Shipbuilding in the American colonies

This was the case in the New England colonies which consisted of the present day New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts.

[2] The Atlantic triangular trade formed a major component of the colonial American economy, involving Europe, Africa and the Americas.

[3] The American colonies were a major component of the transatlantic triangular trade, being the location of the second leg of the voyage where the Africans were sold to owners of slave plantations.

Occasionally, slave ships from the American colonies would travel to Africa carrying manufactured goods made in the Americas, skipping the necessity of sailing to Europe altogether.

Shipyards in Essex and Suffolk regions are credited with the development of the conventional American dory and constructed those that included the prestigious Gloucester, Massachusetts angling armada, freed the settlements from British guideline, reinforced the vendor and maritime armadas that made the United States a force to be reckoned with and assumed essential parts in World War I and World War II.

The colonies had a comparative advantage in shipbuilding with their vast natural resources, skilled craftsmen and capital infused from the British empire.

The introduction of British credit and complicated account balancing during King William's War, in the 1690s, changed how Boston merchants financed the shipbuilding industry.

Local labor and exchanges of goods could be sustained across scores of people linked with myriad small amounts of credit and debit without cash.

But the shipbuilding industry generated the labor and capital necessary for merchants to create larger and more intricate financial networks that solidified their position of power within both the local and the Atlantic economy.

Merchants such as Elias Hasket Derby, ordered schooners and brigs from the North River (Massachusetts Bay) shipyards, in which he began trading with China.

The Spanish attacked and destroyed the British settlement at Trist in the Bay of Campeche, where Boston merchants had long extracted log wood for sale in England and Europe.

Boston's economic catastrophe in 1717 led to the creation of new currency and credit laws that directly affected how merchants and tradesmen in the shipbuilding industry conducted business.

[9] This meant more stringent lending practices to trustworthy tradesmen and a stronger, more transparent industry that continued to dominate the Atlantic economy.

In 1794, Tench Coxe described America's shipbuilding experiences as an art for which the United States is peculiarly qualified by their skill in construction and vast natural resources.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, forests were the basis of sea power in all its military and commercial aspects, and each nation strove to maintain its independence by protecting timber supply routes that often extended over great distances.

Boston, Massachusetts was the distribution hub of natural resources that included cedar, maple, white pine, spruce and oak timber cut in New England.

By the mid seventeenth century shipwrights were beginning to take advantage of oak, mulberry, cedar and laurel in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

The early wooden vessels built for commercial fishing and foreign trade also gave rise to a variety of supporting industries in the area, including sail making, chancelleries, rope walks and marine railways.

Due to the booming shipbuilding industry some colonies such as Maryland experienced deforestation and in turn a depleted stock of available timber.

In fact, in New England the abundance of good timber enabled colonists to produce ships thirty percent cheaper than the English, making it the most profitable manufactured export during the colonial period.

[11] Even with the forests closest to New York and Boston depleted, the country still had vast timber reserves, making the cost of construction much lower.

Given the constant emigration of shipwrights from England and the limited advances in technology, it is not surprising that eighteenth-century Americans were usually familiar with trends abroad.