Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by George Francis Dow

Author:George Francis Dow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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* Wood, New Englands Prospect, London, 1634.

CHAPTER XI

CONCERNING SHIPPING AND TRADE

NEW ENGLAND, with its many rivers and indented coastline, until recent years, has been a breeding place for sailors and a location for shipbuilding. During the first century following the settlement, the larger part of the population lived near the coast, and as roads between towns were poor, it naturally followed that craft of small tonnage were constantly employed for transport on the ocean and the navigable rivers, and as no extent of rich soil was found awaiting cultivation, many settlers, of necessity, turned to fishing and to trade. A ship carpenter was brought over to Plymouth, in 1624, who “quickly builte them 2 very good and strong shalops . . . and a great and strong lighter, and had . . . timber for 2 catches” framed when he fell sick of a fever and soon died.* These shallops were used in opening a fur trade among the Indians on the Kennebec River that eventually discharged the indebtedness of the Pilgrims to the London adventurers.

Six shipwrights were sent over by the Company of the Massachusetts Bay, in the spring of 1629, together with a considerable stock of ship stores, such as pitch, tar, cordage and sail cloth.† Doubtless these men were employed at the outset in housing the settlers and in building small fishing boats, as the first vessel of any size in the Bay, of which there is record, is Governor Winthrop’s trading bark, The Blessing of the Bay, of thirty tons, built mainly of locust, which went to sea, August 31, 1631, on a voyage to the eastward and afterwards traded with the Dutch at New Amsterdam.‡

In January, 1633, Emanuel Downing wrote to the Council for New England that he had made enquiries of Mr. Winthrop respecting the ship carpenters employed in New England and found that the plantation was able to build ships of any burden. Their most competent shipwright was William Stephens, who had built in England, the Royal Merchant, a ship of six hundred tons.

The General Court, in 1639, exempted ship carpenters and fishermen (during the fishing season) from compulsory military training.* Two years later the Court was informed that some shipwrights were scanting their work and an order was adopted providing for a survey of all ship construction as was usual in England at that time.†

The coasting trade led to the building of small shallops and sloops and the need for firewood in Boston and Charlestown brought about the building of sloops, broad of beam, intended especially for that trade. Fishing craft and wood sloops were soon being built all along the coast. As early as 1634, one merchant in Marblehead owned eight fishing craft, and Portsmouth, N. H., had six great shallops, five fishing boats, with sails and anchors, and thirteen skiffs, in the trade as early as 1635. Richard Hollingsworth, in 1637, had a shipyard at Salem Neck and in 1641, built “a prodigious ship of 300 Tons.”

The number

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