Gibraltar was ceded to Britain in 1713, and for the next two hundred years was run mainly as a military garrison. Records of the life of the growing civilian population are very sparse. Gibraltar was declared a free port from the beginning and therefore the provisions of the Navigation Acts which regulated the trade of Britain and her colonies did not apply. The Port books which kept records of ships that arrived and their cargoes did not start until 1820, but the officers had founded a weekly newspaper, the Gibraltar Chronicle, in 1801 which after a few years started noting ship arrivals and their cargoes. The purpose of this short communication is to set out a brief outline of the maritime trade of Gibraltar during the first two decades of the nineteenth century based in this source.