The wills of deceased persons sometimes revealed ownership of vessels. Of particular interest is the will of Nathaniel Bacon, Senior, in which he left to his wife and his nephew, Lewis Burwell, "all ships or parts of ships ... to me belonging in any part of the world." These were to be disposed of by Abigail, his wife, and the nephew as they saw fit. An inventory of the estate of one Thomas Lloyd of Richmond County, on October 27, 1699, lists one decked sloop on the stocks, unfinished, of about thirty tons; one small open sloop newly launched, not finished, of twenty-five tons; one new flat, one old ditto; one old barge; one parcel of handsaws, etc. Sir Edmund Andros, Governor of Virginia, in answering the inquiries of the Council of Trade and Plantations, the clearing house for colonial affairs, in the year 1698, stated that there were 70,000 inhabitants in Virginia, and the number of vessels reported by the owners were four ships, two barks, four brigantines, and seventeen sloops. His report for the previous year had named eight ships, eleven brigantines, and fifteen sloops that had been built for which carpenters, iron work, rigging, and sails had been brought from England. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SHIPBUILDING The building of ships, barkentines and sloops in Virginia, during the early years of the eighteenth century, had so increased that the Master Shipbuilders of the River Thames addressed a petition to the King in 1724, stating that by the great number of ships and other vessels lately built, then building, and likely to be built in the colonies, the trade of the petitioners was very much decayed, and great numbers of them for want of work to maintain their families, had of necessity left their native country and gone to America. They felt that not only British trade and navigation had suffered thereby, but danger existed in fitting out the Royal Navy in any extraordinary emergency. This petition applied to the northern colonies particularly, as they were far ahead of Virginia in shipbuilding, but the southern colonies were included. As we have seen, many shipwrights came to Virginia and acquired large tracts of land and became planters. In the narrative of his travels in Virginia, with some companions early in the eighteenth century, Francis Louis Michel of Berne, Switzerland, related that when he was within fifty miles of the coast, he saw two ships, the larger, one of the most beautiful merchantmen he had ever seen. Because it was built in Virginia, it was named _Indian King_ or _Wild King_, he did not remember which. Three years before, it had fallen into the hands of pirates, so the narrative related, but had been rescued by the British warship _Shoreham_, and sixty pirates of all nations taken prisoners, all of whom were hanged in England.