Byrd acquired a new shipwright who came from England on the ship _Betty_ in 1711. In March, he wrote that the new shipwright was offended because he had been given corn pone instead of English bread for breakfast. He had taken his horse and ridden away without a word. However, he reported later that the shipwright had returned. On May 15, 1712, Byrd reported that he had engaged Mr. T-r-t-n to build him a sloop next year. Several years later, he recorded the loss of his great flat boat, but it was found by a man at Swinyards. Swinyards was a place for public warehouses and a shipyard, located on the north bank of the James River, a short distance below Westover, opposite Windmill Point. At Berkeley, a neighboring plantation on the James River, owned by Benjamin Harrison, there were extensive merchant mills and a large shipyard where vessels were built for the plantation. On October 20, 1768, there appeared a for-sale advertisement in the _Virginia Gazette_: "A double decked vessel of 110 tons on the stocks at Berkeley Shipyard, built to carry a great burden, and esteemed a very fine vessel." Two years later, John Hatley Norton and a Mr. Coutts were negotiating with Colonel Harrison for the purchase of the ship _Botetourt_ built there for which they offered 1100 pounds sterling. "She is as stout a ship as was ever built in America, and we expect will carry 380 hogsheads of tobacco," wrote Mr. Norton. THE VIRGINIA COMPANY'S INTEREST IN BOATBUILDING When Sir Thomas Smith ended his term as Treasurer of the Company in 1619, among many other charges brought against him by the opposing faction, it was declared there was left only one old frigate belonging to Somers' Isles, one shallop, one ship's boat, and two small boats belonging to private persons. In his defense, Smith referred to the 150 men he had sent to Virginia to set up iron works; the making of cordage, pitch, tar, pot and soap-ashes from material at hand; the cutting of timber and masts; and how he had sent men to erect sawmills for cutting planks for building houses and ships. In justification of Smith and himself, Robert Johnson, alderman, a leader during Smith's administration, drew up an account in which he stated among other evidences of prosperity that barks, pinnaces, shallops, barges, and other boats had been built in the colony; but this statement was not accepted as fact. Sir Edwin Sandys succeeded Smith as Treasurer; and in the Earl of Southampton's administration in 1621, a list of improvements was drawn up, among which it was claimed that the number of boats was ten times multiplied and that there were four ships owned by the colony. A reply to this may be taken from _An Answer to a Declaration of the Present State of Virginia in May_, 1623, in which it was declared that the new administration was many degrees behind the old government, for in those times there were built boats of all sorts, barges, pinnaces, frigates, hoyes, shallops and the like.