‘Yet this comes in useful for building ships’: Shipbuilding and repairs in New Netherland

Abstract

Contemporaries cited the great wood reserves of the colony of New Netherland on the Hudson River as an excellent resource for shipbuilding. However, this remained a small industry during the colony’s Dutch period between 1624 and 1664. Ship repairs in New Netherland took off on a small scale: vessels calling at the colony were repaired with limited means or entirely new vessels were constructed if a ship was found to be irreparable. Skilled workers who could construct small boats were at least present in New Netherland around 1630. There is evidence for structural shipbuilding in the 1630s. In this decade, the West India Company had a small shipyard on Manhattan and employed a shipwright who was mainly concerned with building small vessels for local and regional use, as well as repairs to Company ships calling at the colony. This pattern seems to have continued in later years.

The scale of shipbuilding and repairs in New Netherland was much smaller than in New England. The latter colony had a geography comparable to the former and developed a significant export trade of newly built ships. New England developed this shipbuilding industry because it lacked other export goods, such as cash crops. New Netherland did not need to do this, because it could focus on its lucrative export of beaver skins. New Netherland also faced much heavier competition from shipyards in the Netherlands than New England did from British shipyards.