During the American Civil War, when the Cotton Famine brought the Lancashire mills to a halt, merchants sought alternative sources of supply in Egypt & India
One of the problems they ran into was the lack of any established system of finance. Suppliers in those countries would not accept bills of exchange or any other type of funny money derivatives of the day which were an established feature of the Atlantic trade.
Only gold would do. The merchants grumbled about the government’s failure to provide this in adequate amounts
The bit of this story which seems truly astonishing today is that, since information is just as important as money to keep the wheels of commerce turning, so the names of ships, port & date of departure & amount of bullion to be carried were announced in advance in the newspapers
