So far as the North River is concerned the building of vessels was begun as early as 1678, and the first one there built was launched on the Hanover side of the river, a little above the present bridge on the Plymouth and Boston road. Up to 1889, according to the record of Dr. L. V. Briggs, ten hundred and twenty-five vessels had been built, many of which before the Revolution were owned in England. The largest vessel was a ship of six hundred and fifty tons, and the classes numbered one hundred and one sloops, four hundred and eight schooners, sixty-six brigantines, one hundred and thirty-three brigs, fifty-three barks and two hundred and eight ships. The North River industry gradually declined as the demand for larger vessels than could float in the waters of the river, increased. The records of the ship building industry of the Merrimac river, and those of Medford and East Boston, show where the industry went. The industry on the Merrimac river began at a very early period, it having the advantage of floating its timber from the northern woods directly to the ship yards. Before the Revolution, what were called Jew’s Rafts, were built on the Merrimac for a London Jew named Levi, bolted and fastened with the equipment of a ship, and sent across the ocean. In an English newspaper of 1770 it was announced “that the Newbury,” Capt. Rose, had arrived in the Thames, a raft of timber in the form of a ship, in twenty-six days from Newbury, New England. No record of vessels built before the Revolution exists, but after the Revolution, up to 1883, about five hundred vessels were built on the Merrimac, and registered in the Custom House at Newburyport. The career of John Currier, Jr., of that city, was a remarkable one. Between 1831 and 1883, he built ninety-two ships, four barks and one schooner, of which the largest measured nineteen hundred and forty-five tons, and the average tonnage of the whole number was nine hundred and fifty-six.