142 Perspectives in American History factures which all the colonies were obliged to buy only from the mother country whether or not they had anything to sell which the mother count The^gpgrtunities created by the fisher^called into existence at Bostonairnost from the beginning ot settlement a shipbuilding in- dustry, to supply fishing craft, then coastal craft, then sloops and schooners for the West Indies trade (important by the 1640*5), and finally the larger brigantines, snows, and ships suitable for the trade to Spain and Portugal. The merchants of Massachusetts soon found that they could sell these larger vessels advantageously in Spain and Portugal and in Britain as well. While oak was expensive in Eng- land and the pine planks and deals for shipbuilding there had to be imported from Norway and the best masts from Riga, the ship- builders of New England had close at hand inexpensive supplies of adequate oak and splendid pine for both planks and masts. Profits from the sale of ships in the ever fluctuating market in Europe con- stituted the most attractive "windfall profits" of the fish export trade and must have played an important part in capital accumula- tion among merchants and shipowners in the seventeenth century.31 Although dozens of seaside villages in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire participated in the fisheries, and Salem and Mar- bleheatkexported fish in quantity, only Boston developed the full panoply olFtrade based on the fishing-shipbuilding complex. There were economussof scale in these trades and the greater amounts of capital required rar the longer voyages to Europe were probably not available at firsrui the lesser ports. But part of the concentra- tion at Boston must b\seen as arising from the very complexity of the trade. If the New England colonies' trade had been a simple bilateral trade with the mother country, it is possible that several Massachusetts havens might have participated as soon as volume justified. However, the complexity of the