As the reader remembers, the first charter of Virginia as a colony provided for two colony-planting companies. One, the London Company, settled its colonists in what is now the State of Virginia, while the other, the West-of-England or Plymouth Company, was to people the northern coast. In May, 1607, the Plymouth Company sent two vessels to establish a fishing colony on what is now the coast of Maine. One of the vessels was a "fly-boat" called the Gift of God. A fly-boat was a flat-bottomed, shoal-draft vessel handy for exploring inland waters. The other was "a good ship" named the Mary and John. These ships shaped their course to an island off the coast then well known to the fishermen, and now called Monhegan, "a round high Ile," where they arrived on August 9. On the 18th they located their settlement on a peninsula, on the west side of the mouth of the Kennebec, which was "almost an island." There they erected dwellings, a storehouse, and a church, with a fort enclosing all. Then "the carpenters framed a pretty pinnace of about 30 tons, which they called the Virginia, the chief shipwright being one Digby of London." A plan of the fort as "taken by John Hunt, the VIII day of October in the yeere of our Lorde 1607," is reproduced in Brown's Genesis of the United States. This chart is important because it shows under the guns of the fort a small vessel which was, no doubt, the "pretty pinnace" Virginia.
While the dimensions of the Virginia were not recorded, we can get a fair idea of her size from Charnock's History of Marine Architecture (II, 431), where a smack named the Escape Royal, in 1660, was of 34 tons burden and 30 feet 6 inches long by 14 feet 3 inches wide, and 7 feet 9 inches deep. The 30-ton Virginia was not far from these dimensions. She carried a spritsail and a jib. As the sail spread was insufficient for driving the vessel in light airs and confined waters, oars were provided. The hull was partly decked, enough to protect the cargo.
The crew had to be content with an awning when the wind was light. When the wind was heavy, they had to face the gale, as was the custom on the Banks. And yet the Virginia was built by men who intended to use her not only in the fishery and the coasting trade with the Indians, but for oversea trade as well. It is a matter of record, too, that she made at least one voyage from England to the Chesapeake, and it is believed that some of the Kennebec colonists sailed in her upon that voyage.
Curiously enough, however, the Kennebec colony failed somewhat ingloriously. The winter was long and severe. A fire destroyed the storehouse and the provisions that had been brought from England. The unexplored wilderness oppressed them. In fact, while they would face a hurricane at sea in an open boat, the terrors of the wilderness, though chiefly of their own imagining, drove them away, and they were hard pressed at home to find excuses for what they had done.
In the meantime a settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia. Of the 105 colonists at Jamestown, 48 were described as gentlemen, 12 as laborers, 4 as carpenters, and the others as servants and soldiers. The servants were white slaves, who were not, however, held for life. The ships with this oddly assorted colony arrived in the Chesapeake on April 20, 1607. Of the things done at Jamestown two only need be considered here. They began creating a merchant marine in 1611 by building a shallop of twelve or thirteen tons' burden. A Spaniard who visited the colony at that time noted that the iron used in the boat had been taken from a wreck at Bermuda—a fact that shows the colonists had not had enough interest in ship-building to bring iron for that purpose from home.
The truth is the Virginia colonists never had much interest in shipping, save only as they built many vessels of small size for use in local transportation on their inland waters. The reason for this condition of affairs is pointed out in Bruce's Economic History of Virginia. The money crop was, as it is now, in many parts of the State, tobacco. Tobacco had been introduced into England in 1586. The settlers found the Indians cultivating it on the James River, but they gave little heed to it until 1612, when John Rolfe, the first American "squaw man," began producing it partly for his own use and partly because he was trying to find some product that could be exported to England with profit. Thus Rolfe's garden was the first American agricultural experiment station. Under cultivation the leaf produced was of better quality than that obtained from the Indians, and when a trial shipment was sent to England the success of the venture was great. Thereupon the colonists became so eager to produce it that the authorities felt obliged to prohibit the crop unless at least two acres of grain were grown at the same time by each planter.
The demand for Virginia tobacco increased until the merchants sent their agents to the colony to buy and pay for the crop long before it was harvested; they even sent ships to lie there for months before the harvest in order to have first chance to secure it. Why should the Virginians build or buy ships under such circumstances?
Now consider some of the conditions surrounding the first New England settlers. Many fishermen had visited the New England coast before a settlement was made there. These adventurers found full fares and they looked upon the coast at a season when it was not "stern."
It was to this coast that the Pilgrims came.
Of the well-known story of the Pilgrims it seems necessary to recall here, first of all, the fact that they were Englishmen who had lived for several years among the Dutch, a people who described themselves upon their coinage as a nation whose "way is on the sea." More than a thousand ships were built every year in Holland where the Pilgrims were sojourning, and everybody lived in a seafaring atmosphere. Though a distinct people, the Pilgrims necessarily absorbed, as one may say, something of the Dutch aptitude for trade and sea life. Thus, when ready to migrate to America, they were able to secure the capital they needed for the venture from merchants who were acquainted with the success that had attended the fishing voyages to the coast.