An irregular traffic was carried on along the coast, and it was 1801 before the first sloop was built to ply regularly on the Hudson between New York and Albany.

She was of 100 tons, and carried passengers only.

Sometimes the trip occupied a week, and the owner of the sloop established an innovation by supplying beds, provisions, and wines for his passengers.

Between Boston and New York communication was still irregular, passengers waiting for cargoes.
But small as this maritime interest now seems, more money was invested in it, and it occupied more men, than any other American industry, save only agriculture.
To this period belong such shipowners as William Gray, of Boston, who in 1809, though he had sixty great square-rigged ships in commission, nevertheless heartily approved of the embargo with which President Jefferson vainly strove to combat the outrages of France and England.
Though the commerce of those days was world-wide, its methods--particularly on the bookkeeping side--were primitive.

"A good captain," said Merchant Gray, "will sail with a load of fish to the West Indies, hang up a stocking in the cabin on arriving, put therein hard dollars as he sells fish, and pay out when he buys rum, molasses, and sugar, and hand in the stocking on his return in full of all accounts." The West Indies, though a neighboring market, were far from monopolizing the attention of the New England shipping merchants.