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Some Notes On Shipbuilding and Shipping In Colonial Virginia
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 (From The Trades Increase , London, 1615) SHIPBUILDING AND SHIPPING...
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The Dugout Canoe
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 firs
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Virginia-Built Pinnaces
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,
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Wreck of the Sea Venture
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 "Excellen
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Building the Deliverance and the Patience
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, a
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Boatbuilding Before 1612
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
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Argall's Shipyard at Point Comfort
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
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Other Voyages of Argall
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. How
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Shipbuilding on Plantations
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 Si
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The Virginia Company's Interest in Boatbuilding
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 m
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Shipwrights and Ship-carpenters
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, s
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Controversies Over Boats
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 comp
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Shipbuilding on the Eastern Shore
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,
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Encouragement for the Building of Ships
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 encourageme
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Eighteenth Century Shipbuilding
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 nat
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Trading Towns and Ports
Trading Towns and Ports
In the early days of the colony after tobacco had become a commodity for export, ships moored at the wharves of the plantations along the James, York and Rappahannock rivers and their estuaries. As trade increased, larger ships were used which anchored in the channels of the rivers, and the tobacco and other exports were carried to them by small boats—shallops, sloops, and barges. The government complained that it was losing revenue by this individualistic and unorganized shipping of the planter
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Early Ferries in Virginia
Early Ferries in Virginia
During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the settler in Virginia used any kind of craft he possessed to cross the streams that separated him from his neighbor or for transacting business. Canoes, flatboats, scows, even sailing boats were pressed into service. These he propelled himself until he acquired a slave or two. Communication was aided by bridges across the smaller streams, and when horses became available, by crossing the rivers at the fords whenever possible. The steady incr
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Shipbuilding in the Period of the Revolution
Shipbuilding in the Period of the Revolution
At a Convention of delegates and representatives of the counties and corporations of the Colony of Virginia on July 17, 1775, there was established a Committee of Safety consisting of ten prominent men for putting into execution the ordinances and resolutions of the Convention. That committee was authorized to provide as many armed vessels as they judged necessary for the protection of the Colony in the war that seemed to threaten. Advertisements for ship-carpenters and other operatives were mad
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EARLY VIRGINIA WATERCRAFT (as defined by authorities)
EARLY VIRGINIA WATERCRAFT (as defined by authorities)
Shallop —A nondescript type of small boat, from the French "chaloupe," open or half-decked, sometimes with one or two masts for use if needed. It was the most popular boat used in the colony for collecting corn from the Indians, fishing, oystering, and exploring. Pinnace —"An old name in English marine nomenclature." A light sailing vessel from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, decked and having one or more masts, from twenty to thirty tons Burden. The pinnaces Virginia , Discovery , and
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbot, W. J. American Merchant Ships and Sailors. New York, 1902. Ames, S. M. Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in the Seventeenth Century. Richmond, 1940. Andrews, C. M. The Colonial Period of American History. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1934-1938. 4 vols. Beverley, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia. London, 1705. Reprinted for The Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina, 1947. Bishop, J. L. The History of American Manufactu
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APPENDIX I
APPENDIX I
The following advertisements of vessels TO BE SOLD were selected from the Little Betty as showing types and sizes of watercraft in use. 1739, May 4. … a small shallop about five years old in Yorktown, will carry between 400 and 500 bushels of corn. William Rogers. 1745, … by the executors of Mr. Thomas Rawlings, a ship carpenter, lately deceased, the frame of a snow which was to have been built by the said Rawlings on account of Mr. John Hood, merchant, of Prince George County, of the following
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APPENDIX II
APPENDIX II
The items on shipping given below were selected from the Virginia Gazette to show some details of Virginia shipping in the eighteenth century: the home ports, the ports entered and cleared, the types of vessels and various kinds of cargo. Sailings are given from September 3, 1736, when a Virginia owned vessel was first mentioned in the Gazette , to June 28, 1768, and is by no means a complete list, even in the copies of issues now extant; it is well to recall that copies of many issues have neve
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