these ‘three vessels may go to the banck with 29 waigh of salt. . . lynes, hookes, knives, bootes and barvells necessary for ffishinge.’Of course, the banks had long been known for fishing, and these ships were to go to the banks en route home, but the colonists would undoubtedly want the supplies they were to use on the banks. So Cradock directs
that then you send our barke that is already built in the colony to bring back our fishermen and such provision of salt if any remainder be and also of hookes, lynes & of use to you on all occasions.
Thus out of the lips of Cradock himself a bark was already built in the colony before ever Winthrop arrived or the Blessing of the Bay was launched. There is no account of any ship-building in Salem, Dorchester or Nantasket, so that the presumption is strong that Cradock's men whom the Spragues had found in Medford had already started in ship-building, the better to pursue Governor Cradock's ambition in his trading colony of importing fish to England. This is, of course, another assumption, based on probability rather than proof, but the account of Sprague's and the letter of Cradock do establish the settlement at Mystic earlier than 1630 and the launching of boats in the colony earlier than the Blessing of the Bay.
That the company, through Cradock, knew in February, 1629, of a bark already built here, proves that Endicott must have sent word to Cradock in his letter of September, 1628, and that the probability is strong that ships were built in Medford as early as 1628 and a settlement was already established at that date. In the spring of 1629 the company sent over six shipwrights, and provisions for building ships as pitch, tar, rosin, oakum, cordage and sailcloth in all these ships, with nine firkins and two half-barrels of nails in the ‘Two Sisters, two thirds for the company and one third for the governor.’ These letters show that Governor Cradock,
