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Updated: May 19, 2025
In 1683 there were one hundred and seven ships of from twenty-four to one hundred and twenty guns, twelve of which carried over seventy-six guns, besides many smaller vessels. The order and system introduced into the dock-yards made them vastly more efficient than the English. An English captain, a prisoner in France while the effect of Colbert's work still lasted in the hands of his son, writes:
He was a marked personage, even had it not been known that he was the Czar, a tall, robust, active man of twenty-five, with a fierce look and curling brown locks, free from all restraint, seeing but little of the ambassadors who had followed him, and passing his time with ship-builders and merchants, and adhering rigidly to all the regulations of the dock-yards.
Had the haste in the dock-yards of Lisbon and Cadiz been at all equal to the magnificent procrastination in the council-chambers of Bruges and Ghent, Medina Sidonia might already have been in the Thames. But although little ostensible business was performed, there was one man who had always an eye to his work.
There are, likewise, several dry-docks, and, in fact, an establishment completely equipped and intelligently managed. A short distance below the dock-yards is the American Mission, comprising the dwellings of the missionaries and a modest school-house and chapel, the latter having a fair attendance of consuls and their children.
Three miles below the capital are the royal dock-yards, where most of the ships composing the Siamese navy and merchant marine are built, under the supervision of English shipwrights. Here, also, craft from Hong-Kong, Canton, Singapore, Rangoon, and other ports, that have been disabled at sea, are repaired more thoroughly and cheaply than in any other port in the East.
The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these sea- robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the market place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest. When a boy he had learned the trade of ship-carpenter with his father on the Merrimac; and now he was set to work in the dock-yards. His master, who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him.
Excellency: I have the honour to state that a report has reached me that the Chinese Government have given permission to foreign nations to construct, on the coast of Fukien Province, dock-yards, coaling stations for military use, naval bases and other establishments for military purposes; and further, that the Chinese Government are borrowing foreign capital for putting up the above-mentioned constructions or establishments.
Three courses were open to us. The first was to devote the funds in the Treasury at once to the creation of a navy; to commence ten or twelve ships of the line in our dock-yards, and twenty frigates in the ship-yards of Boston, Salem, Portsmouth, New York, and Philadelphia; to build them as the Constitution and Constellation were built before; and to appeal to the merchants who built the Essex and Connecticut to build more, and to take their pay in certificates of stock.
This being all the barbarians wanted, an Accord, with the full consent of the Regent, was drawn up at Amsterdam and the other northern cities. The Catholics kept churches and cathedrals, but in the winter season, the greater part of the population obtained permission to worship God upon dry land, in warehouses and dock-yards.
He visited the manufactures, inspected dock-yards, reviewed troops, addressed the sailors, and attended the ball's given in his honor in all the towns through which he passed; and amid this life of seeming pleasure and distraction, he exerted himself almost more than in the quiet, monotonous life of the camp, and was affable, gracious, and accessible to all his subjects.
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