The Scotts, like a few other shipbuilders on the Clyde, were concerned for the greater part of the eighteenth century in the building of fishing and coasting boats. There belonged to Greenock, in 1728, as many as nine hundred of such fishing boats, locally built, each carrying from twenty to twenty-four nets and manned by a crew of four men. For many years the business of the firm consisted almost entirely in the building of herring busses and small craft employed in the fishing trade, the first establishment being at the mouth of the West Burn, on land leased from the Shaw family. The shipbuilding industry was carried on intermittently, and the Scotts were the first to give it stability and continuity. In 1752, the Greenland whale fisheries were engaged in, and this led to a development in the size of craft. The first square-rigged vessel built in the port was a brig, named _Greenock_, constructed in 1760, for the West Indian trade. In 1765, William Scott, who had succeeded the original founder--his father, John Scott--built a large square-rigged ship for some merchants of the town of Hull, the timber for which came from the Ducal woods at Hamilton. This ship is notable as being probably the first ship built on the Clyde for owners out of Scotland.[4] To take a fairly representative year (1776), eighteen vessels, ranging up to 77 tons, and of a total of 1073 tons burden, were constructed in Greenock, and of the number six were built by the Scotts.[5] Although the work could be more cheaply done on the Clyde than at London or Bristol, there was for a long time a strong prejudice against English owners ordering vessels from the north, and against Scotch vessels taking any part in the oversea trade. The Jacobite risings had also affected the industry, but the War of Independence in America had far-reaching beneficial results. It is true that prior to this the rich fields of the English colonial possessions, as well as the English markets, had been opened to the commerce of Scotland, and that the merchants of Glasgow had developed extensive commercial operations with the West Indies and British North America; but, although there was thus a considerable oversea trade between the Clyde and the Western hemisphere, all the large vessels trading to the Clyde were built in America.[6] The shipbuilding industry in the States was thus a very extensive one; and, in 1769, there were launched, in the North American Colonies, three hundred and eighty-nine vessels of 20,000 tons burden, which was far in excess of the annual British output.[7] This was largely owing to the limitless supply of timber in America, and to the import duties on constructional material imposed in this country to suit the English growers of oak, the price of which advanced in the eighteenth century from £2 15s. to £7 7s. per load.[8]