Part 2

Soon after June 28, 1613, Argall sailed from Virginia on his "fishing voyage" in a well-armoured English man-of-war. His object was the French colony of Jesuits at Mt. Desert, now in Maine, but at that time within the bounds of Virginia. He attacked the buildings and returned with the priests late in July. He was sent back by Gates to destroy the buildings and fortifications there and at St. Croix and Port Royal. This was done and he arrived back at Jamestown, about the first of December. On this voyage, he stopped at New Netherlands, on the Hudson, and forced the colonists there to submit to the crown of England.

SHIPBUILDING ON PLANTATIONS

The tracts of land or plantations occupied by individual settlers of the colony were very few until after the "starving time" in 1610. When the colony had been reorganized by Lord De La Warr and Sir Thomas Gates, and something like peace existed with the Indians, more land patents were issued year after year. A list of land owners, in 1625, in the records of the Company, shows nearly two hundred persons owning plots of land varying in size from forty acres to the thirty-seven hundred acres of Sir George Yeardley's plantation at Hungar's river on the Eastern Shore.

In _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ by an unnamed writer in 1648, it is stated that there were in the colony "pinnaces, barks, great and small boats many hundreds, for most of their plantations stand upon the rivers' sides and up little creeks and but a small way into the land." Every planter must have had a boat of some kind. Neighborly communication had to be maintained, religious services attended, fishing and oystering to be done, crops of tobacco transferred to the ships anchored out in the channel, and cargoes of goods taken from the ships to the warehouses. The planter navigated the boat himself unless he could provide a slave or an indentured servant.

Most of the shipbuilding done on the plantations was done by ship carpenters or men trained by them. The shipyards were very simple affairs, the essentials being a plot of ground on the bank of a stream with water deep enough to float the vessel and near a supply of suitable timber. Later would be added, perhaps, a small pier to which the boat could be attached, and a small building or shed for the protection of tools.

A visiting ship in need of repair would seek some convenient place on the river and the hospitality of the neighboring planter. An instance is that of Captain Thomas Dermer from Monhegan, North Virginia, now in Maine, who arrived at the colony in September, 1619, in an open pinnace of five tons. He had met Captain Ward several weeks earlier at a place called "St. James his Isles," and there had put most of his provisions on board the _Sampson_, Captain Ward's boat. Of his arrival in Virginia, he wrote to Samuel Purchas as follows: "After a little refreshing, we recovered up the river to James Citie and from thence to Captain Ward his plantation, where immediately we fell to hewing boards for a close deck." He and his men soon fell sick with malaria and "were sore shaken with burning fever." As their recovery was slow and winter had overtaken them, Dermer decided to wait until spring before sailing north. Captain John Ward had arrived in Virginia during the previous April and was already a member of the House of Burgesses.

Some of the visitors did their shipbuilding more quickly. A Captain Thomas Young arrived in the colony with two ships on July 3, 1634, and by July 14, was reported by Governor Harvey to have built two pinnaces, and that he would be gone in two more days.

Some planters on the larger plantations continued to build their own ships even after public shipyards had been established in seaport towns. Flowerdieu Hundred on the James River was a prosperous plantation, where many vessels were built. It had its own wharf where large ships could be moored for loading.

Some shipbuilding at Westover on the James River is recorded in the diary of William Byrd II, who, after the death of his father in 1704, became owner of the plantation.

In July 1709, Byrd wrote: "I sent the boatmaker to Falling Creek to build me a little boat for my sea sloop." Two days later he wrote: "I sent Tom to Williamsburg for John B-r-d to work on my sloop." Later in the month, he noted that John B-r-d had come in the night to work on his sloop. In November, he wrote: "In the afternoon we paid a visit to Mr. Hamilton who lives across the creek. We walked about his plantation and saw a pretty shallop he was building." In August, 1710, he wrote that he had taken a walk to see the boatbuilder at work. On August 9, he wrote that he had paid the builder of his sloop sixty pounds, which was twenty pounds more than he had agreed for. Later in the year, he noted that his sloop had gone down to the shipyard at Swinyards.

Byrd acquired a new shipwright who came from England on the ship _Betty_ in 1711. In March, he wrote that the new shipwright was offended because he had been given corn pone instead of English bread for breakfast. He had taken his horse and ridden away without a word. However, he reported later that the shipwright had returned. On May 15, 1712, Byrd reported that he had engaged Mr. T-r-t-n to build him a sloop next year. Several years later, he recorded the loss of his great flat boat, but it was found by a man at Swinyards. Swinyards was a place for public warehouses and a shipyard, located on the north bank of the James River, a short distance below Westover, opposite Windmill Point.

At Berkeley, a neighboring plantation on the James River, owned by Benjamin Harrison, there were extensive merchant mills and a large shipyard where vessels were built for the plantation. On October 20, 1768, there appeared a for-sale advertisement in the _Virginia Gazette_: "A double decked vessel of 110 tons on the stocks at Berkeley Shipyard, built to carry a great burden, and esteemed a very fine vessel." Two years later, John Hatley Norton and a Mr. Coutts were negotiating with Colonel Harrison for the purchase of the ship _Botetourt_ built there for which they offered 1100 pounds sterling. "She is as stout a ship as was ever built in America, and we expect will carry 380 hogsheads of tobacco," wrote Mr. Norton.

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY'S INTEREST IN BOATBUILDING

When Sir Thomas Smith ended his term as Treasurer of the Company in 1619, among many other charges brought against him by the opposing faction, it was declared there was left only one old frigate belonging to Somers' Isles, one shallop, one ship's boat, and two small boats belonging to private persons. In his defense, Smith referred to the 150 men he had sent to Virginia to set up iron works; the making of cordage, pitch, tar, pot and soap-ashes from material at hand; the cutting of timber and masts; and how he had sent men to erect sawmills for cutting planks for building houses and ships. In justification of Smith and himself, Robert Johnson, alderman, a leader during Smith's administration, drew up an account in which he stated among other evidences of prosperity that barks, pinnaces, shallops, barges, and other boats had been built in the colony; but this statement was not accepted as fact.

Sir Edwin Sandys succeeded Smith as Treasurer; and in the Earl of Southampton's administration in 1621, a list of improvements was drawn up, among which it was claimed that the number of boats was ten times multiplied and that there were four ships owned by the colony. A reply to this may be taken from _An Answer to a Declaration of the Present State of Virginia in May_, 1623, in which it was declared that the new administration was many degrees behind the old government, for in those times there were built boats of all sorts, barges, pinnaces, frigates, hoyes, shallops and the like.

The great massacre in March, 1622, put an immediate check on any progress in boatbuilding in the colony. For a time the settlers were panic stricken, and there was much talk of assembling all the remaining settlers on the Eastern Shore, but happily, wiser counsel prevailed. That the few boatwrights then in the colony perished is considered probable from the fact that none could be found to repair a boat that had drifted ashore at Elizabeth City after the massacre. When writing about the Indian massacre, Captain John Smith, in his _General History of Virginia_, in a bitter outburst, said: "Yea, they borrowed our boats to transport themselves over the river to consult on the develish murder that insued and of our utter extirpation." In Sir Francis Wyatt's commission to Sir George Yeardley on September 10, 1622, to attack the Indians in punishment for the massacre, he ordered the use of "such ships, barks, and boats as are now riding in this river as transports." The ships and barks may well have been English vessels.

When Virginia became a Crown Colony in 1624, the reports on the state of the colony named thirty-eight boats, two shallops, one bark, one skiff, and one canoe, but this was considered inaccurate as many plantations did not report their vessels.

SHIPWRIGHTS AND SHIP-CARPENTERS

Every colonizing expedition to the New World had been deeply impressed by the wealth of shipbuilding materials to be found. The English were particularly enthusiastic, since the scarcity of timber in England was very serious. Here, in Virginia, were to be found all that was needed for building ships: "oakes there are as faire, straight and tall and as good timber as any can be found, a great store, in some places very great. Walnut trees very many, excellent faire timber above four-score foot, straight without a bough." The report went on in praise of the tall pine trees fit for the tallest masts, and the kinds of woods for making small boats: mulberry, sassafras, and cedar. Other materials were not wanting: iron ore, pitch, tar, rosin, and flax for making rope. The colonists saw in this wealth of materials a new source of supply at one-half of the previous cost. Both England and Holland had been purchasing their shipbuilding materials from Poland and Prussia at a cost of a million pounds sterling annually. One enthusiastic Englishman, when he heard these reports, wrote: "We shall fell our timber, saw our planks, and quickly make good shipping there, and shall return thence with good employment, an hundred sayle of ships yearly."

When Captain Newport returned to England in June, 1607, he carried with him a request, from the colonists to the company, for carpenters to build houses, and shipwrights to build boats. Upon Newport's return in 1608, he brought with him a number of Poles and Dutchmen to erect sawmills for the production of boards for houses and boats. This did not prove to be a successful venture. Further attempts were made in 1619, and later, to establish sawmills in the colony. Instructions sent to Governor Wyatt, in 1621, bade him "to take care of the Dutch sent to build sawmills, and seat them at the Falls, that they may bring their timber by the current of the water." Repeated appeals had been made to the Company for ship-carpenters without success. In January, 1621, the Governor and Council joined in an appeal for workmen to build vessels, of various kinds, for the use of the people in making discoveries, in trading with their neighbors, and in transporting themselves and goods from one place to another. In reply, a letter from the Company, in August, gave the encouraging news, that in the spring, the Company would send an excellent shipwright with thirty or forty carpenters. In preparation, they were advised to fell a large number of black oak trees, and bark as many others. The Company expected the sawmill to provide the planks and suggested a place near the sawmill and ironworks for the shipyard. A thousand pounds had been underwritten by private persons for sending the shipwrights and carpenters who were promised by the end of April at the latest.

The next spring, in May, the Council received notice that sailing on the ship _Abigail_ were Captain Thomas Barwick and twenty-five other persons for building boats, ships and pinnaces. They were to be established together in an area of at least twelve hundred acres, and were to be employed only in the trade for which they were sent. Four of the Company's oxen were to be assigned to them for use in hauling the timber.

Captain Barwick and his men settled in Jamestown. At first they were employed in building houses for themselves and afterward began to build shallops, the most convenient and satisfactory vessels, for transporting tobacco to the large ships. Soon several of the men were ill, from malaria it was thought, and by the end of the year many of them had died. A letter from George Sandys, in March, to Deputy Treasurer Ferrar, sent by the ship _Hopewell_, told the discouraging news. He deplored the failure of the shipbuilding project caused by the death of Captain Barwick and many of his shipbuilders, "wherein if you blame us, you must blame the hand of God." He attributed the pestilent fever that raged in the colony to the infected people that came over in the _Abigail_, "who were poisened with stinking beer, all falling sick and many dying, everywhere dispersing the contagion." Not only the shipbuilders, but almost all the passengers of the _Abigail_, died immediately, upon their landing. The contagion even spread to the cattle and other domestic animals, it was said.

On March 31, 1626, Thomas Munn (?) came before the Council and the General Court of Virginia and swore that he was at the making of a small shallop, by direction of Captain Barwick, and that afterward this boat was sold to Captain William Eppes, for two hundred pounds of tobacco, and "as yet the debt is not satisfied unto any man." Upon the death of Captain Barwick, Munn had delivered to George Sandys, Treasurer, a list of debts owing, and this debt had never been paid.

Adam Dixon, who came over in the _Margaret and John_, was sent by the Company as a master calker of ships and boats. He was living at Pashbehays, near Jamestown, in 1624. As the years went by, a number of shipwrights came to the colony from time to time, and were engaged in private shipyards on plantations, or set up shipyards of their own. Orphan boys were sometimes apprenticed to these shipbuilders until they reached the age of twenty-one. They were expected to be taught to read, write and cipher in addition to learning the trade of ship-carpenter.

Many of the shipwrights who came to Virginia in the seventeenth century, became land owners, some of them owning large tracts of land, as shown by county records, especially in the Tidewater area. In Lancaster on the Rappahannock River, John Meredith, a shipwright, obtained, by patent, a tract of fifty acres. His sale of 600 acres is recorded, also a contract to build a sloop and a small boat, in payment of a debt of 47,300 pounds of tobacco.

In Rappahannock County records, we find shipwright Simon Miller, a noted shipbuilder, who owned a tract of 125 acres; and John Griffin, a shipwright, who, in 1684, recorded a deed to Colonel Cadwalader Jones for a bark of fifty odd tons, for the consideration of fifty pounds sterling.

The first John Madison of Virginia, great-great-grandfather of President James Madison, acquired considerable land in Virginia by the importation of immigrants; in a land patent dated 1682, he called himself a ship-carpenter. At this time, good ships of three hundred tons and over were being built in Virginia, and probably John Madison aided in the construction of one or more of these. It is evident that many of the shipwrights, who came to Virginia from England, found the life of a planter more desirable than that of a shipbuilder, while some of them combined the two occupations.

CONTROVERSIES OVER BOATS

The Council and General Court of Virginia were called upon occasionally to settle controversies over vessels of various kinds and to hear reports concerning others. The following reports are from the records of the Court for 1622 to 1632.

At an early date, Robert Poole reported a trading voyage with the Indians for Mr. "Treasurer," in the pinnace _Elizabeth_, during which he gave ten arms length of blue beads for one tub of corn and over, and thirteen arms length for another tub. Anne Cooper complained that her late husband, Thomas Harrison, loaned a shallop to Lieutenant George Harrison, late deceased. It was ordered by the Court that she should receive one hundred pounds of merchantable tobacco from George Harrison's estate.

An argument between John Utie and Bryan Caught resulted in the order that the latter should build Utie a shallop eighteen feet, six inches keel; six feet, six inches breadth; with masts, oars, yard and rudder, and to find the 1100 nails and six score "ruff and clench" desired. Utie was to pay Bryan for building the shallop six score pound weight of tobacco, and to furnish the help of a boy and the boy's diet. Also, he was to pay Bryan six score pounds of tobacco for a boat previously built for him.

Captain Francis West, a member of the Council, desired that he be given the use of the Spanish frigate with all her tackle, apparel, munitions, masts, sails, yards, etc., that had been captured by John Powell, with a shallop built for that purpose, on an expedition to the West Indies in the man-of-war, _Black Bess_. He was required to pay 1200 pounds of tobacco to the captain and men.

In trading for corn for Southampton Hundred, John Powntis was allowed a barrel of the corn for the use of his pinnace.

Mr. Proctor had to pay Mr. Perry fifty pounds of tobacco for splitting Perry's shallop. Later, a shallop, which Edmund Barker sold to Mr. Rastall's men, was ordered returned to Mr. Perry, and Edmund Barker to be paid fifty pounds of tobacco for mending the shallop. To settle a charge against Thomas Westone by several men, he was ordered to appear before the Governor with his pinnace. At a later meeting, Thomas Ramshee swore that Westone was owner of the ship _Sparrow_ and "did set her out of his own charge, from London to Virginia." This was an early seagoing vessel of a colonist, but whether built in Virginia, or purchased, is not stated.

Nicholas Weasell received the most severe penalty, in cases concerning boats, when he was ordered to serve Henry Geny the rest of the year from February, for taking away Geny's boat without leave, "whereupon it was bilged and spoiled."

Captain Claiborne purchased a shallop with appurtenances from Captain John Wilcox who had been "at the plantation called Accomack" since 1621. He paid Wilcox 400 pounds of tobacco for the shallop, and sold it to Thomas Harwood. Captain Wilcox failed to make delivery, and the court ordered the attorney of Captain Wilcox to make satisfaction to Thomas Harwood.

The court was called upon to settle a controversy between Captain William Tucker and Mr. Roland Graine about a boat. A Mrs. Hurte was named as the owner of another ship in the colony, the _Truelove_, formerly owned by John Cross, deceased in England. A much discussed case was that of William Bentley, on trial for the killing of Thomas Godby, which resulted when Mr. Conge's boat ran ashore at Merry Point, near William Parker's house. While there, Bentley, who had arrived in the boat, got into a quarrel and fight with Godby, and was accused of killing him.

These Court records show that most of the cases concerned vessels built in the colony: boats, pinnaces, and shallops. The ships mentioned were evidently of English make. The shallop was the most popular boat for use in the colony. It was a small boat from sixteen to twenty feet in length, fitted with one or two masts and oars, and suitable for exploring the creeks and rivers, collecting corn from the Indians, and transporting tobacco to waiting ships.

SHIPBUILDING ON THE EASTERN SHORE

The Eastern Shore records are among the earliest in Virginia. Shipbuilding in the early days has been ably discussed by Dr. Susie M. Ames in _Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century_. In 1630, John Toulson, or Poulson, built a pinnace at Nassawadox in which he had one-half interest. Richard Newport, one of Captain Christopher Newport's sons, while living in Northampton County, bought a shallop from the carpenter, Thomas Savage, for the use of the merchant, Henry Brookes, for which Savage was paid twenty pounds sterling. William Berry, another Eastern Shore carpenter, made an agreement with Philip Taylor, one of William Claiborne's men, during the Kent Island controversy, to make him a boat, twenty by ten feet, provided Taylor furnished the boards for the deck between the forecastle and the cabin. For this, Berry was to receive two cows with calf and four hundred pounds of tobacco. During the dispute over Kent Island, a pinnace, belonging to Captain Claiborne, was taken by the Marylanders.

Obedience Robins, a well-known citizen of the Eastern Shore, acquired from the boatwright, William Stevens, a shallop, twenty-six feet in length, with masts, yards, and oars. He owned a pinnace also, which he had named _Accomack_. A number of lawsuits on the Eastern Shore in the 1640's, involved boats and ship materials. Philip Taylor was indebted to William Stevens for one house, four days on a shallop, valued at one pound sterling, six gallons of tar, and 1250 nails of various sizes. Payment was ordered made to the overseers of the estate of Daniel Cugley of one small boat, twenty-four yards of canvas, twenty gallons of tar, and ninety ten-grote nails, supplies for making a boat. Another court order concerned the delivery of a boat, and 3500 six-penny nails lent by John Neale. Ambrose Nixon testified that he and his mate had built a boat for Randall Revell. In 1638, two planters of Accomack, Nicholas White and one Barnaby, made voyages to New England in their own vessels. The names of Walter Price and Christopher Stribling shipwrights are listed in the early records of Northampton County.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE BUILDING OF SHIPS

The General Assembly of Virginia encouraged shipbuilding by such laws as those enacted during 1662: "Be it enacted that every one that shall build a small vessel with a deck be allowed, if above twenty and under fifty tons, fifty pounds of tobacco per ton; if above fifty and under one hundred tons, one hundred pounds of tobacco per ton; if above one hundred tons, two hundred pounds per ton. Provided the vessel is not sold except to an inhabitant of this country in three years."

Other encouragement by Virginia to owners of vessels, built by them, was the exemption of the two shillings export duties per hogshead of tobacco; the exemption from castle duties; the reduction to two pence per gallon on imported liquor from the four pence required of foreign vessels; and the exemption from duties imposed on shipmasters on entering and clearing, and for licenses and bond where necessary.

The English government discouraged manufacture in the colonies that would compete with home manufactures, but the building of ships was an exception. England needed ships and granted the colonies the right to build as many as they could. Throughout the whole period of royal government, there were enacted various laws remitting the duties on imports brought in on native ships and remission of tonnage duties. This aroused the resentment of the English shipbuilders, who had endeavored to put a stop to the building of ships of any size in the colonies. They were alarmed, too, at the laws passed in the colonies to encourage shipbuilding and complained that they had been discriminated against. Resolutions were passed by Parliament to investigate such laws framed in the colonies, and a bill, based upon these resolutions was proposed, but never introduced.