NEW HAMPSHIRE-EARLY SHIPS OF WAR.

57

Colonies. Other vessels laden with spars and timber, proceeded directly for the British ports, and were sold with their cargoes for the same purpose. The coasting trade to the Southern ports, was an exchange of West India productions for corn, rice, flour and naval stores, portions of which were re-exported to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. As early as 1668, the Government of Massachusetts, (which then included New Hampshire), passed an order, reserving for public use, all white-pine trees, measuring twenty-four inches in diameter, at three feet from the ground. In the reign of William III., a Surveyor of the Woods was appointed by the Crown; and an order was sent to the Earl of Bellamont, to cause Acts to be passed for the preservation of white-pine trees in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York. Under Queen Anne, the people were forbidden to cut any trees without leave of the Surveyor, who was ordered to mark all such trees as were fit for the use of the Navy, and keep a register of them. A perpetual struggle was kept up between the people and the Surveyors; fines were exacted, and trees were purposely destroyed; and the subject was perpetually dwelt upon by the Royal Governors, in their dispatches home."(1)

In answer to the queries of the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in 1730, the Governor reported the trade of the Province to consist in lumber and fish. "The number of shipping belonging to the Province are five, consisting of about five hundred tons; and there are about three or four hundred tons of other shipping that trade here (annually) not belonging to the Province."

(1) The first of the ships, named America, above mentioned, was built under the control and supervision of Sir W. Pepperell, of Kittery, and was launched May 4, 1749; the second of the same name was the heaviest ship constructed in America, up to that time, and was the only one of the three seventyfour's ordered at the same time that was built. She was taken by the British from the French, in an engagement on 1st of June.

The following outline of a description of the America, by Paul Jones, is given in Cooper's History of the U. S. Navy, and may not be uninteresting, as a specimen of early naval architecture, in its highest display at that time, and as exhibiting what were deemed peculiarities in the construction of ships of that day.

"The upper deck bulwarks were particularly described as 'breast-works, pierced for guns; and he adds, that all the quarterdeck and forecastle guns, could be fought at need on one side; from which it is to be

inferred, that the ship had ports in her waist. The poop had a 'folding breast-work,' grapeshot proof, or bulwarks that were lowered and hoisted in a minute. The quarter-deck ran four feet forward from the mainmast, and the forecastle came well aft. The gangways were wide and on the level of the quarter-deck and forecastle. The ship had only single quarter galleries, and no stern-gallery. She had fifty feet six inches beam over all, and her inboard length on the upper gundeck was one hundred and eighty-two feet six inches. Yet this ship, though the largest of seventy-fours in the world, had when the lower battery was sunk, the air of a delicate frigate; and no person at the distance of a mile could have imagined she had a second battery.' Unfortunately her intended armament is not given."

Of the others mentioned, the Faulkland is said to have been the first line of battle-ship built in America, and the Raleigh to have been built in sixty days.

From December, 1747, to December, 1748, the clearances from Portsmouth, were 121, of the following class, viz. : 13 ships; 3 snows; 20 brigs; 57 sloops; 28 schooners. The number entered at the port during the same time, was 73. There was besides about 200 coasting sloops and schooners trading to Boston, Salem, Rhode Island, &c. The port had little foreign trade. The number of vessels built in New Hampshire in 1769, according to the Colonial Custom House books at Boston, was forty-five sail, which was about equal to the excess of the number cleared above the number entered at the port in the years above mentioned. This excess of clearances, was, in most of the ports of the country, made up, in some measure, of vessels disposed of in foreign or domestic ports. The total tonnage of the vessels built in 1769, is given as two thousand four hundred and fifty-two tons, registered measurement, which is allowed to have been from one-fifth to one-third below the real burden. The average tonnage of each vessel on the former supposition, was 65 tons. In amount, the Province ranked next to Massachusetts. Of sixty-four thousand six hundred and seventy-nine tons of new shipping, built in the colonies in the three years, 1769, 1770, and 1771, rather more than one half was built in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. There were entered for that Province, for the year ending January 5, 1771, fifteen thousand three hundred and sixty-two tons, and cleared twenty thousand one hundred and ninety-two tons of shipping. The excess of outward tonnage, amounting to nearly five thousand tons, consisted in a great measure, as before remarked, of vessels built for sale.

Under the revenue system adopted by the New Government in 1790, the ship-manufacture of New Hampshire, in common with that of other building States, made rapid advances. The number of ships built in the State in that year, was only eight; in the following year, twenty sail of vessels were built at Piscataqua, which then owned 33 vessels of 100 tons and upward, and 50 under 100 tons burden, in all 83 sail. Of 277 vessels which cleared from the port in that year, the total tonnage was 31,097 tons, of which 26,560, was American.

The extensive business in lumber, masting, yards, and other naval stores, carried on at Piscataqua, employed, during the colonial period, a very heavy description of vessels, called mast ships, built expressly for that use, which were usually about four hundred tons burden, and carried twenty-five men, and from forty to fifty good masts each trip. Exeter and Portsmouth were also largely engaged in the business. The employment for this class of transports, it may be concluded, was large, from the dependence placed by the Commissioners of the Royal Navy on the timber of these Provinces.

CHAPTER IV.

SHIP-BUILDING IN THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES.

IT has been incidentally mentioned on a previous page, that "The Restless," built at Manhattan, in 1614, by the Dutch schipper, Adrian Block, and called, by an early chronicler, a yacht, was the first decked vessel, it is believed, ever constructed by Europeans in this country. This little. pioneer craft, whose name so aptly preindicated the commercial activity of the future city, after passing through Hellgate and the Sound, over which had glided for ages only the bark canoe of the savage, proceeded on a voyage of discovery; and perpetuated the name of her owner, by the discovery of Block Island, off Newport harbor.

SHIP-BUILDING IN NEW YORK.-An early and successful prosecution of the business of Ship-building could have been more reasonably expected of none of the first Colonists of America, than of the settlers at Manhattan. Holland was at that period, and long after, in the enjoyment of the carrying trade of the world. Though not possessed of a foot of timber, she built and armed more ships than all the rest of Europe. "The Low Countries," says Sir Walter Raleigh, addressing the King on the subject of English commerce, about ten years before, "have as many ships and vessels as eleven kingdoms of Christendom have, let England be one. They build every year near one thousand ships, although all their native commodities do not require one hundred ships to carry them away at once." Planted by this commercial people, and by merchants and capitalists of Amsterdam, then the mercantile metropolis of Europe, exclusively for the purposes of trade, it appears somewhat surprising that the facilities afforded by the new territory for ship-building were not made available to a greater extent, by the parent nation. But the administration of a privileged mercantile association, such as the "West India Company," which, in 1621, was invested with a monopoly of its trade, was unfavorable to the development of the resources of the Colony. The Knickerbockers, who succeeded the first adventurers, built, nevertheless, as we are told, many small vessels, sloops and pirogues, in which they

prosecuted an active Indian trade, in the bays, sounds and rivers of the Colony. It was a complaint against the Company, by delegates sent to the Hague, in 1649, to procure a reform of the government, that, among other unnecessary expenditures, it had built "the ship New Netherlands at a great expense." She was said to have been of the burden of eight hundred tons, and was built about the year 1630. The carrying trade between Holland and America, and the trade with Brazil, where the Company had sustained losses equivalent to "one hundred tons of gold," were, about this time, thrown open to the Colonists, and private ships were, for the first time, entered at Amsterdam, and publicly advertised for New Netherlands. Other restrictions, which had fettered commerce, were soon after removed, and the trade of the world, with the exception of that to the East Indies, and the trade in Furs, were open to the Colonists. The duties which, in 1638, had been fixed at ten per cent. on imported, and fifteen on exported goods, had left some difference in favor of English colonial bottoms, by which goods were imported first to New England, and thence, at a low rate, into New Netherlands. It was in 1651 modified, by laying sixteen per cent. upon all such goods, except Tobacco; thus discriminating in favor of the navigation of the Province.

Up to this time (1652), when the first city magistracy was appointed, there was but one small wharf, for the landing of goods from scows and small boats, which was now extended to fifty feet, to accommodate a larger trade

Grants of land were first made in 1642, and, at the date of its capitulation to the English, in 1664, a number of property holders of the shipbuilding profession resided in the part of the city then known as "De Smit's Valey," and afterward as the "Vly," or "Fly," along the shore road, between Wall street and the present Franklin Square. Among these were two brothers, Lambert Huybertson and Abraham Lamberzen Mol, Stoffel Elsworth, Joost Carelzen, John Adriance, Pieter Harmenzen, and Pieter Jansen, whose residences were all outside the water gate or city palisades, at Wall street, within which lived Dirck Jansen Vandeventer, of the same business, and a number of prominent traders and shipping merchants. Govert Loockermans, one of the most extensive and wealthy of these, was the father-in-law of the insurrectionist, Jacob Leisler, and the partner of the pilgrim trader, Isaac Allerton, of Plymouth.

In 1672, the trade of New York employed ten or fifteen vessels, of about one hundred tons each, of which six small ones only belonged to the city. In 1678 the shipping owned in the port consisted of three ships and fifteen sloops, and other small sailing vessels. In that year a measure designed to promote the interests of the city was adopted by Governor Andros, who conferred upon its inhabitants a monopoly of the

NEW YORK. EARLY SHIP-BUILDING IN.

61

business of bolting flour, and of exporting flour and biscuits from the Province. The privilege appears to have been beneficial to the trade and navigation of the port, though doubtless at the expense of other portions of the Province. When the Bolting Act was repealed in 1694, on the petition of other communities, the shipping had increased to sixty ships and one hundred and two sloops, and other vessels. The revenue from imports and exports had increased from two thousand to six thousand pounds per annum.1 The withdrawal of the privilege caused great complaint, and appears to have seriously damaged the trade and especially the shipping interests of the port. Some merchants suspended their shipping business altogether, and many mariners were thrown out of employment. The occurrence of war with France, soon after, induced many to engage in Privateering, which they are reputed to have carried to the extent of preying on friendly vessels; a charge which, though possibly true in some individual cases, was nevertheless, with little truth probably, laid at the door of some of the highest functionaries of the Province. The depredations of Captain Kid, who was regularly commissioned, and commenced his career in this business, probably gave currency to the charge. Others of the distressed ship-owners afterward entered into the Slave Trade with the Dutch possessions on the coast of Guinea, and found great profit in the iniquitous, but at that time perfectly lawful traffic. In 1683, the city had enrolled, by their names and their owners, three barks, three brigantines, twenty-six sloops, and forty-six open boats.

2

An official Report of Gov. Dongan, in 1686, states there were then belonging to the Province nine or ten three-mast vessels of about eighty or one hundred tons burden, two or three ketches, a bark of about forty tons, and about twenty smaller vessels of twenty to twenty-five tons each, all of which, excepting the sloops, traded with England, Holland, and the West Indies.3

So considerable had the increase of shipping in the Colonies become, that England was supplied with numerous transports; and a large propor

(1) Governor Andros, in 1678, reported that the merchants in New York were not numerous: "A merchant worth £1,000 or £500 is accounted a good and substantial merchant; a planter worth half that in movables is accounted rich. All the estates may be valued at £150,000." The number of houses in New York was then 343, and were found to contain ten persons to each, making the population 3,430. In 1696, they had increased to 594 houses and 6,000 inhabit

ants.

(2) Watson's Annals of New York, page 150. The names of some of these, it is said, were peculiar indeed. The Dutch affected high-sounding names for their vessels. The following are from an old record of vessels at one time in New York:-The Angel Gabriel, King David, Queen Esther, King Solomon, Arms of Rensellaerwyck, Arms of Stuyvesant, The Great Christopher, The Crowned Sea Bears, the Spotted Cow, etc. (3) Documentary Hist. of New York, i., 160.