The building of ships, barkentines and sloops in Virginia, during the
early years of the eighteenth century, had so increased that the
Master Shipbuilders of the River Thames addressed a petition to the
King in 1724, stating that by the great number of ships and other
vessels lately built, then building, and likely to be built in the
colonies, the trade of the petitioners was very much decayed, and
great numbers of them for want of work to maintain their families, had
of necessity left their native country and gone to America. They felt
that not only British trade and navigation had suffered thereby, but
danger existed in fitting out the Royal Navy in any extraordinary
emergency. This petition applied to the northern colonies
particularly, as they were far ahead of Virginia in shipbuilding, but
the southern colonies were included. As we have seen, many shipwrights
came to Virginia and acquired large tracts of land and became
planters.
In the narrative of his travels in Virginia, with some companions
early in the eighteenth century, Francis Louis Michel of Berne,
Switzerland, related that when he was within fifty miles of the coast,
he saw two ships, the larger, one of the most beautiful merchantmen he
had ever seen. Because it was built in Virginia, it was named _Indian
King_ or _Wild King_, he did not remember which. Three years before,
it had fallen into the hands of pirates, so the narrative related, but
had been rescued by the British warship _Shoreham_, and sixty pirates
of all nations taken prisoners, all of whom were hanged in England.
How many vessels were built or repaired at the Point Comfort shipyard
is not known. At a meeting of the Council of Virginia in May, 1702, a
letter from Captain Moodie stated that he had fitted up a very
convenient place at Point Comfort for careening Her Majesty's ships of
war, or any other ships that came to the colony; and he proposed that
some care be taken and some person appointed to have charge of the
situation. This arrangement was confirmed by a letter from Lieutenant
Governor Alexander Spotswood to the British Admiralty on October 24,
1710, in which he wrote that for the convenience of careening, there
is a place at Point Comfort which, with a small charge, could be
fitted up for that purpose; H.M.S. _Southampton_ had careened there,
and there may be served the largest ships of war, which Her Majesty
will have occasion to send to Virginia as cruisers or convoys. This
careening site at Point Comfort provided long-needed facilities for
careening vessels for repairs and scraping bottoms. As early as 1633,
David Pietersz de Vries from Holland, arrived at Jamestown with a
leaky ship, but found no facilities in the colony for careening
vessels. He found it necessary to sail to New Netherlands for such
repairs. As late as 1700, when the _Shoreham_, a fifth rate frigate,
was the Chesapeake Bay guardship, Captain Passenger, her commander,
wrote to Governor Nicholson: "I have only to offer (may your
Excellency think convenient) about the latter end of September to
careen the _Shoreham_. She is at present very foul, and the rudder is
loose, which I fear before the next summer, may be of dangerous
consequences which cannot be removed, without careening or lying
ashore, which I presume there is no place in Virginia, that will admit
of." It is thought, however, that there must have been careening
places in the colony for the smaller vessels, or how else could the
pinnaces and sloops have been kept in repair.
Sloops became popular in the eighteenth century, and a number of them
were built in Virginia to be disposed of in the West Indies. After the
sloop was finished, she received a cargo of tobacco, and vessel and
tobacco were sold together. Because of the danger from pirates and
Spanish interference, the sloops for the West Indies trade were
designed especially for speed and maneuverability. The pilot boat
evolved in the colony quite early. An advertisement appeared in the
_Virginia Gazette_, on July 22, 1737, for a pilot boat stolen or
gone adrift from York River. The boat was twenty-four feet keel, nine
feet beam, with two masts and sails, and was painted red. Another
advertisement in September, 1739, concerning a boat stolen from
Newport News, on the James River, by one James Hobbs, a carpenter. The
boat was about fifteen feet keel, had two masts, and was payed with
pitch. It had a new arch thort of black walnut, and a tarpaulin upon
the forecastle.
Norfolk became one of the busiest ports in Virginia, both in
shipbuilding and ship repair work. A shipyard had been established on
the Elizabeth River in 1621 by John Wood and work had been almost
continuous, though at times very slow, throughout the seventeenth
century. An inventory in 1723, listed one brigantine, three sloops,
and three flats owned by Robert Tucker. One of the sloops was forty
feet in length and valued at 230 pounds sterling. Captain Samuel
Tatum owned the ship _Caesar_, which was said to be worth 625 pounds
sterling, and the sloop _Indian Creek_ valued at twenty-five pounds.
William Byrd in his _History of the Dividing Line_, states that he saw
at Norfolk, in 1728, twenty sloops and brigantines. Some of them were
quite evidently of English origin. In 1736, the sloop _Industry_,
"lately built in Norfolk," was loaded with tobacco in the James River
to take to London.
Captain Goodrich, master of the ship _Betty_ of Liverpool, which
was built on the Elizabeth River for the Maryland trade, was permitted
by the Council of Virginia, to sail to Liverpool without the payment
of the usual port duties. The firm of John Glasford and Company
contracted with Smith Sparrows in 1761, for a ship built at Norfolk,
sixty feet in length, sixteen feet in the lower hold, and four feet
between decks, the price being fifty shillings per ton.
Many of the shipwrights, who came to Virginia and became land owners,
settled in Norfolk. That port was especially known for this kind of
citizen, ranking next to the merchant in wealth and influence. Among
house owners were some ship-carpenters who carried on their trade,
receiving for a day's work four shillings and a pint of rum, more
wages than the salary of some clergymen. Several shipwrights listed in
Lower Norfolk were large property owners. Abraham Elliott owned land
both in Virginia and England. One John Ealfridge owned one-half
interest in a mill, and acquired a plantation for each of his two sons
in addition to his own.
To secure a large sum of money due Robert Cary of London, Theophilus
Pugh of Nansemond County mortgaged his lands, slaves, and vessels with
all their boats. The vessels were listed as follows: ships, _William
and Betty_, _Prosperous Esther_; sloops, _Little Molly_, _Little
Betty_; schooners, _Nansemond Frigate_, _Pugh_. If the average planter
had owned the equivalent of two ships, two sloops and two schooners,
the total number of vessels in Virginia in the middle of the
eighteenth century would have far exceeded any inventory reported.
The frame of a snow, which was to have been built by Thomas Rawlings,
a ship-carpenter, for Mr. John Hood, merchant of Prince George County,
was advertised for sale in 1745. The snow was to have been sixty feet
keel; twenty-three feet, eight inches beam; ten feet hold; and four
feet between decks. Also advertised for sale about the same time was a
schooner, trimmed and well-fitted with sails and rigging to carry
fifty hogsheads of tobacco. In March, 1746, the sloop _Little Betty_,
burden fifty tons, was offered for sale with her sails, anchors,
furniture, and tackle.
The advertisements of Virginia-built vessels in the 1750's, and in the
1760's, show a steady increase in the size of sloops and ships. The
following are mentioned: a brig of eighty tons; several snows, one to
carry 250 hogsheads of tobacco; and several schooners. Schooner rigged
boats appeared in the colony early in the eighteenth century, and
gradually increased in size and importance. During the second half of
the eighteenth century, the schooner displaced the sloop as the
principal coastwise vessel, and emerged during the Revolution as a
distinctive American type. "The most spectacular event in the history
of naval architecture in the eighteenth century was the emergence of
the Chesapeake Bay clipper-schooner," says Arthur Pierce Middleton.
In April, 1767, John Hatley Norton came from London to be his father's
agent with headquarters in Yorktown. He wrote home that his cousins,
the Walker Brothers, had a shipyard at Hampton, and were building
ships of new white oak, well calculated for the West Indies trade. A
letter from John M. Jordon & Company, London, in 1770, reads in part
as follows: "Mr. William Acrill desires you will make insurance of his
brig, _America_, Captain William C. Latimer; in case of loss to
receive four hundred pounds. She is chartered by a gentleman on the
Rappahannock; and is now in Hampton Roads, and will sail tomorrow or
next day; and in case she arrives safe, you are to receive her
freight, and sell the vessel, provided you can get four hundred pounds
for her."
Occasionally, we find an account of the use of a vessel of some kind
or other for pleasure. In Fithian's _Journal and Letters_, the author
writes in 1773, that his employer, Mr. Robert Carter of Nomini,
prepared for a voyage in his schooner _Harriot_ (named for his
daughter), to the Eastern Shore of Maryland for oysters. The schooner
was of forty tons burden, thirty-eight feet in length, fourteen feet
beam, six feet in depth of hold, carried 1400 bushels of grain, and
was valued at forty pounds sterling. Again from the _Journal_: "From
Horn Point, we agreed to ride to one Mr. Camel's, who is Comptroller
of the customs here. Before dinner, we borrowed the Comptroller's
barge, which is an overgrown canoe, and diverted ourselves in the
river which lies fronting his house."
[Illustration: _Susan Constant._ Replica of the Ship that
brought the first settlers to Jamestown, 1607
Photograph by W. T. Radcliffe.]
[Illustration: Interior of the _Susan Constant_
Photograph by W. T. Radcliffe.]
[Illustration: The manner of makinge their boates. XII.
The manner of makinge their boates in Virginia is verye wonderfull.
For wheras they want Instruments of yron, or other like vnto ours,
yet they knowe howe to make them as handsomelye, to saile with whear
they liste in their Riuers, and to fishe with all, as ours. First
they choose some longe, and thicke tree, accordinge to the bignes of
the boate which they would frame, and make a fyre on the grownd
abowt the Roote therof, kindlinge the same by little, and little
with drie mosse of trees, and chipps of woode that the flame should
not mounte opp to highe, and burne to muche of the lengte of the
tree. When yt is almost burnt thorough, and readye to fall they make
a new fyre, which they suffer to burne vntill the tree fall of yt
owne accord. Then burninge of the topp, and bowghs of the tree in
suche wyse that the bodie of the same may Retayne his iust lengthe,
they raise yt vppon potes laid ouer cross wise vppon forked posts,
at suche a reasonable heighte as they may handsomlye worke vppó yt.
Then take they of the barke with certayne shells: thy reserue
the innermost parte of the lennke, for the nethermost parte of the
boate. On the other side they make a fyre accordinge to the lengthe
of the bodye of the tree, sauinge at both the endes. That which they
thinke is sufficientlye burned they quenche and scrape away with
shells, and makinge a new fyre they burne yt agayne, and soe they
continue sometymes burninge and sometymes scrapinge, vntill the boate
haue sufficient bothowmes. This god indueth thise sauage people with
sufficient reason to make thinges necessarie to serue their turnes.
From Hariot's _Virginia_.