From the earliest colonial days, ship-building has been a favorite industry in America. The first vessel built within the present limits of the United States was the _Virginia_, a pinnace of thirty tons, constructed in 1607 by the Popham colonists who had arrived during the summer at Stage Island, near the mouth of the Kennebec River, on board the ships _Gift of God_ and _Mary and John_. When these vessels returned to England, leaving forty-five persons to establish a fishing station, and a severe winter followed, the colonists became disheartened and built the _Virginia_, which carried them home in safety and which subsequently made several voyages across the Atlantic. The _Onrust_, of sixteen tons, was built at Manhattan in 1613-14, by Adrian Block and his companions, to replace the _Tiger_, which had been damaged by fire beyond repair. After exploring the coasts of New England and Delaware Bay, she sailed for Holland with a cargo of furs. The _Blessing of the Bay_, a barque of thirty tons, was built by order of Governor John Winthrop at Medford, near Boston, and was launched amid solemn rejoicings by the Puritans on July 4, 1631. This little vessel was intended to give the New England colonists a means of communication with their neighbors at New Amsterdam less difficult than that through the wilderness. So we see that ship-building was begun in America under the pressure of necessity, and it was fostered by the conditions of life in the new country. In the year 1668, the ship-building in New England, small as it may now seem, had become sufficiently important to attract the attention of Sir Josiah Child, sometime Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, who in his _Discourse on Trade_ protests with patriotic alarm: “Of all the American plantations, His Majesty has none so apt for building of shipping as New England, nor any comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of that people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries, and, in my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial, and in prospect more dangerous, to any mother kingdom, than the increase in shipping in her colonies, plantations, and provinces.” The apprehension of the worthy Sir Josiah was well founded, for at that period most of the spars and much of the timber which went into the construction of the East Indiamen and the fighting ships of his royal master, King Charles II., had grown in American soil, and of 1332 vessels registered as built in New England between 1674 and 1714, no less than 239 were built for or sold to merchants abroad. Not that they were better than foreign built vessels, but on account of the plentiful supply of timber they could be built more cheaply in America than in Great Britain and on the Continent.