convincing argument in favor of Plymouth was that it offered a
good harbor for boats and was "a place of profitable fishing."
Both pious and amphibious were these pioneers whom the wilderness
and the red Indian confined to the water's edge, where they were
soon building ships to trade corn for beaver skins with the
Kennebec colony.

Even more energetic in taking profit from the sea were the
Puritans who came to Massachusetts Bay in 1629, bringing
carpenters and shipbuilders with them to hew the pine and oak so
close at hand into keelsons, frames, and planking. Two years
later, Governor John Winthrop launched his thirty-ton sloop
Blessing of the Bay, and sent her to open "friendly commercial
relations" with the Dutch of Manhattan. Brisk though the traffic
was in furs and wampum, these mariners of Boston and Salem were
not content to voyage coastwise. Offshore fishing made skilled,
adventurous seamen of them, and what they caught with hook and
line, when dried and salted, was readily exchanged for other
merchandise in Bermuda, Barbados, and Europe.

A vessel was a community venture, and the custom still survives
in the ancient ports of the Maine coast where the shapely wooden
schooners are fashioned. The blacksmith, the rigger, the calker,
took their pay in shares. They became part owners, as did
likewise the merchant who supplied stores and material; and when
the ship was afloat, the master, the mates, and even the seamen,
were allowed cargo space for commodities which they might buy and
sell to their own advantage. Thus early they learned to trade as
shrewdly as they navigated, and every voyage directly concerned a
whole neighborhood.