American Canopy

by Eric Rutkow

  The North American mast trade, however, was already well established before the 1691 charter. The initial shipment had occurred in 1609 when Jamestown colonists sent “fower score” masts to the home country. Twenty-five years later, New England sent its first delivery of the enormous pines aboard a ship aptly named Hercules. Then, in 1652, during the First Anglo-Dutch War, the British admiralty dispatched a mast transport to New England. This precipitated an annual trade with prices for good masts averaging around one hundred pounds. Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth-century English naval administrator whose daily diaries have made him one of the most famous figures in English history, talked about the New England mast trade on repeated occasions in his journal. On December 3, 1666, he wrote: “There is also the very good news come of four New England ships come home safe to Falmouth with masts for the King; which is a blessing mighty unexpected, and without which, if for nothing else, we must have failed the next year. But God be praised for thus much good fortune, and send us the continuance of his favour in other things!”

  Unlike timber or naval stores, colonial masts were not simply an alternative or an insurance policy to the Baltic trade. They were superior to the European equivalents, regardless of shipping costs. To begin with, the North American white pines were generally considered more resilient than the Riga firs and were one-fourth lighter than the European product. But of infinitely greater importance was the size of the North American trees. Hundreds of years without human intervention had allowed these trees, capable of growing taller than nearly any others on earth, to reach proportions almost incomprehensible to London shipwrights (or, for that matter, modern-day Americans). The tallest white pines soared 250 feet above the forest floor, often a hundred feet straight up without a single branch. They were citadels of twenty-five stories (by comparison, twice the height of the nation’s first skyscraper, Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, built in 1885). The largest New England pine trees could also be several feet in diameter at their base. While forty inches was the widest mast that English ships of the line required, much broader trees were recorded and rumored to exist. A 1736 article in the American Weekly Mercury noted one tree “whose Diameter was seven feet eight Inches, and its Length proportionable.” If such an awesome tree ever lived, it would have been twenty-four feet around at the ground.

  These grandiose pines grew in a broad swath that stretched from the Connecticut River in the northern half of present-day Connecticut straight into Nova Scotia, a region that included almost all of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine—in other words, New England. It is nearly impossible to convey in text just what these trees meant for the landscape, though many have tried. To quote Donald Culross Peattie, author of a classic American tree guide, “When the male flowers bloomed in these illimitable pineries, thousands of miles of forest aisle were swept with the golden smoke of this reckless fertility, and great storms of pollen were swept from the primeval shores far out to sea and to the superstitious sailor seemed to be ‘raining brimstone’ on the deck.”

  Colonists, for the most part, were less interested in the mast potential of these mighty pine trees than in their value as timber. Boston’s powerful shipping business with the West Indies and wine islands ensured a brisk commerce in colonial softwoods. Timber export was the premier, and really only, industry of New Hampshire and later Maine. White pines even served as currency in those territories. Advertisers in New Hampshire papers offered “an Assortment of English and West India Goods, Pork and Molasses, cheap for cash or White Pine Boards.” Consequently, whatever bounty the Royal Navy offered to encourage mast production was not incentive enough to preserve the white pines from general cutting. The 1691 charter was seeking to remedy this problem by fiat.

  Woodsmen, who were compensated only for their labor whether the product was timber or masts, particularly disliked the mast trade because the felling and transport of whole pine logs was brutal work. First, they had to cut a roadway, free of tree-damaging impediments, from the potential fell site to the nearest watercourse, a distance that increased as these trees became harder to find. Next, the fell site had to be prepared with a springy bed of smaller trees, for the weight of a great pine easily caused the trunk to crack on impact with forest floors. According to a colonial official, the white pines were “of such immense weight it [was] almost beyond the power of man to use any secure management in lowering them.” And when trees did fall, they often went in unexpected directions, killing lumbermen or making the massive pines impossible to move. Once on the ground, though, loggers found that “48 out of 50 may happen to be defective, although while standing they appeared to be perfectly sound.” Decay in the heart of the wood, common in centuries-old trees, disqualified it for use in shipbuilding. The unsuitable 90-plus percent was simply cut to pieces and sent to the nearest mill. Given what was involved in transport, the only person saddened to find a decayed pine was likely the mast contractor himself.

  Felled logs that had not cracked, become immobile, or shown signs of heart rot weighed from fifteen to twenty tons and were as difficult to transport as they had been to cut down. The loggers rigged them up with fifteen-foot-high wooden wheels, connected through heavy chains and axles, in a process known as baulking. Enormous teams of oxen pulled these baulked logs toward the river, an especially precarious journey. A log that rose when cresting a hill could pull the oxen off the ground, at which point the yoke strangled them. Trees rushing downhill on icy roads crushed or injured many animals. The loggers simply cut dead or maimed members of the team from their yokes and replaced them with reserves. Once logs finally reached the river, they floated down, often before crowds who assembled to watch the spectacle, and were eventually loaded onto special transports.

  When the 1691 charter first appeared, its white pine reservation clause had little impact on the logging trade or the men involved. The independent-minded colonists simply ignored the restriction on cutting trees with diameters exceeding twenty-four inches, treating it like other mandates that proved nearly unenforceable across an ocean. The only evidence of the clause was a marking on some “protected” trees known as the King’s Broad Arrow, three strikes of an ax that looked like a crow’s track or an upward facing arrow. Parliament had authorized an official to survey the woods and mark restricted trees, but he also proved ineffectual, unsurprisingly, considering the size of the territory involved. One 1700 survey found more than fifteen thousand logs that violated the twenty-four-inch restriction.

  The situation changed, however, upon the arrival of John Bridger on the scene. He had worked as a shipwright in Portsmouth, England, and had visited New England while serving as purser aboard a royal naval vessel. In his opinion, Parliament’s failure to enforce the reservation clause was putting the Royal Navy, and with it the Crown, at risk. In 1705, Parliament needed a new surveyor general of His Majesty’s Woods, and Bridger got the job—it helped that he was the only applicant. He arrived in North America the following year and began to perform his duties with enthusiasm, seizing timber, prosecuting violators, conducting extensive mast surveys, and blazing the King’s Broad Arrow throughout the regions where logging was heaviest.

  Colonists, who had lived for generations free from British interference in their timberlands, fought back against Bridger’s new regime. They cut down the marked pines and sent them to the mills in secret, where they would be sawed into boards just shy of the punishable twenty-four inches. Prerevolutionary homes in New England contained beautiful pine boards of twenty-two or twenty-three inches, but almost never more, a society-wide wink and nod. Fires also began to mysteriously damage trees that Bridger had emblazoned, rendering them useless as masts but fine for timber. Paper townships appeared, turning public lands private and excepting the pines from Bridger’s Broad Arrow. Even when perpetrators were caught, colonial courts dismissed Bridger’s prosecutions and lectured him for exceeding the scope of his official mandate. A frustrated Bridger wrote to his superiors in England, “[H]ere everyone’s hand
is against anything belonging to her Majestie or her Intrest; No such thing as Loyallty ever breed here.”

  For fifteen years, Bridger petitioned members of Parliament and the British Board of Trade to strengthen the Broad Arrow laws. It became a personal obsession. He sent hundreds of letters asking for more resources, tighter regulations, and the authority to bring prosecutions in vice-admiralty courts, which were considered more loyal to the Crown than colonial courts. “Nothing can Doe it Else Effectually,” Bridger pleaded.

  Between 1706 and 1729, a series of parliamentary acts shaped a Broad Arrow policy that met Bridger’s demands. The surveyor-general’s resources and jurisdiction increased. More important, the new legislation brought almost all New England pine trees, not just those above twenty-four inches or on public property, under the control of the Crown. Bridger, however, never benefited from these changes, as he was removed from office under charges of corruption in 1718. His immediate successor as surveyor-general treated the new scheme much as Bridger’s predecessor had, with indifference.

  Though the new legislation wasn’t being enforced, it still bred resentment among colonists. A similar Broad Arrow policy had existed within England a century earlier as part of the policies attempting to combat the timber shortage, but the 1647 civil war that ousted King Charles I had ended royal infringements on personal property. Colonists wanted to own their property on the same terms as their countrymen, but the reformed Broad Arrow policy abrogated their rights. At its strictest interpretation, the policy would have permitted the surveyor-general to arrest a man for building his home out of white pine logs or for clearing his land of trees to plant crops. The lieutenant governor of New Hampshire wrote in 1710 that the Crown “never had right: soil being in the natives, as judges of the Courtt have declared.”

  In 1734, a new surveyor-general, Colonel David Dunbar, soon found out just how strongly the colonists felt about British claims to their pines. He was not only surveyor, but also the lieutenant governor of New Hampshire, which remained under the authority of Massachusetts through 1741. When he took over from Bridger’s replacement, he attempted for the first time to enforce the more expansive Broad Arrow policy and decided to make an example of Exeter Township in New Hampshire.

  In March 1734, Dunbar traveled up-country toward Exeter to review the timber situation personally. While there, his team encountered a large supply of white pine logs floating in a mill pond. Dunbar proceeded to interrogate a townsperson about the name and ownership of the nearest mill. When the man refused to cooperate, Dunbar raised his cane and began to beat him vigorously. A second townsman refused to provide the information and received the same treatment. After two canings, Dunbar returned to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to contemplate his next step.

  He procured a decree of seizure for a half million board feet from the vice-admiralty court and hired a brute squad to follow him to Exeter. Several of these men headed there in advance of the surveyor-general to gather information. Upon arrival, they found the town quiet and retired to a lodging house for the evening. Soon, a party of Exeter townsmen, dressed as Indians, descended on the inn and assaulted Dunbar’s men with a fury that made the surveyor’s canings seem like gentle caresses. These assailants ordered Dunbar’s men from the inn, at which point the scouts discovered that their attackers had also burned the seizure boat, forcing them to return to Portsmouth on foot.

  The next morning, Dunbar approached the town with his entire enforcement squad. When he encountered his beaten scouts walking toward him, he grew enraged and set upon Exeter, his cane raised in fury, prepared to right the injustice. Two more men suffered lashings from the surveyor. He next destroyed the sawblades of one of Exeter’s larger mills with an iron bar. But the Exeter townsmen were not to be intimidated. An armed militia met the surveyor and sent his team fleeing to the sound of gunshots. Dunbar never seized his half million board feet.

  His replacement as surveyor-general, Benning Wentworth, had a much different idea about the role of the Broad Arrow policy. Wentworth came from the most prominent timber family in New Hampshire. His brother, Mark Hunking Wentworth, was the primary New England mast contractor and one of the richest men in the colonies. Thanks to these connections, Benning had been appointed governor of New Hampshire in 1741. Two years later he actually paid two thousand pounds for the surveyor title, a remarkable sum considering that the job only provided two hundred pounds salary. The position, in conjunction with his governorship, allowed him to secure his family’s monopoly and increase his brother’s fortune for the twenty-five years of his reign. Enforcement was superficial or used as a tool to intimidate rivals, though woodsmen still chafed at seizures. The surveyor-general reported that one of his deputies, while “in the Execution of his office, was Seized . . . & thrown into a Mill pond, whereby he was in great danger of being drowned.”

  In 1767, Benning Wentworth finally lost his titles due to malfeasance and disloyalty to the Crown. His cousin, John Wentworth, took both positions, partly to save face and to preserve the family name. The younger Wentworth, despite the conflict of interest with his family, took his responsibilities seriously. According to Reverend Timothy Dwight, who knew Wentworth, he “was a man of sound understanding, refined taste, enlarged views, and a dignified spirit. His manners, also, were elegant; and his disposition enterprising.” New Hampshire citizens respected Wentworth for these qualities as well as for his having been born in the state, which distinguished him from all the other royal governors. He was truly one of their own.

  Wentworth marshaled all his resources and personal charisma to enforce a mast policy that he found deeply flawed but necessary. Whereas his uncle had sent deputies to survey the woods, Wentworth went personally, riding on horseback through the forests for days at a time and greeting new settlers and lumberers. One of Wentworth’s tours began in South Carolina, which produced naval stores, and stretched all the way back to his home state. When he did encounter violators, he treated them with respect and sympathy, a sharp contrast to Dunbar’s cane. In one incident Wentworth patiently explained the mast policy to a group of poor woodsmen who had assumed that they could fell the trees because they owned the land. At the conclusion of the conversation, in Wentworth’s words, he “singled out one man who had been the most zealous . . . and required him to . . . help me to seize and mark five hundred logs . . . which he directly performed.” This approach to enforcement led to a hundredfold decrease in destruction after one year, at least according to Wentworth. If this were true to any extent, it proved the people’s affection for Wentworth, not respect for the mast policy.

  As Wentworth’s term as surveyor and governor advanced, he was increasingly torn between loyalty to his homeland and loyalty to his home country. Many colonists shared these concerns in the last decade before the Revolution, when open hostility toward royal authority became commonplace. For every New Hampshire resident who cursed the Crown and its forest policies, another stressed that all colonists were British citizens first. An opinion piece in a New Hampshire paper argued for continued Broad Arrow enforcement, “especially when all that is required of us, is to preserve such trees as nature has provided for the sole use of the Navy, and which the laws of our country enjoin upon us, from falling a sacrifice to the avaricious and unbounded desires of groveling and mean spirited men.” The words might as well have been Wentworth’s.

  Soon, circumstances forced him to choose between his state and his country. In April 1775, eight days before the violence at Lexington and Concord that initiated the Revolutionary War, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress sent word to northern ports instructing them “to make use of all proper and effective measures to prevent” any masts on hand from reaching the enemy. Woodsmen from Portsmouth and from Falmouth and Georgetown in Maine began towing masts from the loading pools and hiding them. The following month, Maine loggers kidnapped the British commander of a mast transport ship. Later on, the British, in retaliation, bombarded the kidnappers’ town until there was little
left but ashes. The last supply of New England masts—a trade that had sent forty-five hundred white pines to England under the Broad Arrow policy—reached the home country on July 31, 1775.

  Wentworth honored his position and stayed loyal to the Crown through the Revolution. Though some in his family sided with the colonists, Wentworth himself left New Hampshire soon after hostilities began, figuring that it was safest to wait out the conflict abroad and return after the English triumphed. But he never saw his beloved New Hampshire again. Halifax, Nova Scotia, became his new home, as was the case with numerous Loyalists. He once more was surveyor-general, only in a different Majesty’s Woods, the forests of the region that would become Canada.

  Ironically, the policies meant to protect England from a mast shortage would trigger one during the Revolutionary War. The Royal Navy had used New England pines almost exclusively as their mainmasts in ships of the line, and the sudden outbreak of hostilities, and consequent cessation of mast shipments, forced England to turn back to the Baltic ports. While the Eastern European ports quickly filled the demand, the Riga firs they provided almost never exceeded twenty-seven inches. Nearly all of the new mainmasts that English ships of the line used in the eight-year Revolutionary War were inferior composite or “made” masts, and the British were unable to produce a wartime effort’s worth of made masts on schedule after several generations of relying on colonial white pines.