The Pilgrims who sought freedom in New England were enterprising men.  The country in which they landed kindled a commercial spirit.  Natural ports and havens, vast forests of pine and oak suitable for spars and timber, abundance of fish and whales, and the occasional failure of their crops, all invited them to the deep.  Under the rule of Governor Winthrop, the shallop Blessing of the Bay was built at his Ten Hills farm, and made a voyage to Virginia.  Boats, soon followed by sloops, engaged in the fisheries; brigs and ships were built for the trade with England.  Boston became noted for ship-building, and Portsmouth supplied the royal navy with spars.  The fleet which took Port Royal in 1710 was composed principally of American ships.  The New England volunteers who in 1745 captured the fortress of Louisburg from the veteran troops of France were conveyed by ten American ships of war.

As early as 1765, six hundred sail from Massachusetts were engaged in the fisheries, and many American vessels pursued the trade to England, Spain, and the West Indies.  The towns of Salem, Marblehead, and Gloucester were almost surrounded by fish-flakes.  Fish, lumber, and provisions were the great basis of trade.  Ships were built and laden with timber, and sold with their lading in English ports.  Cargoes were made up of fish, live stock, and boards, for the West India Islands.  The returns were shipped to Spain and Portugal, and there exchanged for silk, iron, fruit, wines, and bills on England.  Occasionally ships joined the Jamaica fleet, or adventured on bolder voyages to the French islands; but the admiralty courts at Tortola and New Providence, often supposed to be in league with English admirals, repressed the spirit of adventure, and annually condemned American ships on the most frivolous pretences.  The fame of American whalers had already reached England.  Burke, in his celebrated speech on America, alludes to their enterprise.  “We find them,” he says, “in the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay, and again beneath the frozen serpent of the South.....What sea is not vexed by their fisheries? what climate is not witness to their toils?”

No record is to be found of the shipping of the Colonies prior to the Revolution, but there is reason to suppose that it must have exceeded two hundred thousand tons.  During the Revolution the merchantmen went generally to decay or were captured.  Some were equipped as privateers.  But after seven years a ship is in its dotage.  New vessels were built and armed.  The models which figure in old pictures, with high sterns and bows, proved too clumsy for war, and modern forms were adopted.  At least five hundred armed vessels were fitted out in the commercial States, and among them one hundred and fifty-eight from the single port of Salem.  Some of these vessels mounted twenty guns; they captured large numbers of English vessels, and performed feats on the ocean as brilliant as any upon the land.  At the close of the war, our shipping, although it included many prizes, was undoubtedly reduced; but it had changed its character.  Our ships had improved in size and speed, and were manned by officers and seamen who had measured their strength with Englishmen, and acknowledged no superiors.  From the Peace of 1783 to the Embargo of 1807, a period of twenty-four years, is a remarkable epoch in the history of American navigation.