United States

Virginia: Plymouth

Virginia: ° Alexandria ° Jamestown ° Newport News ° Plymouth ° Richmond

PLYMOUTH COLONY (or Plantation), the second permanent English settlement in North America, was founded in 1620 by settlers including a group of religious dissenters commonly referred to as the Pilgrims.

Pilgrims believed that the Church of England could not be reformed. Rather than attempting to purify the church, the Pilgrims desired a total separation.

By 1620 the Virginia Company was in deep financial difficulty. One of many measures designed to shore up the company's financial situation was selling special patents to settlers who desired to establish private plantations within Virginia. Though under Virginia's general domain, the Pilgrims would be allowed to govern themselves.

Thomas Weston and a group of London merchants who wanted to enter the colonial trade financed the Pilgrims' expedition. The two parties came to agreement in July 1620, with the Pilgrims and merchants being equal partners.

The Pilgrims sold most of their possessions in Leyden and purchased a ship—the Speedwell—to take them to Southampton, England. Weston hired another ship—the Mayflower—to join the Speedwell on the voyage to America. On 22 July 1620 a group of about thirty Pilgrims left Delfshaven, Holland, and arrived in Southampton by month's end. They met the Mayflower, which carried about seventy non-Separatists hired by Weston to journey to America as laborers. After a great deal of trouble with the Speedwell, the ship had to be abandoned, and only the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, for America on 16 September 1620. The overcrowded and poorly provisioned ship carried 101 people (35 from Leyden, 66 from London/Southampton) on a sixty-five day passage. The travelers sighted Cape Cod in November and quickly realized they were not arriving in Virginia. Prevented from turning south by the rocky coast and failing winds, the voyagers agreed to settle in the north. Exploring parties were sent into Plymouth harbor in the first weeks of December, and the Mayflower finally dropped anchor there on 26 December 1620. The passengers gradually came ashore to build what would become Plymouth Colony.

Since the Pilgrims did not settle in Virginia, their patent was worthless, and they established Plymouth without any legal underpinning. Needing to formulate some kind of legal frame for the colony's government, the Pilgrims crafted the Mayflower Compact, in which the signers agreed to institute colonial self-government. The ship's free adult men signed the compact on 11 November 1620 before the settlers went ashore. They agreed to establish a civil government based upon congregational church compact government, in which freemen elected the governor and his assistants, just as congregational church members chose their own ministers.

The colonists were extremely vulnerable during the first winter, and could have been annihilated had the Indians attacked. The first face-to-face meeting, however, was peaceful. In March 1620 an English-speaking Wampanoag—Samoset—approached Plymouth, and provided useful information about local geography and peoples. On 22 March 1621 Pilgrim leaders met with the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, who was in need of allies, and agreed to a mutual defense treaty.

The last great Indian war in seventeenth-century New England—King Philip's or Metacom's War—was a terrible, bloody affair, resulting in attacks on fifty-two English towns. Metacom (called King Philip by the English) was Massasoit's son, and formed a confederation of Indians to destroy English power.

in 1686 James II consolidated all of New England, plus New York and New Jersey, into one viceroyalty known as the "Dominion of New England." Assemblies were abolished, the mercantile Navigation Acts enforced, and Puritan domination was broken.

Navigation Acts (1660s, 1700, 1800s)

Throughout the colonial period, after the middle of the seventeenth century, a great source of irritation between Great Britain and her colonies was in the Navigation Acts. The twofold object of these acts was to protect English shipping, and to secure a profit to the home country from the colonies. As early as the reign of Richard II steps had been taken for the protection of shipping, but not before 1651 were there any British statutes that seriously hampered colonial trade.

The Long Parliament, in 1642, exempted New England exports and imports from all duties, and a few years later all goods carried to the southern colonies in English vessels were put on the free list. In 1651, however, while Cromwell was master of England, the first of the famous Navigation Acts was passed. The chief provisions were, that no goods grown or manufactured in Asia, Africa, or America should be transported to England except in English vessels, and that the goods of any European country imported into England must be brought in British vessels, or in vessels of the country producing them.

The law was directed against the Dutch maritime trade, which was very great at that time.

In 1660 the second of these memorable acts was passed, largely embodying the first and adding much to it. This act forbade the importing into or the exporting from the British colonies of any goods except in English or colonial ships and it forbade certain enumerated articles -- tobacco, sugar, cotton, wool, dyeing woods, etc. -- to he shipped to any country, except to England or some English plantation. Other goods were added at a later date. Such goods were to pay heavy duties when shipped to England, and in 1672 the same duties were imposed on goods sold from one colony to another.

After the American Revolution, parliament continued to pass legislation governing international commerce. Because American supplies were selling so well in the British West Indies, parliament passed the American Navigation Act of 1783, admitting only British-built ships to the Weest Indies, and imposing heavy tonnage duties on American ships at other British ports. The American Navigation Act of 1786 prevented fraudulent registration of American ships. The American Navigation Act of 1787 prohibited importation of American goods by way of foreign countries.

The American Navigation Act of 1818 prohibited British ships sailing from an American port from landing in the West Indies or entering an American port if they had already been to the West Indies. In 1820, a new American Navigation Act directly restricted much trade between the United States and the British West Indies. The Navigation Acts gradually were repealed in the 19th century when mercantilist philosophy gave way to free trade.

Sources include:

° USAHistory.info
° Plymouth Colony, Encyclopedia.com. 2 July 2016

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9