Since the name of my blog is The Shipyard, I thought it only appropriate for my first post to dwell a bit on the topic of shipyards, their historic origins and importance. A shipyard is so much more than just an area used for the construction and the repair of ships. It is the place where a ship is physically born, where it slowly comes to life one piece at the time! Where people come together to give material shape to an abstract model, so far existing only in their minds. It is a place where engineers, mechanics, mathematicians, architects, constructors, painters, captains, and artists join their skills with one common goal: to turn a dream into reality. The shipyard is the place where a ship’s life begins and where it is intended to end once it’s life cycle is over.

Before we start the journey, I want to make a few small disclaimers, related to the historic approach in my article.

Firstly, when I talk about “first”, “earliest” and “oldest” shipyards, I mean the “first”, “earliest” and “oldest” shipyards discovered so far. The reasons are obvious. The very first time people saw the sea, they wanted to build a boat and sail on it, and for the same reasons that people navigate the oceans today – hunger, curiosity, trade, or just for the heck of it. That could have happened 100,000 years ago, or even earlier, and the earliest discovered shipyard is only 5,000 years old. Antiquity has left us a lot more shipwrecks than shipyards, simply because for most of history a ship has been a much more impressive facility than the shipyard that built it. The physical inventory of an ancient shipyard consisted of little more than trivial carpenter’s tools, the same ones used to build a cottage, a door, or a table. The shipyard was defined not by its technology, but by the imagination, skill and adroitness of its people.

The second disclaimer is about the choice of shipyards in this article. These are in no way the largest or the most important, or the most historically influential shipyards that ever were. But they do offer an entertaining read, I promise.

Thirdly, let’s be a huge disappointment to our high-school history teachers and ditch the timeline approach from time to time. Just because some periods of maritime development are better researched than others, does not mean that there were gaps in between. The oceans and rivers never emptied of vessels, men (and women) never stopped fishing, trading, or diving for pearls, and the world never ran out of genius minds who wanted to make bigger, faster, and better ships. While Europeans were patting each other on the backs for making decent galleys, the Polynesians crisscrossed the mighty Pacific in their high-speed canoes and the humble dhow was the undisputed hegemon of the Indian Ocean. The stakes of maritime technology have always been as high as today – political, military, and commercial domination – and shipyards never rested their hammers and chisels.

With disclamers out of our way – let’s get this show on the road!

Lothal – A Magnificent Shipyard in the Cradle of Civilization

The earliest shipyard discovered and studied by archaeologists so far dates back to around 2600 BC in the Harappan city of Lothal. The area is nowadays known as the Indian state of Gujarat, but it was then the southernmost extension of the truly monumental bronze-age Indus Valley Civilization.

Lothal was strategically situated on the Sabarmati River, part of the ancient trade route between the Saurashtra peninsula and the fabulous cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, and might have been connected with the earliest known trade routes to distant Mesopotamia. The ancient engineers selected the city of Lothal for its location in the Gulf of Khambhat, where they measured the highest tide levels in the region – an immense advantage for easy launching of ships through the mouth of the river.

The people who built the shipyard knew what they were doing. They possessed spectacular knowledge of the tides and the hydrography in the region, as well as of the water’s effect on the brick structures they had erected. The shipyard was a sturdy baked-brick complex and was purposefully situated away from the main river stream to avoid sedimentation from strong currents. How sturdy was it? Some of the warehouse cubes still stand today, 4500 years later, and continue to fascinate and bewilder the imagination.  

The shipyard area spanned 22 meters from the north to the south and 37 meters from the east to the west. A main inlet in the embankments allowed the ships to enter when the tank was flooded, while a smaller channel on the opposite side allowed for some of the water to exit the tank and prevent overflooding. The outlet was equipped with wooden gates that could be closed, so that ships could unload cargo even in times of low tides. Once a ship was unloaded, the gates could be opened and the ship would float out of the tank and back into the river canal. Additional supports were discovered on the outside walls of the tank, to balance out the force of the water on the walls. The dockyard was connected to an elevated warehouse made of bricks. The warehouse consisted of 64 cubical segments, each with an area of about 3.5 square meters, and was erected on a 3.5 meters high podium to protect the goods from floods.

Relatively little is known about what vessels came out of this shipyard, since little is known about the Indus Valley Civilization in general. Seals discovered in Mohenjo Daro show flat-bottomed river boats and sea-going ships with a mast and sail.  Other discovered stone panels revealed flat-bottomed boats with oars and a wooden cabin on deck. The boats seem to have been made of some kind of grass, put together in bundles, which were then tied together. These boats could travel in shallow waters due to their flat bottoms and were easy to dock, load and unload, making them therefore perfectly suited for trade.

This fact puts the importance of the Lothal shipyard in much broader perspective, with regard to the trade with other cultures and most notably, Sumer. To understand it, we need to bear in mind that the world was quite sparsely populated in those days and all the cities in the world could be counted on the fingers of one’s hands. Travel by land was too long, logistically impractical, and most of the time extremely dangerous. Despite the large distances, the latest studies suggest that maritime trade routes between the Indus Valley and its most important trading partners in Sumer were much more important than land routes.

On the map above, I have tried to capture a snapshot of human civilization as it was around 2500 BC, when the three rival cultures were just getting ready for the glory that will follow in the centuries to come. It is exciting to see that shipbuilding and navigation are just as essential to the growth and spreading of a civilization as urbanization and communication.

The Red Sea Shipyards – A Different Approach Altogether

Parallel to the developments in the Indus Valley, evidence suggests that between 2686 and 2181 BC, the Egyptians were also developing their own shipyards. Giant ships with ores and sails were depicted in wall paintings of temples and tomb engravements that precede even the Old Kingdom. The strong presence of ships in the Egyptian mythology, suggests that they were an essential and special part of life, not only for fishing but also for trade and transportation, both in this life and in the afterlife.

Well preserved ships, perhaps most famously the ship of King Khufu, have been dug up from tombs and were most likely built to carry the bodies of the dead into the afterlife. Thanks to these burial rituals, many ships are well preserved and can tell us how the ships looked. Unfortunately, very little evidence has been discovered where and with what methods these ships were built. Perhaps the closest thing to a shipyard complex discovered, are the man-made Wadi Gawasis caves near Port Safaga by the Red Sea.

The archaeological investigations of the caves unearthed remains of wooden ships, ropes, ores, spare parts, cargo boxes, cedar wood plants, anchors and other seafaring objects and supplies, many of which date back to the Old Kingdom. The excavated site consists of 6 caves, each on average 20 square meters big and 2 meters high, a harbor area and something which is considered to be a dry dock for assembling and repairing the ships. The evidence found in the area suggests that once ships were back from months of sailing, they would be taken to a dry dock and get dismantled. Parts would be repaired or replaced with new ones if damage from shipworms and seawater was too big. The traces of shipworms in the discovered wooden planks suggests that the Egyptians spend months out at sea, as such damage usually occurs after long periods of exposure.

With the limited information available from this excavation, we can still see the curious model of operation of the shipyards. The wood discovered in the Wadi Gawasis excavations was not available and did not come from the surrounding region. Archaeologists claim that the ships were originally designed and built by skilled carpenters at shipyards further inland along the Nile River. The ships were then disassembled and the parts, materials and tools were carried over several hundred kilometers to the harbor area of Wadi Gawasis where they were assembled once more to be sent off to sea expeditions.

Alexandria – The Long Road to Greatness

The port of Alexandria, as known in its glory days, was founded by Alexander the Great during his successful conquest of Egypt. But a port at that location existed long before the legendary general and was called Rhakotis, a small and much less ostentatious town that played a key role in the early development of shipbuilding and trade in the area.

Facilities for shipbuilding, repairs and docking were first built around 1900 BC, a whopping millennium and a half before the tumultuous arrival of Alexander in 332 BC, so it seemed like the logical choice for a major hub of his naval fleet.

Alexander’s main engineer, Dinocrates, planned and managed the building of the Heptastadion, a 1.2 km long bridge, joining the port of Alexandria to the island of Pharos, therewith creating two active harbor areas. One was for military ships, Portus Magnus, and the other was for commercial ships, Portus Eunostus. Portus Eunostus was connected to the river Nile through a special canal, originally built by Ramses II and later reopened by Ptolemy II.

Both ports thrived during the Ptolemaic Kingdom which inherited Alexander’s Egyptian realm after his death in 323 BC, and became home to some of the world’s most advanced galleys at the time, the largest of which were commissioned and built during the early years of Ptolemy I. Some of his ships reached a length of 50 meters and a beam of 10 meters, an impressive size considering the tools and materials available to the shipbuilders of the period.

Even more impressive than the size of Ptolemy I’s ships, was the number of vessels commissioned and built during the rule of his successor, Ptolemy II. From his descent to the throne in 283 BC and up to his death in 246 BC, he had a fleet of approximately 300 ships of various sizes, ranging from large warships and merchant ships to small river boats and fishing boats. It is assumed that the beaches in the two bays served as the shipyards where these ships were built and repaired. Slipways connecting the beach to the water were most likely used for launching the ships into the water as well as taking them out of the water for servicing.

These numbers are not as staggering, if we consider that historians assume that the shipyards of Alexandria could accommodate the building of up to 200 galleys at one time. As we will also see later in this article, the Mediterranean has always been characterized by intense naval competition and if one intended to dominate it, one had better ensure a substantial fleet size.

Portus – Rome’s Gateway to Domination of the Mediterranean

Portus, the ancient harbor of Rome, served as a major link between Rome and the Mediterranean, during the first 6 centuries AD. It is there that archaeologists have uncovered remnants of a monumental building, which contrary to first assumptions, was most likely not just a warehouse, but served as a shipyard that was utilized for building, repairing and lodging vessels that carried merchandise in and out of Rome. Greater than a football field and five stories high, the structure included docks and inlets that opened onto a hexagonal harbor basin connected to the Tiber waterway, which served as the empire’s portal to the Mediterranean.

The shipyard measured around 145 meters long and 60 meters wide. The actual building is assumed to have been up to 15 meters high and just under 60 meters deep. It was able to accommodate at least eight halls of merchant and perhaps even warships. Inscriptions from the port area of ​​Portus Romae and a famous mosaic both depict a shipyard and provide clues regarding the purpose of the 1900-year-old ruin, now much more exciting than previously thought!

It is fascinating how Roman architecture and civil engineering were at a technological level unattainable for many centuries after they were lost to the world with the fall of the empire. The structure of the Portus shipyards was no exception. Remains of eight 60 meter long narrows indicate that shipbuilders could have used them for assembly of new ships or maintenance and repairs of older ones. These narrows had wooden roofs and were supported by expansive brick-face concrete columns, some of which were nearly 3 meters wide. Copper nails were discovered in some of the narrows, indicating that the Romans used nails to hold together the hulls of their ships.

Think about it from this perspective – considering Rome’s massive, resource-intensive overland campaigns to expand its European borders, it is even more astounding to see the scale and mastery of its maritime strategy and its shipbuilding in particular. Rome wanted it all and they got it! Few empires in history, regardless of their size and glory, have been so vibrant, full of energy and ambition for such a long time and the remnants of Portus still stand proudly to remind us of this.

Scandinavia – The Silicon Valley of the First Millennium

Okay, maybe I am being a little silly to come up with this analogy, but really, Scandinavia was specked with dozens and dozens of shipyards, from the smallest high-tech start-up to established powers, and all united by the same vision – free enterprise, fierce competition, adaptability, and ultimately, survival of the fittest. Vikings were famous for their sailing and shipbuilding skills. Their technologically advanced ships and their knowledge of navigation allowed them a truly global reach, including many parts of Europe, North Africa, Greenland, Iceland, Vinland and even parts of Central Asia.

Contrary to common belief, the Vikings did not only raid on their journeys but also set up trade routes and established foreign relations with other tribes. While plenty of historical artefacts have been discovered which point to how the Vikings lived and how their ships looked, very few of these artefacts give clues about what their shipbuilding yards were like.

Only a few locations with some traces of shipyards have been discovered so far. Perhaps this is because their shipyards were mobile in the sense that they could build a ship in any available space as long as they had suitable wood, a few tools, some smart heads, and skillful hands. Or perhaps so far archaeologists have been looking for evidence in the wrong locations, mostly around the sea, and ignored other possible shipbuilding locations further inland near small streams and rivers. This would explain why the names of so many places in Denmark, contain the word skib, meaning ship, and the word snekke, a certain type of boat, despite being relatively far from the sea. Perhaps these places were considered entries into the sea and the Viking ships were built there and then taken down the streams and rivers and finally out into the open sea.

One of the few places where traces of shipbuilding have been discovered is on the Island of Gotland, more specifically in the area of Paviken. Remnants of tools, wood and rivets in the same area suggest that some sort of dry dock existed in which ships were repaired. Large pieces of wood from Viking ships, a ship anchor, a man-made canal, several boat docks and a quay built of stones have also been discovered around Loch na h-Airde on the Rubha an Dunain peninsula, suggesting that the location was a crucial shipbuilding hub not just throughout the Viking era but also during the Scottish MacAskill and MacLeod clans who occupied the island of Skye. Other traces of shipyards have been discovered on the island of Falster in Denmark, including wooden ores, planks and wooden plugs and rivets from snekke boats.

Luckily for us, some texts, documenting shipbuilding at the time, have also been preserved and provide a small glimpse into what a Viking shipyard might have looked like. From these texts, we can assume that Vikings built their ships either under the open sky or under a wooden construction, called a hróf, which served as a roof. A supporting framework of beams served as the basis on top of which the construction of the ship occurred. Upon completion, the ships were covered in tar and moved to a special shed, naust, to dry.

Some of the first texts of the Gulating, the earliest known form of legislative assembly in Norway, were written around 900AD and also concern the building of ships. The texts lay out instructions and regulations on how and where the ships must be build and by whom. They mention two separate types of shipbuilders: the stafnasmiðr, who were responsible for building the keel, and the filungar, whose job was to build the ship’s hull. For some of the larger ships, a manager of the construction, called a höfuðsmiðr, was appointed to oversee and coordinate the works of all shipbuilders working on the ship. According to the law at the time, the stafnasmiðr stood above the filungar in terms of importance and pay. Other people involved in the shipbuilding process included lumberjacks, carpenters, merchants and blacksmiths who supplied goods and services to the shipyard.

The Viking shipyards were equipped with relatively simple tools for today’s understanding but still quite advanced for their time. These included hammers, anvils, hand planes, pliers, files, axes and hatchets, adzes, drawknives, and spoon drills. The wood saw was not yet known to the Viking people, making their carpenter skills even more impressive.

The European Renaissance and the Arms Race in the Mediterranean 

The factors that triggered the European Renaissance also maintained the century-long maritime tensions between the superpowers of the Mediterranean. The mass exodus to Venice, Genoa and Florence of Christian and Jewish intellectuals at the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 gave the necessary momentum for a Europe-wide wave of technological, cultural, and economic development. At the same time, the same Ottoman Turks absorbed a vast number of people during their conquest of the Islamic Middle East and greatly benefited from its wealth of knowledge, sciences and arts. With the stakes now being the bulk of the lucrative Mediterranean trade, the stage was set for an arms race between Venice and the Ottomans. Things quickly escalated and an iron curtain was drawn between East and West, centuries before Churchill actually coined this phrase. And nothing showed how red-hot things got as well as the mass-production of war and merchant ships on both sides of the curtain.

The first Ottoman shipyard was established in Karamürsel in the year of 1323 and would remain the center of the early Ottoman navy up to the rule of Sultan Bayezid I, who established a new shipyard in Gallipoli. After the expansion of the empire to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean under Sultan Mehmet II in 1455, the center of the Ottoman navy was once again moved to a new shipyard, this time to the much-coveted location of the Golden Horn in Constantinople. The shipyards at the Golden Horn became the headquarters of the Imperial Arsenal and eventually the biggest and most modern shipyards in the world.

The importance of a strong fleet increased with the growing expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the bloody Ottoman-Venetian Wars in the 15th century, and the power struggle with the Portuguese in the 16th century. This called for huge amounts of timber for shipbuilding and hemp for ropes. Regions of the Empire with large areas of forests were forced to supply the shipyards with timber quotas decided by the Imperial Arsenal. The same applied for regions rich in hemp, such as the regions of Samsun and Mihaliç.

While a part of the shipyards was already completed under Bayezid II, the first significant expansion occurred in 1513 under the rule of Selim I, who commissioned the building of sheltered dry docks to accommodate construction and repairing of ships during all seasons of the year. The Golden Horn was lined with staggering 160 docks by the year 1515. In the years to follow, each dock built its own small warehouse to safely store tools, materials, sails, oars, ropes and numerous other essential ship parts.

Walls around the shipyards were raised to keep naval activities secret, additional larger warehouses were built to store wood supplies and large ship equipment and office buildings were set up to accommodate admirals and officers. By the mid 1600’s, the grounds of the shipyards had their own dry and wet docks, iron foundries, rope-making facilities, mills for textiles, a dungeon, an infirmary, a mosque, gardens and fountains. The most skilled naval engineers, shipbuilders, carpenters and craftsmen were gathered from around the empire to build the ships for the Ottoman Navy.

Just think about it – we are talking about steppe nomads, originating from some of the driest regions of the world, and it took them a couple of centuries to transform into one of the most formidable naval powers in all of history! At their peak in the 17th century, the Imperial Arsenal shipyards had no equal and were looked up to by other kingdoms. 3000 employees were churning out hundreds of warships every year to face the Venetian and Portuguese fleets, as well as even more merchants of various sizes and purposes for the empire’s intensive trade between three continents.

…

But let us now jump over the Renaissance iron curtain, where even more impressive things were happening at the same time. Venice, queen of the Mediterranean, was building a monumental shipyard and was prepared to challenge shipbuilding methods of the past with a novel setup, head-spinning scale, and a monstrous output!

The construction works of the Venetian Arsenal started in the early 12th century. The designated site was on two predictably damp and marshy islands in the district of Castello, but what was to be erected there was to become Europe’s largest industrial production plant before the Industrial Revolution. In the course of the rise of Venice to a European naval power, the arsenal was extended several times. Most importantly, in 1325 it was extended to become the Arsenale Nuovo and in 1475 to become, you guessed it, the Arsenale Nuovissimo.

The shipyards stretched over an area of around 46 hectares and contained drydocks, rope houses, carpentry and caulking facilities, and storage houses for ores, weapons and other shipping equipment.

As early as the 14th century, the production of the galleys took place in a strictly rationalized work processes. The previously slow and inefficient system of a father passing on a craft to his son was replaced by the training of young workers from all regions and family backgrounds, turning them into skilled shipbuilding hands. Individual parts of the shipyards were assigned the pre-manufacturing of different components, that could then all be assembled into a ship. Each partially built ship was moved down a canal for the completion of its various parts. In this way, each ship moved from one station to the next without the workers moving around and waiting for the other team to complete their task. Every separate station was operating throughout the whole day.

At its peak, the Venetian arsenal was the busy, noisy, and dusty workplace of 16,000 employees who build galleys at the rate of one per day! In addition, most Venetian merchant ships were designed and built in a way that could to be converted into a warship in very little time, allowing Venice to maximize its military and commercial potential, as needed.

The Venetian shipyards were revolutionary in more than just their use of an assembly line. The layout of the shipyards was well planned and optimized the use of space. Distances between warehouses and docks were minimized to save time and resources. In addition, the frame of the ships was built before the hull, as shipbuilders had noticed that this method saved wood, time and money. The ships were designed and produced with standardized parts and spare parts were kept in warehouses, making the servicing and repairs of existing ships extremely easy and efficient.

And if the above has not convinced you of the greatness of the “Arsenale”, hear this: by the mid-15th century, the Venetian Arsenal consisted of approximately 3,000 merchant and war ships and in the late 16th century even Galileo Galilei became advisor to the shipyards, solving the most complex naval artillery challenges.

The Royal Navy – From Small Scale to Global Empire

Significant shipbuilding activities in the Kingdom of England began around the 9th century, as a response to the constant attacks and invasions by the Viking fleets. King Æthelwulf of Wessex and his son Æthelstan later on were able to win a number of significant battles against the Vikings and capture part of their fleets.

From the years after and up to the 16th century, the English navy did not exist as an organized and unified institution, but rather as separate fleets ordered by kings in times of need and decommissioned again when there was no longer need for them. In the 16th century, a more unified navy started to form which eventually led to the establishment of the official Royal Navy in the year 1660.

The true expansion of British naval power began with the execution of Charles I in 1649 and was triggered by the fact that England had gained new enemies following the revolution. A large number of new ships was commissioned in 1650 and the Anglo-Dutch wars over economic power in the years 1652-1674 led to a further expansion of the fleet by 40 ships.

For the next two centuries, the Navy continued to grow in size and to advance in innovative shipbuilding due to the tensions and conflicts between England and France, the colonization of the Americas, and the gruesome slave trade from Africa. The Navy reached its highest peak with the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century.

Perhaps the first significant shipyards emerged during the rule of King James IV of Scotland in the late 1400’s and early 1500’s. These were set up in Leith, Airth and Newhaven by the River Forth and commissioned to build ships for trade and war. Archaeological studies of the yards show that very basic dry docks were used, situated right next to the river and protected from the water by a specially built clay wall. Once a ship was completed, the wall was broken to let the water in, flooding the dry dock and allowing the ship to sail out directly into the river. James recognized the need for a Royal Scots Navy that could protect his kingdom in conflicts with England. The shipyards built a total of 38 ships for the Royal Scots Navy, not a small number for the time. One of the notable ships that came out of the Scottish shipyards was the Great Michael, weighing 1,000 tons and measuring 73 meters in length, making it the biggest ship the world had ever seen at the time.

By the year 1513, major English shipyards also began to develop under the rule of Henry VIII, the most significant of which, were situated around the cities of London, Kent and Portsmouth. Perhaps one of the earliest and the most famous shipyards was the royal shipyard at Deptford near London. This was largely due to its close proximity to the central offices of the Admiralty. The Deptford shipyard employed some of the best shipbuilders and engineers, resulting in some of the greatest and most technologically advanced ships of the time.

The shipyard itself was not unusual in design. As a matter of fact, it was slightly outdated in comparison with other royal shipyards, but it was of great significance to the British Navy. It attracted famous and important personalities and served as a prototype for other shipyards, such as the one built in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great. The ships that came out of the Deptford shipyards allowed the British Empire to explore and conquer new lands, protect their existing kingdom, set up trade routes and advance technologically and economically into a world power.  

The shipyards at Portsmouth, while less mentioned and glorified, were famous for the first planned and officially documented dry dock to be built in England. The dry dock dates back to 1495 and was ordered by Henry VII. It was used to construct war ships that later played a key role in fighting off the Spanish Armada. From the mid 1500’s up to the mid 1600’s, the use of the drydock declined due to the construction of the new Chatham Shipyard in Kent. In 1649, shipbuilding in the drydock continued once again and a new double dry dock was added to the shipyard in 1656. One more dry dock and two wet docks followed in the year after.

The docks, revolutionary for their time, were planned and designed by naval engineer Edmund Dummer, who was the major shipwright of the Chatham shipyard. In his new design of the docks, he replaced the traditional brick and stone base, on which the ships were built, with one made of short wooden supports that allowed workers to reach all parts of the hull during building and repairs. The wet docks were equipped with innovative horse-driven chain pumps, specially designed to drain the docks when needed. Although these small changes seem trivial in today’s context, they were huge steps in those days and involved lengthy and expensive planning.

In the beginning of the 18th century, the Portsmouth shipyards became the first land-based location to house a Royal Navy Academy for the education of young naval officers, further increasing the importance of the shipyards. In the years to follow, the shipyards developed further in terms of size and output, engineering, and innovation.

Efforts Across the Pond – Early Shipyards in British North America

While the English Navy thrived, shipbuilding activities also began to emerge in the American colonies, triggered by the transatlantic triangular trade routes. The rapid agricultural growth of the colonies, due to the European demand for raw materials such as tobacco, sugar, and cotton, increased the demand for slave labor. European ships loaded with guns, textiles and other finished goods would sail to Africa and trade their cargo for slaves, which would then be brought to the Americas and the Caribbean. Once there, the slaves would be traded for the raw materials and the ships would sail back to England.

While the climate in some areas of the colonies allowed for agriculture to flourish, other areas such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia did not have that advantage. They did however have two other major advantages that allowed shipbuilding to develop in these areas: the direct access to the North Atlantic and the abundance of forests which provided the necessary amounts of wood for the building of new ships. Shipyards that started building ships for the fishing industry in the late 1600’s eventually grew into major shipbuilders, providing trade as well as war ships throughout the colonies. This development was strongly supported by Britain, as the slave labor and cheap wood made shipbuilding more economic in North America.

By the early 18th century, Boston had established itself as the major shipbuilding center. Raw materials to other parts of the colonies as well as to Europe were mainly distributed from the ports of Boston. Shipyards were originally started by families of early settlers and passed on to future generations, creating a tradition of skilled shipbuilders.  Other famous colonial shipyards included those in Essex and Suffolk, New England, which are well known for the invention of the American dory and for their highly skilled fishing-boat makers. The fishing boats produced by the Essex shipyards were so well built, that they served as a prototype for other shipyards throughout North America. Approximately 4000 vessels were produced in these shipyards during colonial times.

Meanwhile, further down the East Coast, Quakers, who fled Britain in 1681 to avoid religious persecution, settled down in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Many of the Quakers who settled there were already skilled shipbuilders who had worked in the shipyards on the Thames River back in England, and naturally continued their craftsmanship along the Delaware River. In addition to the abundance of wood for shipbuilding, Philadelphian shipyards had the advantage of nearby iron deposits that allowed for cheap production of nails, chains and anchors. The area became famous for the shipyards covering its riverfront and for the schooners, brigs and scows that they produced.

Some more notorious colonial shipyards worth mentioning, are those of Baltimore set up in 1670 particularly for the trade of tobacco with England. The Fells Point harbor shipyards became famous for the building of the Baltimore clippers which were widely used by privateers to attack and plunder ships of the Crown. 

Moving even further down the coast, while not as well-known as the shipyards in the northern colonies, the shipyards of South Carolina also played an interesting role in colonial shipbuilding. The shipbuilding industry of South Carolina did not pick up until the second half of the 1600’s and while it could not compare in size to the shipbuilding industry in the North, it was still the biggest industry of the colony.

The largest number of shipyards were situated in and around Charleston, Georgetown and Beaufort. Charleston was an especially important strategic location as it was a major official port of entry for the traffic of slaves, not just into South Carolina but into the Thirteen Colonies as a whole. Furthermore, Charleston was a major distribution hub of materials and goods not only to Europe and the Caribbean but also along the coast to neighboring colonies. This explains why the size of local shipyards was relatively small compared to those up North, as the majority of vessels built were small schooners, ideal for the shallow waters of rivers, canals and coastal areas. One advantage the Southern shipyards had was that the type of wood growing in the nearby area turned out to be more resilient to the harsh properties of sea water, resulting in ships with a life cycle 10-15 year longer than those produced in the North.

While the shipyards of the Thirteen Colonies all have their own uniqueness, they were all very similar in their operations, facilities and the skilled hands they required for the building of the ships. All of them attracted shipwrights, joiners, carpenters, blacksmiths, painters, plumbers, sailmakers, glass makers, oar makers, merchants of raw material, and other skilled workers. Larger shipyards employed up to 200 workers whereas the smallest ones employed as many as two. Their tools included hammers, irons, mallets, nails, saws and cranes to lift heavy planks. Shipyard facilities included dry docks, hauling platforms, warehouses, service and repair docks. Surrounding the shipyards were taverns, workers’ lodgings, food markets, docks, churches, and countless businesses serving the shipbuilding industry.

Conclusion – Or not?

As long as you may have found this article, this is just a drop in the ocean that is the history of shipyards. The centuries between the mentioned shipbuilders were filled with ingenuity and courage worthy of admiration and enough for thousands of pages.

Do you know some other remarkable, fascinating, or simply bizarre stories? Go on, share them with me below…

The Shipyard