Some Notes On Shipbuilding and
Shipping In Colonial Virginia

AS CONCERNING SHIPS

It is that which everyone knoweth and can say

(From The Trades Increase, London, 1615)

SHIPBUILDING AND SHIPPING

The Dugout Canoe

Various types of watercraft used in Colonial Virginia have beenmentioned in the records. The dugout canoe of the Indians was foundby the settlers upon arrival, and was one of the chief means oftransportation until the colony was firmly established. It is ofgreat importance in the history of transportation from its use inpre-history to its use in the world today. From the dugout have comethe piragua, Rose's tobacco boat, and the Chesapeake Bay canoe andbugeye as we see them today.

The first boats in use by the colony in addition to the Indian canoewere ships' boats—barges, long-boats, and others. A shallop broughtover in sections was fitted together and used in the first explorations.As the years went by, however, "almost every planter, great and small,had a boat of one kind or another. Canoes, bateaux, punts, piraguas,shallops, flats, pinnaces, sloops, appear with monotonous regularityin the seventeenth and eighteenth century records of Virginia andMaryland."

Little is known about the construction of boats in the colony exceptthe log canoe. A long and thick tree was chosen according to the sizeof the boat desired, and a fire made on the ground around its base.The fire was kept burning until the tree had fallen. Then burning offthe top and boughs, the trunk was raised upon poles laid overcrosswise on forked posts so as to work at a comfortable height. Thebark was removed with shells; gum and rosin spread on the upper sideto the length desired and set on fire. By alternately burning andscraping, the log was hollowed out to the desired depth and width. Theends were scraped off and rounded for smooth navigating.

Captain John Smith, who had a number of occasions to use the canoe,wrote that some were an elne deep (forty-five inches), and forty orfifty feet in length; some would bear forty men, but the most ordinarywere smaller and carried ten, twenty, or thirty men. "Instead of oars,they use paddles or sticks with which they will row faster than ourbarges." Additional space and graceful lines in the canoes weresecured by spreading the sides. To do this, the hollowed log wasfilled with water and heated by dropping in hot stones until the woodbecame soft enough to bend into the desired shape by fo

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