The great massacre in March, 1622, put an immediate check on any progress in boatbuilding in the colony. For a time the settlers were panic stricken, and there was much talk of assembling all the remaining settlers on the Eastern Shore, but happily, wiser counsel prevailed. That the few boatwrights then in the colony perished is considered probable from the fact that none could be found to repair a boat that had drifted ashore at Elizabeth City after the massacre. When writing about the Indian massacre, Captain John Smith, in his _General History of Virginia_, in a bitter outburst, said: "Yea, they borrowed our boats to transport themselves over the river to consult on the develish murder that insued and of our utter extirpation." In Sir Francis Wyatt's commission to Sir George Yeardley on September 10, 1622, to attack the Indians in punishment for the massacre, he ordered the use of "such ships, barks, and boats as are now riding in this river as transports." The ships and barks may well have been English vessels. When Virginia became a Crown Colony in 1624, the reports on the state of the colony named thirty-eight boats, two shallops, one bark, one skiff, and one canoe, but this was considered inaccurate as many plantations did not report their vessels. SHIPWRIGHTS AND SHIP-CARPENTERS Every colonizing expedition to the New World had been deeply impressed by the wealth of shipbuilding materials to be found. The English were particularly enthusiastic, since the scarcity of timber in England was very serious. Here, in Virginia, were to be found all that was needed for building ships: "oakes there are as faire, straight and tall and as good timber as any can be found, a great store, in some places very great. Walnut trees very many, excellent faire timber above four-score foot, straight without a bough." The report went on in praise of the tall pine trees fit for the tallest masts, and the kinds of woods for making small boats: mulberry, sassafras, and cedar. Other materials were not wanting: iron ore, pitch, tar, rosin, and flax for making rope. The colonists saw in this wealth of materials a new source of supply at one-half of the previous cost. Both England and Holland had been purchasing their shipbuilding materials from Poland and Prussia at a cost of a million pounds sterling annually. One enthusiastic Englishman, when he heard these reports, wrote: "We shall fell our timber, saw our planks, and quickly make good shipping there, and shall return thence with good employment, an hundred sayle of ships yearly."