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.