There's a 32-page paper you should probably read:
"American Shipbuilders in the Heyday of Sail"
http://mises.org/journals/scholar/sechrest2.PDF"Shipbuilding CostsThe rising prices of shipbuilding timber naturally leads one to inquire as to the total cost of building a ship and to the proportion of total cost represented by the various inputs. Addressing the second issue first, one might consider the ship Harvest of 646 tons that was built in Kennebunkport, Maine in the year 1857. She was probably typical of the many vessels of modest size and average quality then being built in Maine.
Costs: Labor $ 9,486 (37.9%)
Timber for hull and spars $ 10,735 (42.9%)
Iron fastenings, nails, and castings $ 1,963 (7.9 %)
Oakum (used for caulking seams between planks) and paint $ 1,652 (6.6%)
Equipment and tools $ 774 (3.1%)
Miscellaneous $ 391 (1.6%)
Total Cost = $ 25,001 or $ 38.70 per ton
(does not include suit of sails or copper sheathing for the hull)
If one looks at the cost per ton of this good little ship Harvest, which, even including sails and copper sheathing, would probably not exceed $ 50, and compare it with the much higher contemporaneous prices of many British-built ships, then one is likely to conclude that American shipyards possessed a large cost advantage. And that presumed low-cost advantage is precisely to what some maritime historians have ascribed much of the market success of American shipyards. There are, however, several problems with that
train of thought. First of all, labor usually represented 30%-50% of the total construction cost (see above example), and wage rates in American shipyards were often almost twice those of British shipyards (Hutchins 1941, 297).7 Thus, at least in terms of labor costs,
American shipbuilders may not have had an advantage.
Second, when converting British prices in pounds-sterling into American dollars, one should use the actual, or market, exchange rate rather than the official rate. Otherwise, cost comparisons will be biased.
Third, most sailing ships (particularly in the United States) were what today would be called “one-off” designs, that is, rarely were any two ships identical. Even consecutive ships from the same builder’s yard might vary significantly with regard to their potential
performance under sail, their size, rig, elegance of furnishings, and fitness for a given trade, even though the style and general method of construction would be similar. In modern terminology, sailing ships were relatively heterogeneous capital goods, and any
comparative analysis should, as far as possible, group vessels by the quality of their design and/or construction. Finally, it is imperative that comparisons in prices per ton be made using comparable tonnage measurement rules.
[...]
Comparative Costs Per TonThe following is a list of 25 American and 27 British ships in chronological order.
The basic criterion for selection was that the vessel should have been reputed to be of the highest quality, either with respect to her design and performance and/or her quality of construction. Indeed, the list below includes a number of the most famous sailing ships ever built by the most renowned shipwrights in these two countries. Exchange rates were taken to be $ 4.566 per pound-sterling up until 1834 and $ 4.8665 per pound-sterling after that date (Hepburn 1968, 42, 280)."
I can't post a readable copy of the list without re-typing it all here, but it gives tonnage and building cost per ton. Later, it also goes into some freight rates and building costs of early steam freighters. It's really worth reading, I think.
