45 - 40 - 7,558 - 340,110
58 - 20 - 3,710 - 215,180

85 Sloops, bombs,
and fireships, one 2,000 170,000
with another, _________
Cost 3,266,786
Remains for guns, _________ 233,214
_________
3,500,000

No country on the globe is so happily situated, or so internally
capable of raising a fleet as America. Tar, timber, iron, and cordage
are her natural produce. We need go abroad for nothing. Whereas the
Dutch, who make large profits by hiring out their ships of war to the
Spaniards and Portuguese, are obliged to import most of their materials
they use. We ought to view the building a fleet as an article of
commerce, it being the natural manufactory of this country. It is the
best money we can lay out. A navy when finished is worth more than it
cost. And is that nice point in national policy, in which commerce and
protection are united. Let us build; if we want them not, we can sell;
and by that means replace our paper currency with ready gold and silver.

In point of manning a fleet, people in general run into great errors;
it is not necessary that one fourth part should he sailors. The
Terrible privateer, Captain Death, stood the hottest engagement of any
ship last war, yet had not twenty sailors on board, though her
complement of men was upwards of two hundred. A few able and social
sailors will soon instruct a sufficient number of active landmen in the
common work of a ship. Wherefore, we never can be more capable to
begin on maritime matters than now, while our timber is standing, our
fisheries blocked up, and our sailors and shipwrights out of employ.
Men of war of seventy and eighty guns were built forty years ago in
New-England, and why not the same now? Ship-building is America's
greatest pride, and in which she will in time excel the whole world.
The great empires of the east are mostly inland, and consequently
excluded from the possibility of rivalling her. Africa is in a state
of barbarism; and no power in Europe hath either such an extent of
coast, or such an internal supply of materials. Where nature hath
given the one, she has withheld the other; to America only hath she
been liberal of both. The vast empire of Russia is almost shut out
from the sea: