How many vessels were built or repaired at the Point Comfort shipyard is not known. At a meeting of the Council of Virginia in May, 1702, a letter from Captain Moodie stated that he had fitted up a very convenient place at Point Comfort for careening Her Majesty's ships of war, or any other ships that came to the colony; and he proposed that some care be taken and some person appointed to have charge of the situation. This arrangement was confirmed by a letter from Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood to the British Admiralty on October 24, 1710, in which he wrote that for the convenience of careening, there is a place at Point Comfort which, with a small charge, could be fitted up for that purpose; H.M.S. _Southampton_ had careened there, and there may be served the largest ships of war, which Her Majesty will have occasion to send to Virginia as cruisers or convoys. This careening site at Point Comfort provided long-needed facilities for careening vessels for repairs and scraping bottoms. As early as 1633, David Pietersz de Vries from Holland, arrived at Jamestown with a leaky ship, but found no facilities in the colony for careening vessels. He found it necessary to sail to New Netherlands for such repairs. As late as 1700, when the _Shoreham_, a fifth rate frigate, was the Chesapeake Bay guardship, Captain Passenger, her commander, wrote to Governor Nicholson: "I have only to offer (may your Excellency think convenient) about the latter end of September to careen the _Shoreham_. She is at present very foul, and the rudder is loose, which I fear before the next summer, may be of dangerous consequences which cannot be removed, without careening or lying ashore, which I presume there is no place in Virginia, that will admit of." It is thought, however, that there must have been careening places in the colony for the smaller vessels, or how else could the pinnaces and sloops have been kept in repair. Sloops became popular in the eighteenth century, and a number of them were built in Virginia to be disposed of in the West Indies. After the sloop was finished, she received a cargo of tobacco, and vessel and tobacco were sold together. Because of the danger from pirates and Spanish interference, the sloops for the West Indies trade were designed especially for speed and maneuverability. The pilot boat evolved in the colony quite early. An advertisement appeared in the _Virginia Gazette_, on July 22, 1737, for a pilot boat stolen or gone adrift from York River. The boat was twenty-four feet keel, nine feet beam, with two masts and sails, and was painted red. Another advertisement in September, 1739, concerning a boat stolen from Newport News, on the James River, by one James Hobbs, a carpenter. The boat was about fifteen feet keel, had two masts, and was payed with pitch. It had a new arch thort of black walnut, and a tarpaulin upon the forecastle.