The New Englanders had no considerable back country from which they could draw furs; they had no water route to the interior, and at that time they were unable to produce any crop from the soil for which a good market could be found in Europe. But what they lacked in these respects they made up by hard work in the development of such resources as their country afforded. The histories of New England are full of tales of privation and suffering endured during the first years of their existence, and the stories are all true. But as soon as those settlers had learned how to supplement their prayers for daily bread by well-directed efforts to secure it, hunger fled. They then saw that the waters laving their feet were inviting them to go afloat to seek fortune in the uttermost parts of the earth, and they accepted the invitation. On July 4, 1631 (the fact that it was on July 4 has attracted the attention of more than one New Englander as a "beautiful coincidence"), the ship-builders on the Mystic launched their first sea-going vessel. "The bark, being of thirty tons," was named the _Blessing of the Bay_. Her owner, Governor John Winthrop, recorded his reason for building her:-- "The general fear of want of foreign commodities, now that our money was gone, set us on work to provide shipping of our own." That statement was characteristic of the people as well as of Winthrop. A "want"--any want--"set them on work" to provide for themselves. The _Blessing of the Bay_ was not a "bark" according to modern nomenclature. She was a vessel of one mast, and much like the vessel built by the less persistent people in the earlier settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec. On August 31 she "went on a voyage to eastward," to trade with the Indians, beyond a doubt, and to pick up such business as might be offered by the few settlers and the fishermen to be found along shore. The fishing and trading station which "fishmongers in London" had built on the Piscataqua, at which no planting was done, was probably the most important point visited. Another incident of this year, 1631, is of almost as much interest as the launch of the _Blessing of the Bay_. One John Winter established a shipyard on Richmond Island, off Cape Elizabeth (near the site of the modern Portland), Maine. Some time in December Winter began to build there a ship for merchants in Plymouth, England. As already noted, other ships had been built in America by Europeans for European use, but Winter's work may be called the beginning of the American business of building ships for export. Three facts about Winter's shipyard may be correlated. In 1638 sixty men were at work in it. During the year a 300-ton ship brought a cargo of wines and liquors to the island. "It was a sporadic" settlement, and it "dwindled away."