User:Minnecologies/Naval forestry

Ships were built from wood until the introduction of ironclad warships in the mid-nineteenth century.

Ancient Mediterranean

 * Ancient maritime history
 * Byzantine navy

Age of Sail

 * ships-of-the-line
 * Age of Sail
 * Naval stores

Britain
Great Britain

Tudors


 * Henry VII noted the (nearly) sole reliance of foreign vessels on sail power and decided he wanted a part of that, less manpower, less crew required to commandeer large vessels
 * Within five years of his reign English ships had 3 or 4 masts rather than 1
 * Required more regular shipments of Scotch pine from the Baltic


 * Henry VIII dealt with supply and maintenance of naval stores
 * Early in his reign made naval stores and forest inventory surveys the responsibillity of the clerk of the ships, late in his reign from the surveyor of the wood under the general surveyors and master of woods in the Court of Augmentation.
 * Ensured good relations between England and the Hanseatic League to ensure the continued supply of Baltic naval stores
 * Passed two statutes in 1542:
 * One established the regulation of forest rotations for naval timber
 * The other delineated the difference between common house-type timber and "great timber" that was to be used exclusively for shipbuilding and forbid its sale with the King's expressive consent


 * Naval and forest management programs fell into disrepair during the reign of Edward VI and Mary I

Elizabethan


 * Established a chain of command and greatly financed the Navy, administratively able to handle building and supply issues unlike any other sea power
 * The Clerk of the Ships of the Navy Board oversaw the provision of timber
 * Chose trees, and oversaw their transportation and bucking/cutting/preparation
 * Delegated with London merchants who imported wood from the Baltics, the Muscovy Company (Thomas Allen) supplied all the Russian cordage used by the navy from 1561-1592
 * Navy Board determined that there were too many problems from constructing ships out of diverse and distant sources timber supplies
 * Appointment of Lord High Admiral Charles Edward to the chief justice in eyre of the queen's forests, parks, and chases led to the Royal Forest reserves of oak, beech, and elm suitable for shipbuilding being placed under the control of the chief officer of the navy


 * Cooperation with the Muscovy Company (which had a stranglehold on the Baltic trade) necessary for the procurement of the large pine masts (100 ft. long 30 in. diameter) only available from Russia, Poland, Germany, and Scandinavia (sort of) needed for the men-of-war
 * Only Baltic Scotch pine was usable, due to size and high resin content needs to make supple/strong
 * Logs placed in water storage until needed
 * When Baltic Scotch was unavailable made masts were constructed from fastened pieces of timber, brittle/dangerous high winds, used during the reign of Henry VIII


 * To prepare for the ensuing battle with the Spanish Armada (1588) a domestic timber resources survey was conducted in 1580 through the main English dioceses via their resident bishops
 * The Spanish outbid the English in Riga and other Baltic ports for the ever-important masts (paid outrageous prices in cash)
 * Baltic merchants wanted to appease the side that was appearing to win, after the Spanish defeat at the Battle of Gravelines, merchants wanted to sell to the English again


 * At the end of Elizabeth's reign all maritime states wanted an awesome Navy, and the Baltic supplies were getting less and crappier due to a lack of reforestation after 200 years of cutting

Stuart


 * Charles I of England sucked, so citizens started emigrating to the Americas, where they discovered virgin forest
 * Use of American white pine did not really begin until the accession of Oliver Cromwell to military dictator during the Civil War, he as well exhausted English oak stands


 * When Charles II of England took the throne massive reforestation efforts (11,000 acres of oak seedlings) were put into place in the New Forest
 * More heavily relied on American white pine for the increasingly large men-of-war

Great Britain


 * Britan homegrew most of its needs until the mid-nineteenth century, needed Baltic/North European imports for softwoods for masts/spars
 * War and naval timber shortages were the impetus for forest plantations and conservation, necessity drives action

Tudors


 * Resulted in the administrative centralization of the Royal forests, creation of the post Master of the Woods (1542), which became the Surveyor General of H.M. Woods and Forests (1550)

Elizabethan


 * Forest-specific legislation from the mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century controlled and restricted cutting of oak in order to have sufficient supplies to be sent to the Royal Navy Dockyards
 * During the reign of Elizabeth I of England the depletion of the navy's wood supplies was recognized
 * The Royal forests failed to be a source of naval timber despite their preservation from earlier deforestation due to competing interests between the Treasury and the Navy
 * Supplied less than 1/10 Navy's timber needs


 * After the First Anglo-Dutch War the Navy looked for advice on relieving the timber shortage from the Royal Society, which prompted John Evelyn to write Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in 1664
 * Evelyn's book coincided with a period of oak reforestation; so-called parkland plantings (around houses) and coppice-with-standards with an 80-120 ear extended rotation and 20 year rotation for fuelwood and tanbark

Seven Years' War


 * The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) caused more shortages through heavy felling (as in 1660) (expand)
 * The Royal Society of Arts offered gold and silver medals from 1759-1821 for the largest annual plantations of important species (which ones?) to assuage fears over future naval timber stores
 * Private efforts outweighed government ones


 * Oak over coppice became commonplace in the Midlands, southern England, and Wales, as it produced the massive and curved oak timber required for shipbuilding
 * Massive reforestation happened, which became important reserves for timber needed during the World Wars


 * A survey undertaken by Sir Charles Middleton, a naval officer, in 1787 recommended the European larch (Larix decidua) as a suitable species capable of producing masts for growth in places oak cannot (Scotland, northern England)

Great Britain/New England


 * From 1514 until the gigantic pines of New England were utilized, ship's masts were constructed from sections from multiple trees held together with an iron band or hoop, as the Baltic fir did not grow large enough for the big ship's needs
 * It was not until the First Anglo-Dutch War when British timber trade was cut off from the Baltics that the British government expressed serious interest in colonial holdings
 * For the next 120 years the New England forests furnished all the British mast timber needs
 * Required the building of mast roads, very straight and wide timber trails, as well as the retrofitting of existing New England liners as mast ships, very sluggish and difficult to sail


 * Portsmouth, New Hampshire center of mast timber trade
 * Mast trade was an impetus for other types of timber trade, in 1760 masts accounted for only 10% of timber exports in Maine and New Hampshire

France
France/New England

After the ending of the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent ending of the British timber monopoly, the French looked towards timber supplies in New England for trees suitable for masts.
 * Although the war ended in 17xx, mast trade did not commence until 1783.
 * the Maréchal de Castries (minister of the French Navy) was the first to express interest in the superior (?) quality of the North American timber
 * He did not have any inspectors competent enough or a sample varied enough to accurately gauge the quality of the timber
 * Because of this he didn't know whether to take advantage of a possibly fruitless opportunity or pass up an opportune one


 * Then enters new Americans proposing to sell southern timber to the Navy, including Nathanael Greene's Cumberland Island estate (live oak)- turned out fruitless
 * Sent Sieur Rolland to America to inspect, decided that Quercus virginiana (Southern Live Oak) and Quercus alba (white oak) from New England and New York were usable
 * Completely ignored the pines that the British Navy had used for 80 (?) years in their masts


 * In the meantime France got a lot of timber from the Baltics, and with Comte de La Luzerne (expenditure cutter) succeeding Marechal de Castries (by then unpopular) as the Secretary of the Navy interest in North American timber waned (due to shaky Bourbon administration financing)