By 1642 they were building good-sized vessels at Boston, and the year following was launched the first full-rigged ship, the “Trial,” which went to Malaga, and brought back “wine, fruit, oil, linen and wool, which was a great advantage to the country, and gave encouragement to trade.”  A year earlier there set out the modest forerunner of our present wholesale spring pilgrimages to Europe.  A ship set sail for London from Boston “with many passengers, men of chief rank in the country, and great store of beaver.  Their adventure was very great, considering the doubtful estate of affairs of England, but many prayers of the churches went with them and followed after them.”

By 1698 Governor Bellomont was able to say of Boston alone, “I believe there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and Ireland.”  Thereafter the business rapidly developed, until in a map of about 1730 there are noted sixteen shipyards.  Rope walks, too, sprung up to furnish rigging, and presently for these Boston was a centre.  Another industry, less commendable, grew up in this as in other shipping centres.  Molasses was one of the chief staples brought from the West Indies, and it came in quantities far in excess of any possible demand from the colonial sweet tooth.  But it could be made into rum, and in those days rum was held an innocent beverage, dispensed like water at all formal gatherings, and used as a matter of course in the harvest fields, the shop, and on the deck at sea.  Moreover, it had been found to have a special value as currency on the west coast of Africa.  The negro savages manifested a more than civilized taste for it, and were ready to sell their enemies or their friends, their sons, fathers, wives, or daughters into slavery in exchange for the fiery fluid.  So all New England set to turning the good molasses into fiery rum, and while the slave trade throve abroad the rum trade prospered at home.

Of course the rapid advance of the colonies in shipbuilding and in maritime trade was not regarded in England with unqualified pride.  The theory of that day—­and one not yet wholly abandoned—­was that a colony was a mine, to be worked for the sole benefit of the mother country.  It was to buy its goods in no other market.  It was to use the ships of the home government alone for its trade across seas.  It must not presume to manufacture for itself articles which merchants at home desired to sell.  England early strove to impress such trade regulations upon the American colonies, and succeeded in embarrassing and handicapping them seriously, although evasions of the navigation laws were notorious, and were winked at by the officers of the crown.  The restrictions were sufficiently burdensome, however, to make the ship-owners and sailors of 1770 among those most ready and eager for the revolt against the king.