wrote that he was unwilling to repeat the experiment.[1] It seems that Fitzhugh was not the only planter who had made such a shipment; Captain Brent also had forwarded several cargoes of the same material for the use of Mr. Blaithwaite, having purchased it in Virginia at the rate of six pence a foot.[2]
Pipe-staves and clapboards were manufactured in Virginia from an early date. This was one of the employments in which the colonists were engaged during the presidency of Smith. Among the conditions inserted in every grant of land, as laid down by the Orders and Constitutions of 1619-20, was one that the patentee should, among other tasks imposed on him at the same time, fashion boards for house-building.[3] Williams calculated in 1650 that a man was able to make annually fifteen thousand pipe-staves and clapboards, which could be sold in the Canary Islands for twenty pounds sterling a thousand.[4] That this manufacture was carried on at the time in question, is proved by the statement of the author of the New Description of Virginia, who declared that the shipmasters, when they were unable to obtain a full lading, carried out pipe-staves, clapboard, walnut, and cedar timber.[5] The freight to Barbadoes on the first, towards the close of the century, was one-half of the charge imposed for their transportation to England. On one occasion, Fitzhugh was about to make a shipment of staves to Barbadoes, but on the captain’s deciding to go to England, Fitzhugh sold them to him at the rate of
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, July 21, 1698.
- ↑ Ibid. Pine plank was valued in Lower Norfolk County in 1695 at five shillings a foot. See Records, original vol. 1695-1703, p. 2.
- ↑ Orders and Constitutions, 1619, p. 21, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
- ↑ Virginia Richly Valued, p. 14, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
- ↑ New Description of Virginia, p. 5, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. II.
