But Burlington pandora necklaces, Bordentown, Cape May, and Trenton, and innumerable little villages up creeks and channels or mere ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry They built craft up to the limit of size that could be floated away in the water before their very doors Plentifully supplied with excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar of their own forests, very skillful shipwrights grew up in every little hamlet .
A large part of the capital used in Jersey shipbuilding is said to have come from Philadelphia and New York At first this capital sought its profit in whaling along the coast and afterwards in the trade with the West Indies, which for a time absorbed so much of the shipping of all the colonies in America The inlets and beaches along the Jersey coast now given over to summer resorts were first used for whaling camps or bases Cape May and Tuckerton were started and maintained by whaling; and as late as 1830, it is said, there were still signs of the industry on Long Beach .
Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited--wild stretches of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a lighthouse or lifesaving station In the Revolution, when the British fleet blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg, the safest of the inlets, was used for evading the blockade Vessels entered there and sailed up the Mullica River to the head of navigation, whence the goods were distributed by wagons To conceal their vessels when anchored just inside an inlet, the privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers prowling along the shore .
Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the inlets and channels developed a romantic class of gentlemen, as handy with musket and cutlass as with helm and sheet, fond of easy, exciting profits, and reaping where they had not sown They would start legally enough, for they began as privateersmen under legal letters of marque in the wars .
Chapter XII Little Delaware .
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