The building of this vessel, though small, it has been truly remarked, was an undertaking at that period of exigency and privation, surpassing the equipment of a Canton or Northwest Ship with our means at the present day."(1) John Drew, from Wales, who settled at Plymouth, as early as 1660, is believed to have been a ship-carpenter; and a number of his descendants, in that and other times, pursued the business—one of them at Halifax, on the Winetuxet, a small branch of Taunton River.

2. SHIP-BUILDING IN MASSACHUSETTS.—In the records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, it is stated, April 17, 1629, that they had "six shipwrights, of whom Robert Molton is chief"; and in May following it was recorded that provision had been sent over "for building ships, as pitch, tar, okum, tools, etc.," and it was proposed to set apart a house for such stores, to make an inventory of them, and to give Molten the charge of the whole. Fishing vessels were to be built on shares. The first vessel ever built in Massachusetts-Plymouth being then a separate colony-was a bark launched at Mystic (now Medford) on the fourth of July, 1631, and named by Governor Winthrop, to whom she belonged, "The Blessing of the Bay." In the course of the season this vessel made several coasting trips, and soon after visited Manhattan and Long Island. On this occasion, Mr. Winthrop says, the sailors were surprised at seeing, at Long Island, Indian canoes of great size. Some of these specimens of aboriginal boat building were capable of carrying eighty persons. The natives were no doubt equally amazed at the proportions and novel architecture of the largest vessel, probably, that had yet floated on the waters of the Sound. Another vessel of sixty tons, called the "Rebecca," was built in 1633 at Medford, where Mr. Cradock, the first governor chosen by the Company, had a shipyard. A ship of one hundred and twenty tons was built at Marblehead by the people of Salem in 1636.

The business appears to have received its first impulse about this time from the same cause which threw the colonists upon their own resources for the supply of many of the necessaries of life. They had been hitherto supplied with all but their corn and fish, by the many emigrant ships which had yearly added to their numbers. A suspension of this emigration was brought about by the civil wars in England, and the diminished intercourse caused thereby left them dependent on mercantile enterprise alone, which the state of navigation then rendered precarious in the extreme. "The general fear," says Governor Winthrop, in his Journal, "of want of foreign commodities, now our money was gone, and that things were like to go well in England, set us on work to provide shipping

(1) I. Mass. Hist. Coll., i. 278.

of our own; for which end Mr. Peter, being a man of very public spirit and singular activity for all occasions, procured some to join for building a ship at Salem of three hundred tons, and the inhabitants of Boston stirred up by his example, set upon the building another at Boston of one hundred and fifty tons. The work was hard to accomplish for want of money, etc.; but our shipwrights were content to take such pay as the country could make." Corn was that year made a legal tender for debt.

He speaks in another place of the Trial, of about one hundred and sixty tons, probably the vessel alluded to above, as the first ship built at Boston. She sailed for Bilboa on 4th June, 1642, with Thomas Graves as master, laden with fish, "which she sold there at a good rate, and from thence she freighted to Malaga, and arrived there this day (March 23, 1643, O. S.) laden with wine, fruit, oil, iron, and wool, which was a great advantage to the country and gave encouragement to trade." Thus early began the circuitous and profitable trade to distant ports, in which colonial vessels, at no remote period, bore so prominent a share.

In 1642 five other vessels, all of considerable size, were built at Boston, Plymouth, Dorchester, and Salem; and in 1644, two of two hundred and fifty and two hundred tons respectively, were built at Cambridge and Boston, which sailed for the Canaries with pipe staves, fish, etc. A ship of three hundred tons was built at Boston in 1646.

"New England's First Fruits," a work published in London, in 1643, thus refers to the subject: "Besides boats, shallops, hoyes, lighters, pinnaces, we are in a way of building ships of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred tonne: five of them are already at sea, many more in hand at this present."

In October, 1641, the Court enacted that, "Whereas, the country is now in hand with the building of ships, which is a business of great importance for the common good, and therefore suitable care is been taken that it will be well performed, according to the commendable course of England and other places, it is therefore ordered surveyors be appointed to examine any ship built, and her work, to see that it be performed and carried on according to the rules of the art."

A ship was that year built at the Point, now called Warren Bridge Avenue, by Francis Willoughby, afterward Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, who was a merchant, and did much to improve Boston by building wharves and in other ways.

In May, 1644, the Assembly granted the ship-builders an act of incorporation, which states that: "For the better building of shipping, it is ordered that there be a company of that trade, according to the manner of other places, with power to regulate building of ships, and to make such orders and laws among themselves as may conduce to the public

good." Such a charter seems to admit a sufficiently liberal interpretation. Captain Johnson says, in 1647: "Many a fair ship had her framing and finishing here, besides lesser vessels, barques and ketches; many a master, besides common seamen, had their first learning in this colony. Boston, Charleston, Salem, Ipswich, etc., our maritime towns, began to increase roundly, especially Boston-the which, of a poor country village, in twice seven years is become like unto a small city."

"The people of New England at this time," says Hubbard, A. D. 1646-51, "began to flourish much in building ships and trafficking abroad, and had prospered very well in these affairs, and possibly began too soon to seek great things for themselves; however, that they might not be exalted overmuch in things of that nature, many afflictive dispensations were ordered to them in this lustre, which proved a day of great rebuke to New England; for the first news they heard from Europe in the year 1646, was the doleful report of two of their ships, that were wrecked the winter before upon the coast of Spain, one of which was built in the country the former year by Captain Hawkins, a shipwright of London, who had lived divers years in the country before, and had with others been encouraged to fall upon such dealings as he had formerly been acquainted with. At the last he had built a stately ship at Boston, of four hundred ton and upward, and had set her out with great ornament of carving and painting, and with much strength of ordnance. The first time she was rigged out for the sea was the 23d of November, 1645, when they set sail for Malaga with another ship in her company, whereof Mr. Karman was master." He then gives a narrative of her loss at sea with nineteen persons on board. Another ship of two hundred and sixty tons built at Cambridge, and which sailed the same year for the Canaries, he tells us, was "set upon” by an Irish man-of-war with seventy men, and twenty pieces of ordnance, the New England ship having but thirty men and fourteen pieces; the latter got off with the loss of two men. This action Mr. Cooper regards as the first regular naval combat in which any American vessel is known to have been engaged. Another vessel of one hundred tons, built at New Haven, was lost the same year, with seventy persons and a cargo of wheat.

By papers delivered to the Commissioners of King Charles on the 16th of May, 1665, it appears that Massachusetts then had the following ships and tonnage, viz.: about eighty of from twenty to forty tons, about forty from forty to one hundred tons, and about a dozen ships above one hundred tons, making in all over one hundred and thirty sail.

In October, 1667, the General Court of Massachusetts having received information "that divers unskillful persons pretending to be shipwrights, do build ships and other vessels in several parts of this country, which

are very defective, both of matter and form, to the great prejudice of the merchants and owners and the danger of many men's lives at sea," ordered a committee of five (one of whom was Captain EDWARD JOHNSON, cited on the last page) to draw up and present suitable laws for the regulation of the business.

On the same occasion an order was made to encourage the building of a dry dock, by which it was decreed that any person who should undertake the construction of such a dock in a suitable place in Boston or Charlestown, fit to take in a ship of three hundred tons, should have liberty to do so with a monopoly of the privilege for fifteen years. In April, 1668, the enjoyment of the right was extended to twenty-one years to the person who should build and keep a dock in repair.

The Court in May, 1667, laid a tonnage duty of half a pound of gunpowder, or its equivalent in money, per ton on all ships and vessels above twenty tons burden, not belonging within the jurisdiction or principally owned within it. The duty was levied on every voyage and was chiefly designed for the support of the fort. (1)

In Dec., 1673, the ship Anthony and a ketch, were ordered to be fitted out for the defense of the coast and the vessels of the province, some of which had been taken by the pirates and the Dutch of New Netherland.

As an evidence of the energy with which this business was prosecuted in Massachusetts from the earliest period, it is mentioned that upon the North River, crooked, narrow, and shallow at low water, ships were built of the size of three and four hundred tons throughout its whole course. Scituate, at its mouth, was long noted for its Ship-building. An early chronologist believes the art of Ship-building, so early established at North River and Boston, may be traced to the dock-yards of Chatham on the Medway. In 1666, EDWARD GOODWIN, of Boston, a shipwright from Chatham, in Kent, purchased a plantation at Scituate, where he commenced the business. EDWARD and MICHAEL WANTON, the former believed to be the ancestor of several governors of Rhode Island, whither he subsequently removed, carried on Ship-building at Scituate as early at least as 1670. The barque Adventure, of forty tons, owned by the people of Scituate and Marshfield, in 1681 engaged in the West India trade. The fishery then, as well as later, greatly stimulated this department of industry. Not long after the close of the Revolution, it was declared by an intelligent writer to be of more value to Massachusetts than would be the pearl fisheries of Ceylon. This business was actively pursued by the inhabitants of Scituate. They had in 1770 over thirty sail of vessels in the mackerel fishery. From Forster's Ship-yard

(1) Records of Gov. and Company, vol. iv., pp. 331, 344, 573.

upon the Scituate side of the river, ships of five hundred tons were turned out. The aggregate of the tonnage of ship-rigged vessels built there in the last century would, if known, be a considerable item in the domestic tonnage of Massachusetts.

Salem, so early incited to the same branches of industry by Mr. Peters, long prosecuted Ship-building with great enterprise. Hardy's Cove, on South River, was in 1677 a principal locality for that business. The shipping of that and other towns suffered much by the Indians at this time. They captured in 1677 about fifteen Ketches belonging to Salem. A prominent ship-builder in the town in 1690 was RICHARD HOLLINGWORTH, who owned the property now or recently in the possession of the Hawthorne family. Boston and Salem together, in 1735, owned about 25,000 tons of shipping. The reputation of Salem for commercial enterprise was at that time; and long after, second only to that of Boston. For several years previous to 1721 it cleared yearly about 80 vessels on foreign voyages, and in 1748 about 130.

The enterprise of her merchants, ship-owners, and seamen, among the earliest and most conspicuous of whom were the Derbys, gave ample employment to her ship-yards. A marine society was formed there in 1766, and incorporated in 1771. This town has also the honor of having produced from the bosom of that adventurous class the distinguished mathematician, NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, to whom the ship-owners, merchants, and mariners of Europe and America are more indebted for the preservation of life and property than to any other man this country has produced. While he was himself a mariner, and practically acquainted with the wants of those who "go down to the sea in ships," he prepared with marvelous accuracy his Practical Navigator, which, as the London Athenæum has observed, "goes both in American and British craft over every sea of the globe, and is probably the best work of the sort ever published."

Newburyport was formerly celebrated for the extent and excellence of its Ship-building, as well as its commerce. Its vessels were in repute in Great Britain no less than throughout the Colonies. It appears by the Town Records that Ezra Cottle commenced Ship-building near the foot of Federal street in that town as early as 1698. In 1723 the same business was carried on in the locality known as Thorla's Bridge. The town was noted for the number of vessels yearly turned out from its ship-yards. The business declined considerably after the commencement of the Revolution. The Continental frigates Boston and Hancock were built there, besides many large private armed vessels during the war. In 1772 ninety vessels were built there; in 1788 only three. Notwithstanding the reverses which overtook all commercial towns during that period, New