The importance of ship-building as a factor in the development of New England did not rest merely upon the use of ships by the Americans alone.  That was a day when international trade was just beginning to be understood and pushed, and every people wanted ships to carry their goods to foreign lands and bring back coveted articles in exchange.  The New England vessel seldom made more than two voyages across the Atlantic without being snapped up by some purchaser beyond seas.  The ordinary course was for the new craft to load with masts or spars, always in demand, or with fish; set sail for a promising market, dispose of her cargo, and take freight for England.  There she would be sold, her crew making their way home in other ships, and her purchase money expended in articles needed in the colonies.  This was the ordinary practice, and with vessels sold abroad so soon after their completion the shipyards must have been active to have fitted out, as the records show, a fleet of fully 280 vessels for Massachusetts alone by 1718.  Before this time, too, the American shipwrights had made such progress in the mastery of their craft that they were building ships for the royal navy.  The “Falkland,” built at Portsmouth about 1690, and carrying 54 guns, was the earliest of these, but after her time corvettes, sloops-of-war, and frigates were launched in New England yards to fight for the king.  It was good preparation for building those that at a later date should fight against him.

Looking back over the long record of American maritime progress, one cannot but be impressed with the many and important contributions made by Americans—­native or adopted—­to marine architecture.  To an American citizen, John Ericsson, the world owes the screw propeller.  Americans sent the first steamship across the ocean—­the “Savannah,” in 1819.  Americans, engaged in a fratricidal war, invented the ironclad in the “Monitor” and the “Merrimac,” and, demonstrating the value of iron ships for warfare, sounded the knell of wooden ships for peaceful trade.  An American first demonstrated the commercial possibilities of the steamboat, and if history denies to Fulton entire precedence with his “Clermont,” in 1807, it may still be claimed for John Fitch, another American, with his imperfect boat on the Delaware in 1787.  But perhaps none of these inventions had more homely utility than the New England schooner, which had its birth and its christening at Gloucester in 1713.  The story of its naming is one of the oldest in our marine folk-lore.

“See how she schoons!” cried a bystander, coining a verb to describe the swooping slide of the graceful hull down the ways into the placid water.

[Illustration:  SCHOONER-RIGGED SHARPIE]