Ships fastenings cannot be understood as a standalone
topic. They are intimately linked to the
materials they join together. Neither
can ships fastenings be understood without the economic context in which they
are used.
Several studies have been completed on the merchant fleet
employed in the Chesapeake during the 17th and 18th
century and some data on wood use has been introduced into this regions
research paradigms, but the goal of this past collected works was of a broad
scope. The finite use of wood in the
Chesapeake is best discussed in a two part dialogue. The first deals with how the wood was
selected for shipbuilding, and export.
The second part deals with how the types of wood for shipbuilding and
export changed through time.
Selecting Timber:
First and foremost, it must be understood that wood
selection could come from two avenues, by plantation owners, or by agents of
the crown for shipbuilding. A series of
parliamentary acts beginning in 1691 made the selection of timber from the North
American colonies a priority. Either
way, the tending, selecting, and harvesting of trees would have been as
follows.
Trees in stands or forests are the preferred source for tall
wood for making planning, keel, deadrise, sternpost, and gripe structures on
ships. The competition for light causes
the primary species (white oak) employed in the making of these parts to grow
proportionally than if they had been grown in an open field. It would have been difficult for the
shipwright, lumber merchant to determine the exact height of a tree in a
crowded forest, however, by measuring the diameter of the base of the trunk,
for oak a general ratio of 1:15 could be used to approximate. 1 being the diameter, and 15 being the height. That process can be seen in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1
After performing a measurement on the trunk of a disease and
knot free round white oak tree, it would be felled with either an ax or long
saw. The branches would be trimmed back
to where their curvature had a still useful diameter. All of the timber would have had all of its
bark removed for sale to tanneries and other industries. The shipwright/ timber merchant would choose
likely between 20-100 trees at a time for this process, often assisted in his
labors by slaves. The long logs would
then be rolled downslope and floated down creeks and rivers to the larger towns
for processing. Some of the logs would
be turned into expanded extended logboats of a type employed in the British
Isles during the 17th-19th centuries as can be seen in
Fig. 2. This logboat is in essence the
canoe version of the much larger cargo “Rose’s Tobacco” boat.
Fig. 2
As all species of lumber trees became less prevalent during
the later half of the 18th century many properties were dedicated to
their growth, and forests were jealously guarded. In these more sparsely dense forests, and
plantation roads, trees had less competition for light and grew shorter, often
having a width to height ratio of 1:10-12.
They were more prone to disease such as core rot, and if not tended to
they would develop knots which prevented the wood from being easily split to
make long boards. Saw marks become the
norm and show the decline in lumber resources when one examines late 18th
and 19th century buildings in the Chesapeake region as prior to the
third quarter of the century building employed split and broadaxed toolmarks.
The plantation owner or his agent would have employed the
same type of simple ratio mathematics to determine the height and readiness of
the trees on the plantation estate. Using
perspective, the workman would have employed simple formula a x d = h, where a
is the actual height, d is the distance the observer has walked from the
object, and h is the observed height.
The workman would have tied a knotted line unto the tree, with knots in
1 foot intervals, similar in style to the maritime chip log, and once the tree
to be measured was one foot in perspective, he would count the knots back to
the tree and do very simple arithmetic as can be seen in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3
The same method would be employed for moving the trees,
water was a natural resource that enable exports to go out and imports to come
into the Chesapeake. However, during the
later part of the 18th century trees often fell into the river and
caused “snags”, these had to be cleared by slaves and servants to keep the
inland waterways open for trade, but often meant the slave master had several
slaves managing the riverbanks, making the clearing and herding trees along the
rivers for the first stretch of their journey easier Fig 4.
Fig. 4
Once the timber had reached a port town after floating, it
would be left to dry for several months before it was processed. The two types of processing most common at
port towns such as Alexandria, would have been splitting with wedges, or pit
sawing. Splitting wood enables the
preservation of the long grain of the wood, making boards, beams, and frames
prepared this way more durable than pit sawing.
Pit sawing, achieved with the long saw Fig 5. Would have enabled more
control and efficient usage of lumber, however, it was often employed when wood
of lower quality was brought in.
Fig. 5
Logs with core rot,
and knots are difficult if not impossible to split, yet they retain wood that
is useful for the architectural wood trade.
The shipwright/ timber merchant would have looked the trees over that
were harvested for these imperfections, but as white oak, pine, and tall
straight cedar became scarce in the Chesapeake onwards the end of the 18th
century, merchants often did not have a choice in the timber they selected. Fig. 6 shows knots and core rot.
Fig. 6
A general tendency has emerged for those large wrecks of
vessels built in the Middle Atlantic during the 18th century in
regard to wood use. The center portion
of the tree, with its dense core wood was reserved for keel, gripe, deadrise,
and other critical structures in boats and ships. The outer concave grained sections split off
from the core were relegated to ceiling, decking, and outer hull planking
depending upon quality with more and more pine being employed later in the 18th
century. The corners of the log where
split off would become stringers or bilge clamps, and the scrap wood from the
outside would become the treenails. All of this can be seen in Fig. 7.
Fig. 7
Discussion:
Much work in this field work places emphasis on the belief
that white oak was preferred for shipbuilding, and in a way it was. Further scholars have somewhat bent the data
to say that it was more durable or wear resistant, both statements are
unsupportable. Upon early exploration of
the Chesapeake by the Dutch, English, and Spanish during the late 16th
century, a world of timber resources was revealed and subsequently
exploited. The primary timber species
initially exploited were, white oak, red oak, maple, cypress, and white
pine. Species such as yellow or loblolly
pine, the devil woods, were relegated to split rail fences.
Native peoples also heavily exploited wood resources for
watercraft. Large extended ad expanded
log canoes of upwards of 12 meters in length existed in the Chesapeake during
the 16th century. Some of the
first laws employed by European colonists in the Chesapeake dealt with the
theft of these watercraft by Europeans.
It would appear that cypress and oak were preferred, but any tree with a
suitable trunk could be employed. These
logboats may appear in our mind primitive, but the people of the British Isles
and Continent employed expanded and extended logboats well into the 19th
century.
Due to the lower population density of the colonies during
the 17th century, wood usage can be described as wasteful. However, after the Baltic timber collapse
during the 1640’s and 1650’s more and more timber was exported from Virginia to
Europe, primarily for housing construction.
Wood for export from the entire Middle Atlantic colonies from the 1680’s
and later are usually recorded in merchant ledgers as being in board feet. This is usually taken to mean, boards of 1
foot with, 1 inch thick. Primary export
wood is nearly always white oak.
Throughout the 18th century stands of white oak
became less prevalent along the Chesapeake estuaries. Foraging parties were forced to go further
inland for ships timbers, as the wood necessary was only available out of 1 in
10 white oak trees or less and even then only certain sections of the tree were
useful. White oak trees of poorer
quality were pit sawn after they had been floated downstream to export towns
like Alexandria. This timber made up
part of the burgeoning trade with Hispanola for sugar, Martinique for silk and
fine clothes, and St Eustatius for everything else the colonies wanted to
smuggle in. Grain and lumber were the
most common commodities traded for smuggled goods and were a sticking point
which helped lead to the American Revolution.
Kelso mentions in his text the colonists’ reluctance to buy
boats made from mulberry and cedar, however, from a wider perspective, the
Spanish had banned the harvesting of fruitwoods and cedar on Cuba during the 2nd
half of the 18th century, necessitating import of white oak from the
colonies for the building of sugar plantations.
The reason why ships constructed of Cuban cedar were so sough after was
their rot resistance, a ship build of Cuban cedar would last twice as long as
one built form oak. Here in the colonies
fruitwoods and cedar were employed for the same reason but due to the smaller
nature of the trees in the Chesapeake.
The small cedar trees meant that shallop to sloop size vessels could be
built of these materials but it would be impractical to build anything
larger. Due to the low cargo capacity
of these boat designs, the colonists favored boat of oak, which could be built
larger and improve their profits.
For this reason large oceangoing vessels were constructed
with their lower hulls of white oak, often with white pine as deck
planking. Eventually, during the late 18th
century, white oak would be largely exhausted and timber of southern live oak
would be imported into the Chesapeake from North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, and Florida. Southern live oak
and pin oaks can often be found planted on the properties of the former
colonial plantations, like historic Scotchtown, home of the patriot Patrick
Henry in Hanover, Virginia.
Special thanks goes to Ann Reid, Historic Site Supervisor
for Patrick Henry’s Scotchtown Preservation Virginia.
