Mapping America by Jean-Pierre Isbouts

Author:Jean-Pierre Isbouts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
Publisher: Apollo Publishers
Published: 2021-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 75. John Wollaston, Portrait of a Young Man and Woman, 1749. Simple portraits of affluent young couples such as this one could be found in manor houses throughout the English colonies.

This also fostered the genesis of what in later years we would call the “American Dream,” the idea that any man or woman in America, regardless of rank, class, religion, or education, could have a fair chance of building a productive and happy life, provided one was prepared to work hard and rely on oneself. De Crèvecoeur believed that the wholesomeness of these early Americans and their unbridled optimism were the result of their physical environment. “We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess,” he wrote in his Letters from an American Farmer, which created a sensation when it was published in London in 1782, in the wake of the Revolutionary War. “The goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow.”61

Nautical Improvements

As the American colonies evolved from villages into towns, and agricultural output produced an ever greater surplus, the Atlantic Ocean changed from a barrier to a bridge and became a great highway of international trade. In the 1670s, there were on average around five hundred transatlantic crossings per year. Sixty years later, this number had tripled to fifteen hundred crossings, an astounding achievement in an age before the development of the steam turbine.62

This increase was due to a number of improvements. While the principal design of the seventeenth-century galleon remained largely unchanged, construction methods were constantly being improved based on the reports of captains who had sailed their long-distance ships on either the eastern or western route. Ships were now built in ways that are not dissimilar from the design of today’s metal-hulled vessels: as a series of frames made of curved timber, which were attached to a long keel made of elm. Elm was more plentiful than oak, required less seasoning, and lasted better under water. The strength of the frames, a necessity in the storm-swept Atlantic waters, was dramatically improved by increasing their width and by allowing their sections to overlap, thus producing “compound frames.” The entire structure was further reinforced with V-shaped timber sections known as “breasthooks” or “crutches” in the bow and stern. The hull was then fitted with seasoned or kiln-dried oak, while transverse deck beams held both sides of the hull firmly together.63

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