the Colonists themselves took up this trade, building and manning their
own vessels and speedily making their way into every nook and corner of
Europe. We, who have seen, in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century,
the American flag the rarest of all ensigns to be met on the water, must
regard with equal admiration and wonder the zeal for maritime adventure
that made the infant nation of 1800 the second seafaring people in point
of number of vessels, and second to none in energy and enterprise.

[Illustration: THE SHALLOP]

New England early took the lead in building ships and manning them, and
this was but natural since her coasts abounded in harbors; navigable
streams ran through forests of trees fit for the ship-builder's adze; her
soil was hard and obdurate to the cultivator's efforts; and her people had
not, like those who settled the South, been drawn from the agricultural
classes. Moreover, as I shall show in other chapters, the sea itself
thrust upon the New Englanders its riches for them to gather. The
cod-fishery was long pursued within a few miles of Cape Ann, and the New
Englanders had become well habituated to it before the growing scarcity of
the fish compelled them to seek the teeming waters of Newfoundland banks.
The value of the whale was first taught them by great carcasses washed up
on the shore of Cape Cod, and for years this gigantic game was pursued in
open boats within sight of the coast. From neighborhood seafaring such as
this the progress was easy to coasting voyages, and so to Europe and to
Asia.

There is some conflict of historians over the time and place of the
beginning of ship-building in America. The first vessel of which we have
record was the "Virginia," built at the mouth of the Kennebec River in
1608, to carry home a discontented English colony at Stage Island. She was
a two-master of 30 tons burden. The next American vessel recorded was the
Dutch "yacht" "Onrest," built at New York in 1615. Nowadays sailors define
a yacht as a vessel that carries no cargo but food and champagne, but the
"Onrest" was not a yacht of this type. She was of 16 tons burden, and this
small size explains her description.

The first ship built for commercial purposes in New England was "The
Blessing of the Bay," a sturdy little sloop of 60 tons. Fate surely
designed to give a special significance to this venture, for she was owned
by John Winthrop, the first of New England statesmen, and her keel was
l