Part 3

However, in 1680, Governor Culpeper was ordered to annul the laws exempting Virginia owners of vessels constructed in the colony from duties on exported tobacco and castle duties. The grounds upon which this order was based were (1) the injustice of granting privileges to Virginia ship owners, not enjoyed by the owners of English vessels, trading in Virginia waters; (2) the success of the navigation laws would be impaired by creating a Virginia fleet, able to transport tobacco, without the assistance of English vessels; and (3) owners of English ships might be tempted to order them as belonging to Virginians. Since the Virginia fleet in 1681, was composed of two ships, as mentioned by John Page, in a petition to Lord Culpeper, the English were thought to be unnecessarily alarmed.

During the 1660's, following the laws of the General Assembly, a number of Virginia built ships were recorded. There was much shipbuilding activity on the Eastern Shore. The mate of the _Royal Oake_, when caught trading illegally, stated that the owner had another boat in the house of a Mr. Waters, and also had a sloop being built there. About this time, a shipwright agreed to build between May and October, for William Whittington, a sloop of twenty-six feet keel, and breadth in proportion, receiving for his work 4,400 pounds of tobacco. In 1666, John Goddon entered a claim for a vessel of twenty-five tons built for him in Accomack. John Bowdoin built a brigantine which he named _Northampton_.

The size of the vessels built in Virginia had been increasing steadily. Thomas Ludwell, Secretary of the Colony, reported, in 1655, that there had been built recently, several small vessels which could make voyages along the coast, presumably sloops. Again, in a letter to Lord Arlington, Secretary Ludwell made the following statement: "We have built several vessels to trade with our neighbors, and do hope ere long to build bigger ships and such as may trade with England."

Colonel Cuthbert Potter of Lancaster County, who was sent on a mission to ascertain the truth of the reported Indian depredations in Massachusetts and New York, was an early settler in the colony, and had acquired large land holdings in Middlesex County. About 1660, he removed to Barbadoes in his own sloop, the _Hopewell_.

In 1665, James Fookes agreed to build for the widow, Mrs. Ann Hack, a sloop that would carry thirty-five hogsheads of tobacco, if Mrs. Hack would supply the plank and a barrel of tar; Fookes agreed to finish the job by the 25th of December. The following summer, at the plantation of Mrs. Hack, Fookes made a formal contract with the brother of Mrs. Hack, Augustine Herrman of Bohemia Manor in Maryland, to build a sloop and have it ready by the following October. Herrman is well-known for his 1673 map of Maryland and Virginia. Twenty years later, the dimensions of the _Phenix_, another vessel built by Fookes, were given: length of keel, forty feet; breadth, fourteen feet, nine inches inside; depth, eight feet, ten inches.

In the English _News Letter_ of March 12, 1666, was carried an encouraging news item: "A frigate of between thirty and forty [tuns?], built in Virginia, looks so fair, it is believed that in a short time, they will get the art of building as good frigates as there are in England." At that time, a new fort was being erected at Point Comfort, and it was ordered that every ship riding in the James River should send one carpenter with provisions and tools to work on this fort.

In 1667, Mrs. Sarah Whitby, widow of John Whitby, petitioned the King in Council as follows: "The petitioner with other planters in Virginia are owners of the ship _America_, built in Virginia by Captain Whitby, and pray for a license, for the said vessel with six mariners, to proceed to Virginia." The workmanship of the _America_ and her fine appearance had aroused the interest of the English, and expectations arose that Virginia might soon become skillful in building large vessels.

In a reply by Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, to an inquiry by the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, in 1671, as to the number of ships that trade yearly with the colony, he answered that there were a number of ships from England and Ireland and a few ketches from New England, but never at one time more than two Virginia-owned vessels, and they not more than twenty tons burden. He stated further that the severe Act of Parliament which excluded the colony from commerce with any other nation, was the reason why "no small or great vessels are built here." But other records of the time contradict Berkeley's statement as to the number and size of vessels built in the colony. In addition to those mentioned above, there is found in the records of York County, an itemized cost of building a sloop, the total amount being 4,467 pounds of tobacco. The various materials were furnished by the owners: Richard Meakins, 950 feet of plank; Mr. Newell, the rigging; Captain Sheppard, the sail; and Mr. Williams, the rudder iron. About four months were required to complete the vessel, charges for food running that length of time, during which a cask of cider was consumed. Some sloops were made large enough to hold as many as fifty hogsheads of tobacco, and could sail outside the coast. The sloop _Amy_, with fourteen hogsheads of tobacco, sailed from Virginia to London in 1690.

Dr. Lyon G. Tyler in _The Cradle of the Republic_ wrote that as early as 1690, ships of 300 tons were built in Virginia, and trade in the West Indies was conducted in small sloops. Lieutenant John West of the Eastern Shore, stating that he had built a vessel of forty-five tons, decked and fitted for sea, petitioned the court for a certificate to the Assembly as encouragement for so doing. Two other shipwrights, Thomas Fookes and Robert Norton, testified as to the weight of the vessel. West was evidently seeking the subsidy of fifty pounds of tobacco for building a vessel "above twenty and under fifty tons," under the law of 1662.

John West was evidently considered an excellent boatwright and carpenter, for in an indenture of the year 1697, made between him and Robert Glendall, late of Elizabeth City County, West is enjoined by the court to do his utmost to instruct Glendall in sloop and boat building, and in such other carpenter's work as he was "knowing in."

In his testimony before the Board of Trade on September 1, 1697, as to the manufactures in Virginia, Major Wilson stated that very good ships were built in Virginia of 300 tons and upwards; but cordage, iron, and smith's work were "brought thither." During that year, a group of merchants in Bristol, England, had a number of ships constructed in Virginia. They were influenced by the fine quality of timber and the small cost of the work, as compared with the cost of similar work in England. Also, a matter of no small importance, a cargo of tobacco was ready for each completed ship.

The wills of deceased persons sometimes revealed ownership of vessels. Of particular interest is the will of Nathaniel Bacon, Senior, in which he left to his wife and his nephew, Lewis Burwell, "all ships or parts of ships ... to me belonging in any part of the world." These were to be disposed of by Abigail, his wife, and the nephew as they saw fit. An inventory of the estate of one Thomas Lloyd of Richmond County, on October 27, 1699, lists one decked sloop on the stocks, unfinished, of about thirty tons; one small open sloop newly launched, not finished, of twenty-five tons; one new flat, one old ditto; one old barge; one parcel of handsaws, etc.

Sir Edmund Andros, Governor of Virginia, in answering the inquiries of the Council of Trade and Plantations, the clearing house for colonial affairs, in the year 1698, stated that there were 70,000 inhabitants in Virginia, and the number of vessels reported by the owners were four ships, two barks, four brigantines, and seventeen sloops. His report for the previous year had named eight ships, eleven brigantines, and fifteen sloops that had been built for which carpenters, iron work, rigging, and sails had been brought from England.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SHIPBUILDING

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."

TRADING TOWNS AND PORTS