Cumberland port on the eastern side of the Irish Sea, with longstanding commercial links to the Isle of Man.

Whitehaven was one of the principal English ports dealing with Mann. Manx agricultural produce, fish and other goods crossed to Cumberland, while coal, manufactured goods and passengers travelled in the opposite direction. By the eighteenth century the two ports were also competitors within the same Irish Sea trading system.

In 1752 the merchants and shipowners of Whitehaven prepared a memorial to the Treasury complaining of the growth of Manx smuggling. They stated that the port had formerly enjoyed a profitable trade supplying tobacco to Irish markets, but that tobacco manufacture on the Isle of Man had greatly reduced it because manufactured tobacco was being carried clandestinely from the Island into Ireland.

They made a similar complaint about the coal trade from Whitehaven and neighbouring ports to Dublin. Smuggling vessels, they said, operated publicly in large fleets and at a common risk. Government cruisers were too slow and too easily seen, with "scarce one in a hundred" of the smuggling vessels falling into their hands. The memorial proposed a greater number of smaller, well-manned boats and stronger legal penalties.

The Whitehaven complaints formed part of a sustained English campaign against the Manx running trade before Revestment. Correspondence among the Atholl Papers shows the memorial continuing to circulate in government discussion in the following years.

The connections were not solely hostile. Manx produce found a ready market at Whitehaven, while the town was used for printing and publishing material connected with the Island. Richard Townley's two-volume journal of the Isle of Man, for example, was printed at Whitehaven by Ware in 1791.

Nineteenth-century descriptions continued to list Whitehaven, together with Liverpool, as one of the principal markets for Manx cattle, pigs, poultry, butter and eggs.