o anything like their present importance.

There were, however, a number of small ports and shipbuilding villages
in the Jerseys. It is a noticeable fact that in colonial times and even
later there were very few Jersey towns beyond the head of tidewater. The
people, even the farmers, were essentially maritime. The province showed
its natural maritime characteristics, produced many sailors, and built
innumerable small vessels for the coasting and West India trade--sloops,
schooners, yachts, and sailboats, down to the tiniest gunning boat and
sneak box. Perth Amboy was the principal port and shipbuilding
center for East Jersey as Salem was for West Jersey. But Burlington,
Bordentown, Cape May, and Trenton, and innumerable little villages
up creeks and channels or mere ditches could not be kept from the
prevailing industry. They built craft up to the limit of size that
could be floated away in the water before their very doors. Plentifully
supplied with excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar
of their own forests, very skillful shipwrights grew up in every little
hamlet.

A large part of the capital used in Jersey shipbuilding is said to have
come from Philadelphia and New York. At first this capital sought its
profit in whaling along the coast and afterwards in the trade with the
West Indies, which for a time absorbed so much of the shipping of all
the colonies in America. The inlets and beaches along the Jersey coast
now given over to summer resorts were first used for whaling camps or
bases. Cape May and Tuckerton were started and maintained by whaling;
and as late as 1830, it is said, there were still signs of the industry
on Long Beach.

Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited--wild stretches
of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a lighthouse or
lifesaving station. In the Revolution, when the British fleet blockaded
the Delaware and New York, Little Egg, the safest of the inlets, was
used for evading the blockade. Vessels entered there and sailed up
the Mullica River to the head of navigation, whence the goods were
distributed by wagons. To conceal their vessels when anchored just
inside an inlet, the privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside
the masts and thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British
cruisers prowling along the shore.

Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the inlets
and channels developed a romantic class of gent