Shipbuilding and repair in eighteenth-century Suriname

Abstract

Suriname’s pre-modern economy was entirely dependent on water transport. While shipbuilding in the colony itself was not encouraged by the directors of the Suriname Company (1683–1795) in Amsterdam there was a need to support the colony’s transoceanic, regional and local transport. This article finds that Suriname certainly had an infrastructure for shipbuilding and repair, but its existence has been neglected in the historiography. Since there is no literature on shipbuilding in colonial Suriname this article explores a wide variety of primary sources to piece together the various types of shipbuilding and repair conducted in the colony. We have found that there was a modest-sized barge wharf, as well as the production of small vessels on the plantations, and among the maroons and indigenous people in the interior. The colony furthermore procured ships on an ad hoc basis from the regional North American shipping connections with Suriname.