THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



O'-O 



catecl and taken to Halifax, N. S., when the British 

 evacuated Boston and were thrown into a damp cellar. 

 Nearly seventy-five years later, when some accommodating 

 Halifax officials searched them out for an American anti- 

 quarian, they were so rotten and rat eaten as to be utterly 

 useless. 



For thirteen years until 1789 we had no established 

 port of entry. The earliest enrollment now in our 

 Custom House which concerns Cohasset, is dated 1790 

 and records a square stern schooner called the Lark, 

 built in Cohasset for Eben Parsons of Boston in the year 

 1 78 1. It was as large as the largest in the fleet of 1768 

 mentioned in the chapter on the Separation ; but that 

 was only thirty-five tons. The length of the Lark was 

 fifty-six feet four inches ; breadth, fourteen feet nine 

 inches ; depth, five feet eleven inches. She had but one 

 deck and two masts. 



The ship carpenters and sailmakers and blacksmiths 

 and sawmillers and timber men at work on this schooner 

 in the summer of 1781 may be imagined. Perhaps more 

 than the Lark were built that year, and undoubtedly other 

 vessels built elsewhere were sailed from our harbor. 



Captain Nehemiah Manson, of Cohasset, some years 

 later sailed the Hannah, built in Scituate. Captain John 

 Sutton, of Cohasset, sailed the Beckey, a fifty-four ton 

 schooner built in Scituate, 1784. Captain Samuel Bates 

 sailed and partly owned the Nancy, a sixty-three ton 

 sloop, built as far away as Damariscotta, Maine, in 1786. 



In the year 1783 there was at least one more schooner 

 built here giving considerable employment. It was the 

 Hawk, owned by John Lewis, of Cohasset, measuring 

 sixty-one tons, nearly twice the size of the Lark. In 

 1784 a large sloop of thirty-seven tons was built and 

 christened the Spry. 



The shipbuilding moved on faster and larger craft 

 were undertaken. 



