauban, it became, by colossal maritime development work, a first-rate military port under the leadership of Napoleon I, and holds an arsenal of the French Navy.
context_section_description: At the instigation of Colbert, the guild of drapers was founded on 16 April 1668, the manufacture of cloth produced two thousand pieces per year. Two years earlier, Colbert had also promoted the introduction of the glass factory in the forest of Tourlaville.
  In the 18th century, the economic resources came mainly through maritime trade, the preparation of cured meats and the harbour and breakwater works, plus a moribund textile industry. On the eve of the French Revolution, salt was imported from Le Croisic along with British grain, and Littry coal. Exports were mainly to Britain (sheets and cloths) and the West Indies (cattle and mules, fat and salted butter, salted meats, cod, linens and canvas), but also to Le Havre and La Rochelle for wood and coal. Lawful or otherwise exchanges also took place with the Channel Islands (tanbark, grain and wool). Cherbourg shipowners were absent from significant fishing, including that of cod on the banks of Newfoundland, which was a specialty of Granville. 361 workers (1764) and 69 skilled workers (1778) of the factory annually produced (1760) 2,000 fine linens in green and white strip. Cherbourg also had seven producers of starch. Opened in 1793 at the location of the current Lawton-Collins Wharf, the arsenal was moved in 1803 on a decision by Napoleon, within the project of the military port. Sailing ships were built, the first, the brig La Colombe, was launched on 27 September 1797, and then screw-propelled vessels up to the end of the 19th century. From 1898, the Arsenal specialised in the construction of submarines. The first were Le Morse and Le Narval. Since then, more than 91 vessels have been built there.
  L'Annuaire de la Manche [The Yearbook of Manche] in 1829 mentioned several slate quarries in the agglomeration whose product was sometimes exported to Le Havre, two printers, two soda refineries (properties of Mr. Le Couturier and Messrs. Crenier and Co. producing approximately 600 tonnes for Ostend, Dunkirk, Rouen and Paris, Germany and Russia), a sugar refinery (Mr. Despréaux) whose 50 tonnes were sold in the English Channel, a lace factory run by four nuns on behalf of Messrs. Blod and Lange and several tanners. It is indicated that the port trade was based on exportation of mules to Réunion and the Antilles, salted meat of pigs and eggs in Britain, wine and brandies, and the import of Scandinavian, Polish and Russian wood, linseed, and hemp. But its use as a place of war hampered the development of Cherbourg as major commercial port, compared to Le Havre. Ten years later, for these exchanges, Jean Fleury counted 225 to 230 both French and foreign, from 30 to 800 tons, ships each carrying 6 to 18 crew. He added the maritime buildings and armaments and the export of butter of La Hague, and the total annual trade was estimated at between 4 or 5 million francs, of which one million for the export of eggs to the United Kingdom, and 850 tons of salted meat.
  At the beginning of the 20th century, Cherbourg was primarily a military port. The commercial port was modest, always exporting mules to the West Indies and Réunion and local food products to Britain (butter, meats, eggs, cattle, etc.), but also chemical products of soda extracted from kelp, granite from nearby quarries, and important wood and iron from Nord, tar, hemp, and food from the colonies. At this time the port embraced the transatlantic epic. Cherbourg's industry was then specialised in shipbuilding, as well as in lace-making and the manufacture of rope. The late 19th century also saw Cherbourg develop an aviation industry, through the company of Félix du Temple, taken over in 1938 by Félix Amiot, another aviation pioneer for the aerospace company of Normandy. Gradually, workers developed a particular skill in metalwork, both for the submarines of the Arsenal, for aircraft and ships of the Amiot shipyards or Babcock-Wilcox boilers.
  In 1916, Nestlé introduced its first French factory in Cherbourg.
  The 1960s saw a revival of the local economy through the increase in the female workforce and the decline of agricultur
caption: Old fish market of Cherbourg, Quai de Caligny.
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