The New England vessel seldom made more than two voyages across the Atlantic without being snapped up by some purchaser beyond seas.

The ordinary course was for the new craft to load with masts or spars, always in demand, or with fish; set sail for a promising market, dispose of her cargo, and take freight for England.

There she would be sold, her crew making their way home in other ships, and her purchase money expended in articles needed in the colonies.

This was the ordinary practice, and with vessels sold abroad so soon after their completion the shipyards must have been active to have fitted out, as the records show, a fleet of fully 280 vessels for Massachusetts alone by 1718.

Before this time, too, the American shipwrights had made such progress in the mastery of their craft that they were building ships for the royal navy.