Across the Atlantic.

The manner in which colonial America's increasingly mobile population got from place to place depended on where the person was traveling; wherever possible, however, colonists preferred to travel by water. Watercraft could carry more people and goods than any form of land transport. Spain established regular trade routes with its American possessions during the sixteenth century. Travel between the home countries and their Dutch, English, and French possessions in America increased steadily during the seventeenth century as sugar plantations in the West Indies and tobacco plantations in the Chesapeake became well-established, producing lucrative yearly crops for export. As colonial commerce increased, shipwrights learned to make their vessels larger, faster, and more seaworthy. As transatlantic traffic increased, each European nation developed systems of regulations designed to keep the flow of goods and profits out of other nations' hands. England's piracy acts, along with...