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."

Photograph by W. T. Radcliffe.

Susan Constant. Replica of the Ship that brought the first settlers to Jamestown, 1607