Blessing of the Bay
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The Blessing of the Bay was the second seaworthy vessel built in what is now the United States, preceded only by the Virginia, a thirty-ton pinnace built by the Popham Colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River, Maine, in 1607. The Blessing of the Bay, a thirty-ton bark, mostly of locust, was built for John Winthrop at Mistick (now Medford, Massachusetts), by Robert Molton and other shipwrights sent to New England in 1629 by the Massachusetts Bay Company, and was launched July 4, 1631. She went to sea August 31, 1631, and carried on a coastal trade as far south as the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (New York City).
Source: Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940
