Part 1

Some Notes On Shipbuilding and

Shipping In Colonial Virginia

By

CERINDA W. EVANS

Librarian Emeritus, The Mariners Museum Newport News, Virginia

Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation Williamsburg, Virginia 1957

COPYRIGHT©, 1957 BY THE MARINERS MUSEUM, NEWPORT NEWS, VIRGINIA

Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet, Number 22

AS CONCERNING SHIPS

It is that which everyone knoweth and can say

They are our Weapons They are our Armaments They are our Strength They are our Pleasures They are our Defence They are our Profit The Subject by them is made rich The Kingdom through them, strong The Prince in them is mighty In a word: By them in a manner we live The Kingdom is, the King reigneth.

(From _The Trades Increase_, London, 1615)

SHIPBUILDING AND SHIPPING

THE DUGOUT CANOE

Various types of watercraft used in Colonial Virginia have been mentioned in the records. The dugout canoe of the Indians was found by the settlers upon arrival, and was one of the chief means of transportation until the colony was firmly established. It is of great importance in the history of transportation from its use in pre-history to its use in the world today. From the dugout have come the piragua, Rose's tobacco boat, and the Chesapeake Bay canoe and bugeye as we see them today.

The first boats in use by the colony in addition to the Indian canoe were ships' boats--barges, long-boats, and others. A shallop brought over in sections was fitted together and used in the first explorations. As the years went by, however, "almost every planter, great and small, had a boat of one kind or another. Canoes, bateaux, punts, piraguas, shallops, flats, pinnaces, sloops, appear with monotonous regularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth century records of Virginia and Maryland."

Little is known about the construction of boats in the colony except the log canoe. A long and thick tree was chosen according to the size of the boat desired, and a fire made on the ground around its base. The fire was kept burning until the tree had fallen. Then burning off the top and boughs, the trunk was raised upon poles laid over crosswise on forked posts so as to work at a comfortable height. The bark was removed with shells; gum and rosin spread on the upper side to the length desired and set on fire. By alternately burning and scraping, the log was hollowed out to the desired depth and width. The ends were scraped off and rounded for smooth navigating.

Captain John Smith, who had a number of occasions to use the canoe, wrote that some were an elne deep (forty-five inches), and forty or fifty feet in length; some would bear forty men, but the most ordinary were smaller and carried ten, twenty, or thirty men. "Instead of oars, they use paddles or sticks with which they will row faster than our barges." Additional space and graceful lines in the canoes were secured by spreading the sides. To do this, the hollowed log was filled with water and heated by dropping in hot stones until the wood became soft enough to bend into the desired shape by forcing the sides apart with sticks of different lengths and allowed to harden.

The tools with which the Indians built their boats and used for other purposes, were tomahawks of stone sharpened at one end or both, or one end was rounded off for use as a hammer. A circular indentation was made in the center to secure the tomahawk to the handle. Another method of fitting the stone tomahawk to a handle was to cut off the head of a young tree, and as if to graft it, a notch was made into which the head of the hatchet was inserted. After some time, the tree by growing together kept the hatchet so fixed that it could not come out. Then the tree was cut to such a length as to make a good handle. Another method in use was that of binding the stones to the ends of sticks and gluing them there with rosin.

Some colonists did not hesitate to take the canoes from the Indians, which they may or may not have returned. On one occasion the King of Rappahanna demanded the return of a canoe, which was restored. Among the first laws of the General Assembly was that for the protection of the Indians, enacted in August, 1619: "He that shall take away by violence or stealth any canoe or other things from the Indians, shall make valuable restitution to the said Indians, and shall forfeit, if he be a freeholder, five pounds; if a servant, forty shillings or endure a whipping."

A story of an Indian and his canoe was told by John Pory, Secretary of Virginia, after he had visited the Eastern Shore. "Wamanato, a friendly Indian, presented me with twelve bever skins and a canow which I requited with such things to his content, that he promised to keep them whilst he lived, and berie them with him being dead."

Several writers of boatbuilding have expressed the thought that the evolution of the Chesapeake Bay canoe and the Chesapeake Bay bugeye from the Indian dugout canoe was one of the most interesting developments in the history of shipbuilding. M. V. Brewington, in his _Chesapeake Bay: A Pictorial Maritime History_, says of this development: "The white man's superior knowledge of small craft soon indicated changes which would improve the canoe: sharp ends would make her easier to propel and more seaworthy; broader beam and a keel would increase stability; sail would lessen the work of getting from place to place. Sharpening the bow and stern was a simple matter; the increased beam was difficult because no single tree could provide the needed width. In time, the settler learned to join two or more trees together to give the beam desired. He learned how to add topsides, first of hewn logs, later of sawed plank. A keel was added and a sailing rig. After the centerboard was invented, it took the place of a keel...."

"But the culmination of the simple, single log, trough-shaped Indian dugout was the bugeye, a complex vessel as much as eighty-five feet in length. There was an intermediate step between the canoe and the bugeye, the brogan, a large canoe, partially decked, with a cuddy forward in which a couple of men could sleep and cook.... The earliest known use of the name "bugeye" was in 1868, but doubtless the word was not coined upon the first appearance of the vessel itself.... In essence the bugeye was a large canoe, fully decked, with a fixed rig following that of the brogan. There were full accommodations for the crew which, because the vessel was built for oyster dredging, needed to be comparatively large.... Throughout the course of development from canoe to bugeye, the original dugout log bottom was always apparent in this most truly American craft."

VIRGINIA-BUILT PINNACES

The smallest of the three vessels that reached Virginia in April, 1607, was the little pinnace _Discovery_, a favorite type of small vessel in that period. The first English vessel known to have been built in the New World was a pinnace. A colonizing expedition to Raleigh's colony on Roanoke Island left Plymouth, England, on April 9, 1585, with a fleet of five vessels and two pinnaces attached as tenders. A storm sank the tender to the _Tiger_, Sir Richard Grenville's flagship. On the 15th of May, the fleet came to anchor in the Bay of Mosquetal (Mosquito), and a landing was made at St. John on the Island of Puerto Rico. Here an encampment was made to give the men time to refresh themselves and to build a new pinnace for the _Tiger_. A forge was set up to make the nails, and trees were cut and hauled to camp on a low four-wheeled truck for the boat's timber. The ship's carpenters made speedy headway, launching and rigging the pinnace in ten days. They set sail from St. John on the 29th of May, the new pinnace carrying twenty men and, on the 27th of July, anchored at Hatoraske on the way to Roanoke.

The second English vessel known to have been built in North America was also a pinnace. The members of the second colony of Virginia left Plymouth, England, on the last day of May, 1607, under command of Captain George Popham, and located at "Sagadahoc in Virginia" at the mouth of the Kennebec River. There they set up fortifications which they called Fort St. George. After finishing the fort, "the carpenter framed a pretty pinnace of about thirty tons which they called _Virginia_, the shipwright being one Digby of London." This little vessel is known to have made two voyages across the Atlantic.

On June 7, 1609, a fleet of seven ships and two pinnaces left Plymouth, England, for Jamestown. After a few days out, one of the pinnaces returned to England, but the other, the little _Virginia_, remained with the fleet as the tender to the flagship _Sea Venture_. Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant Governor under Lord De La Warr, and Sir George Somers, Admiral of the fleet, embarked on the _Sea Venture_, commanded by Captain Christopher Newport, Vice Admiral. These three men were leaders of the expedition and in order to avoid any dispute as to precedence, they agreed--very unwisely, it was disclosed--to sail on the same ship "with several commissions sealed, successively to take place one after another, considering the uncertainty of human life."

WRECK OF THE _Sea Venture_

On July 28, a violent storm arose which separated the _Sea Venture_ from the rest of the fleet. This "dreadful tempest" was the tail of a West Indies hurricane and lasted four days and nights. An account of it written in 1610, by William Strachey, secretary to Lord De La Warr, and a passenger on the ship, is said to be one of the finest descriptions of a storm in all literature, and led to the writing of _The Tempest_ by Shakespeare. The letter was written to a person unknown, addressed as "Excellent Lady." Some excerpts are given herewith.

When on S. James his day, July 24, being Monday ... the clouds gathering thicke upon us and the wind singing and whistling most unusually, which made us to cast off our pinnace towing the same until then asterne, a dreadful storm and hideous, began to blow from out the north-east, which swelling, and roaring, as it were by fitts, some hours with more violence than others, at length beat all light from heaven, which like a hell of darkness turned black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror, as in such cases horror and fear use to overrunne the troubled, and overmastered sences of all, which, taken up with amazement, the eares lay so sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds, and distractions of our company.... For foure and twenty houres the storme in a restless tumult, had blown so exceedingly, as we could not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater violence, yet did wee still find it, not only more terrible, but more constant, fury added to fury, and one storm urging a second more outrageous than the former; whether it so wrought upon our feares ... as made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts and panting bosoms; our clamours drowned in the windes, and the windes in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the officers, nothing heard that could give comfort, nothing seen that might encourage hope.... The sea swelled above the clouds, and gave battell unto Heaven. It could not be said to raine, the waters like whole rivers did flood in the ayre.... The winds spake more loud and grew more tumultuous and malignant. What shall I say? Winds and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them.... There was not a moment in which the sudden splitting or instant oversetting of the ship was not expected. Howbeit this was not all; it pleased God to bring a greater affliction yet upon us; for in the beginning of the storm, we had received likewise a mighty leake. And the ship in every joint almost, having spued out her okam, before we were aware ... was growne five foote suddenly deep with water above her ballast, and we almost drowned within, whilst we sat looking when to perish from above. This imparting no less terror than danger ran through the whole ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned the blood and took down the braves of the most hardy mariner of them all.... The leake which drunk in our greatest seas, and took in our destruction fastest could not then be found nor ever was by any labour, counsell or search.... Every man came duely upon his watch ... working with tyred bodies and wasted spirits three days and foure nights destitute of outward comfort, and desperate of any deliverance.... During all this time the Heavens looked so black upon us that it was not possible the elevation of the pole might be observed; nor a starre by night, not a sun beame by day was to be seene. Onely upon Thursday night, Sir George Somers being upon the watch, had an apparition of a little round light like a faint starre, trembling and streaming along with a sparkeling blaze, halfe the height upon the main mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were, upon any of the foure shroudes ... half the night it kept with us; running sometimes along the main yard to the very end, and then returning. At which, Sir George Somers called divers about him, and showed them the same.... It did not light us any whit the more to our known way, who ran now as hoodwinked men, at all adventures, sometimes north and north-east, then north and by west, and in an instant varying two or three points, and sometimes half the compass.... It being now Friday, the fourth morning, it wanted little, but that there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches, and commending our sinfull soules to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea. Surely, that night we must have done it, and that night had we then perished: but see the goodnesse and sweet introduction of better hope, by our merciful God given unto us. Sir George Somers, when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered and cried land!

The storm drove the ship toward the dangerous and dreaded islands of Bermuda. Nearing the shore, the ship was caught between rocks as in a vise and held there while all the one hundred and fifty persons reached the shore in safety. As soon as they were conveniently settled, after the landing, the long boat was fitted up in the fashion of a pinnace with a little deck made of the hatches of the wrecked ship, so close that no water could enter, and with a crew of six sailors, using sails and oars, Thomas Whittingham, the cape merchant, and Henry Ravens, the master's mate, as pilot, the boat sailed for Virginia. It was hoped, when news reached Jamestown of the safe landing of the passengers from the wrecked _Sea Venture_ on Bermuda, that a ship or pinnace from the fleet in Virginia would be sent to take them home, but the long boat was never heard from again.

BUILDING THE _Deliverance_ AND THE _Patience_

While waiting for help from Virginia, Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates decided to build a pinnace, in case of need. The work was put in charge of Richard Frobisher, an experienced shipwright. The only wood on the island that could be used for timber was cedar and that was rather poor, being too brittle for making good planks. The pinnace's beams were all of oak from the wrecked ship, as were some planks in her bow, all the rest was of cedar. The keel was laid on the 28th of August, 1609, and on the 26th of February, calking had begun. Old cables that had been preserved furnished the oakum. One barrel of pitch and another of tar had been saved. Lime was made of wilk shells and a hard white stone, which were burned in a kiln, slaked with fresh water, and tempered with tortoise oil. She was forty feet long at the keel, nineteen feet broad at the beam, had a six-foot floor, her rake forward being fourteen feet, her rake aft from the top of her post (which was twelve feet long) was three feet; she was eight feet deep under her beam, four feet and a half between decks, with a rising of half a foot more under her forecastle, the purpose being to scour the deck with small shot if an enemy should come aboard. She had a fall of eighteen inches aft to make her steerage and her great cabin larger; her steerage was five feet long and six feet high with a closed gallery right aft, having a window on each side, and two right aft. She was of some eighty tons burden.

On the 30th of March, the pinnace was launched, unrigged, and towed to "a little round island" nearer the ponds and wells of fresh water, with easier access to the sea, the channel there being deep enough to float her when masts, sails and all her trim had been placed on her. "When she began to swim (upon her launching) our Governor called her _The Deliverance_."

Late in November, and still with no word from Virginia, Sir George Somers became convinced that the pinnace which Frobisher was building would not be sufficient to transport all the men, women, and children from Bermuda to Virginia. He consulted with Sir Thomas Gates, the Governor, who approved his plan of building another pinnace. He would take two carpenters and twenty men with him to the main island where with instruction from Frobisher, "he would quickly frame up another little bark, for the better sitting and convenience of our people." The Governor granted him all the things he desired, all such tools and instruments, and twenty of the ablest and stoutest men of the company to hew planks and square timber. The keel laid was twenty-nine feet in length, the beam fifteen feet and a half; she was eight feet deep and drew six feet of water, and was of thirty tons capacity. Sir George Somers launched her on the last day of April, giving her the name of _Patience_, and brought her from the building bay in the main island, into the channel where the _Deliverance_ was moored.

After nine months on the islands, these fearless and undaunted men, with a stout determination to finish the voyage they had begun nine months before, set sail in the two pinnaces on May 10, 1610, and after eleven days, arrived at Point Comfort. "On the three and twentieth day of May, we cast our anchor before Jamestown."

BOATBUILDING BEFORE 1612

The few available records of early boatbuilding in the Virginia colony differ so materially that one cannot make a statement as to number or kind of vessels with any degree of accuracy. That the first vessel constructed in Virginia was built earlier than the year 1611, and was of twelve or thirteen tons capacity, seems to be an accepted fact as given in the Spaniard Molina's _Report of a Voyage to Virginia_ in 1611. The report also referred to a galley of twenty-five benches being built there.

In his _Short Relation_ to the Council of the Virginia Company in June, 1611, Lord De La Warr spoke regretfully of the fact that the three forts he had erected near Point Comfort were not properly manned because of a lack of boats, there being but two, and one barge in all the colony. The fishing, too, had been hindered because of this shortage. No mention was made of the galley that was said to have been in the process of construction.

ARGALL'S SHIPYARD AT POINT COMFORT

In a letter to Nicholas Hawes, written in June, 1613, Samuel Argall (later Sir Samuel Argall) tells of a voyage to Virginia in 1612, and some of his activities there. On the 17th of September, he arrived at Point Comfort with sixty-two men on the ship _Treasurer_, his course being fifty leagues northward of the Azores. From the day of his arrival until the first of November, he spent the time in helping to repair such ships and boats as he found there "decayed for lack of pitch and tarre." About the first of November, he carried Sir Thomas Dale in the _Deliverance_ to Sir Thomas Smith's Island to have his opinion about inhabiting it. They found an abundance of fish there, "very great cod" which they caught in water five fathom deep. They planned to get a great quantity in the summer of 1613, and hoped to find safe passage there for boats and barges by "a cut out of the bottom of our bay into De La Warr Bay." This is an early mention of the need for a canal connecting these two bays. That the Sir Thomas Smith's Island referred to was not the island known by that name lying near Cape Charles is evident from the reference to large cod fish caught there, and the desire for a passage between the bays for a shorter route.

Argall sailed from Point Comfort on the first of December and entered Pembroke, now Rappahannock, River where he met the king of Pastancie, who told him the Indians were his very great friends and had a good store of corn for him, as they had provided the year before. He carried his ship to the king's town and there built a stout shallop to take the corn aboard. After concluding a peace with other divers Indian lords, and giving and taking hostages, Argall hastened to Jamestown with 1100 bushels of corn, which he delivered to the storehouses there, besides the 300 bushels he retained for the use of his own company. As soon as he had unloaded the corn, Argall set his men to work felling timber and hewing boards with which to build a "frigat." He left this vessel half finished in the hands of his carpenters at Point Comfort in order to make another voyage to Pembroke River, and so discovered the head of it. Upon learning that Pocahontas was with the King of Patowomack, he devised a stratagem by which she was captured. Pocahontas was taken to Jamestown and delivered to the protection of Sir Thomas Gates, who hastened to conclude with Powhatan, her father, a peace based upon the terms demanded by Argall. Argall returned to Point Comfort and "went forward with his frigat and finished her." He sent a "ginge" of men with her to Cape Charles, to get fish and transport them to "Henries Town" (Henrico). Another gang was employed to fell timber and cleave planks to build a fishing boat. Argall himself, with a third gang, left in the shallop on the first day of May to explore the east side of the Bay. Having explored along the shore for some forty leagues northward, he returned on the 12th of May, fitted his ship and built a fishing boat, and made ready to take the first opportunity for a fishing voyage.

OTHER VOYAGES OF ARGALL

Samuel Argall is said to have achieved lasting fame as one of England's maritime pioneers by establishing a shorter route to Virginia from England in 1609, although Batholomew Gosnold took that route in 1602, and Martin Pring did so in 1603. The usual course led by way of the Canaries to the Island of Puerto Rico in the West Indies, the route of Columbus, a long, circuitous pathway exposed to pirates and interference from Spain. Argall made the round trip by the shorter route in five months. However, the shorter route did not supplant entirely the longer southern route for several decades.

Argall accompanied Lord De La Warr to Virginia in 1610, to point out the northern route. While in Virginia, he was sent with Sir George Somers to Bermuda with two pinnaces to get a supply of hogs and other provisions for the colony. In a storm, Argall lost sight of Sir George's pinnace and failed to locate Bermuda; so he changed his course toward the north and went to Sagadahoc and Cape Cod where he procured a large cargo of fish, which he brought to Jamestown. Sir George Somers reached Bermuda, but died there on November 9, 1610. Argall was then sent by Lord De La Warr to the river Patawomeke to trade with the Indians for corn, where he rescued the English boy, Henry Spelman, who had been living with the Indians. Through Spelman's influence, the Indians "fraughted his ship with corn."