Early Americans, Shipbuilders and Seamen First of all - Wealth of Ship Timber - British Meddling with Colonial Sea Trade- Vital Work of the Privateers of the Revolution - Far More Effective than the Continental Navy — Our Great Debt to the Sailors of 1775-1783
FORTUNATE is that race whose veins hold the salt of the sea, for in its soul there is sure to be genius for adventure. The founders of the American colonies were shipbuilders and sailors, both by inheritance and by environment. The English of New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the Dutch of New York, and the Swedes of Delaware, were all sprung from the world's best seafaring stock. Moreover, the conditions of their pioneer life in the New World were such as to intensify the racial instinct. Without exception the early settlements clung close to the ocean. It was the one sure source of their food until the gathering of the first uncertain harvest. It was their road toward home and their safe refuge, if need be, from an overwhelming onset of the red savages. So it is not strange that the sea and its affairs dominated the thoughts of the first Americans, and that they scarcely waited to raise rude shelter above their heads before the dark, forbidding wilderness which stretched all along