Mast Pines

The town of Cornish, New Hampshire was created by charter in 1763, to a group of 69 incorporators led by Reverend Samuel McClintock of Greenland, New Hampshire. Governor Benning Wentworth granted charters to 12 other towns that year. The charter outlined some requirements the grantees had to fulfill to be able to keep their land. They had to plant and cultivate 5 acres for every 50 acres of land he owned in the township after 5 years. For the first 10 years, town incorporators had to pay one ear of Indian corn every year on December 25^th. After 10 years, they would owe one shilling for every 100 acres, also on December 25^th.

One of the most important provisions of the grant was that all “White and other Pine Trees fit for masting for our royal navy must be preserved for that use”. Although England's forests had been cut down by the mid 1700's, the British navy needed lumber to use for ship building. The Eastern White Pine grows the tallest of any of the pine species of North America. White Pines grow 150 – 250 feet tall. Lumber from these trees is strong, light, and rot-resistant. Because these trees grow so tall and straight, they were ideal for making ship masts. Much of the speed and prowess associated with British ships was due to their masts made out of New England White Pine.

Before Cornish was chartered, an area just south of where the Windsor Covered Bridge is now was called the “Mast Camp”. Every winter, representatives of the King would travel through the woods, marking White Pines fit for becoming masts with the “King's Broad Arrow”.

  These trees were to be saved for the Royal Navy. When Spring came and the ice broke, logging crews set up at “Mast Camp”. These crews went into the woods, cut down the White Pines marked with the King's Mark, and using oxen, dragged them to the riverbank, where they dumped them into the Connecticut River and sent them on a 200 mile trip downstream.

Cutting down White Pines was an arduous and dangerous job. White Pines are bare of limbs for 80 or so feet above the ground. When they fall, they can split if they fall hard enough. If the logging was done in the winter, several feet of snow would soften the fall of the tree. However, it wasa impossible to house and feed a logging crew in the New Hampshire wilderness in the dead of winter. There really couldn't have been a “Mast Camp” in the deep snow. In the summer, lumbermen cleared the ground underneath the mast tree from any rocks or boulders. They chopped down smaller trees and arranged them so they would cushion the fall of the big tree.

Once the mast tree was safely felled, it had to be cut into a straight log. The log was cut in a proportion of a yard in length for every inch in diameter. A ship's mast had to be at least 24 inches in diameter, so the mast logs had to be at least 24 yards long. Logs more than 24 inches in diameter would match their width in length.

The logs were tied to two sets of wheels, and up to 40 oxen pulled the mast and machine to the edge of the river. Dragging the logs on the ground could damage them. At the edge of the river, the huge logs were dumped into the water to begin a 200 mile journey to Connecticut, where they were loaded on ships specially built to transport such long cargo to Britain.

I am far, far from being an expert on colonial ships, but I do want to explain what the mast was, for people who may not know. The masts are the tall poles that carry the sails of the ships. The rigging (ropes, or lines) was attached to the mast and then the sails were attached to the rigging. When the wind caught in the sails, it propelled the ships forward. Using the rigging, sailors could adjust the sails to catch less wind or more wind to go faster or slower, but in a total absence of wind, there was nothing they could do but sit and wait. If you look at the illustration, you can easily imagine the masts being tall White Pines.  This is a picture of a replica of the "HMS Bounty", a little bit more recent ship than we're talking about here, but you can get an idea of the height and straightness of the masts, as well as the extensive system of lines that made up the rigging.

Ships were steered by a steering wheel, attached to an apparatus that led down to the bottom of the ship that attached to a rudder. The rudder was a sort of paddle that turned in the water, and turned the ship. Adjusting the sails could also help a ship turn.

Commonly, British warships and merchant ships of the 18^th century had three masts. The tallest one was in the middle of the ship, with shorter ones at either end. Larger ships needed taller masts that would hold larger sails to take in the increased amount of wind needed to propel more weight. The very biggest ships had four masts. These ships could carry a lot of cargo, but were not very fast.

Ship's masts could break, in a storm or naval battle. When a ship's mast broke, the crew would use the sails on the remaining whole masts to get it to a friendly port as soon as possible, where the broken mast would be replaced with another, temporary one, until the ship could get back to England, where it would either be scrapped, or the mast replaced with a good one made from Northern White Pine. Either way, a broken mast would call for a least one more White Pine, four more if the ship was scrapped, because a the Royal Navy would build a new ship to replace it. The term “jury rigged” isn't as common today as it was when I was a kid, but it means a makeshift repair job done with whatever tools and supplies you have on hand. On my father's farm something would be “jury rigged” with black plastic and baling twine. “Jury rigged” is an old nautical term for fixing a broken mast at sea. The “rigged” comes from the rigging of the sails. There is some argument over where the “jury” comes from, but it probably comes from the French term “joury” which means “for a day”. Thus “jury rigged” literally means “rigged for a day”, or a temporary rigging.

The ship mast industry continued to supply England with White Pines until the Revolution. As time went on, property owners grew more and more resentful over the law reserving the White Pines for the Royal Navy. Not only did the colonists want to use the lumber from the White Pines themselves, they were also in the way during land clearing. Even when White Pines fell in the forest naturally, the landowners were not allowed to touch them. Sometimes fallen mast trees would rot on the ground if a King's surveyor did not get around to approving it for local use. In April of 1772, in Weare and Gofftown, New Hampshire, hatred of the White Pine Act expressed itself in riots against King's Surveyors inspecting local sawmills for suspected poached White Pines.

Although less well known than the Stamp Act or the Tea Tax, the White Pine Act was equal in inflaming the passions of the colonists against the rule of the king, inciting the movement for independence. One of the first flags of the Colonists during Revolutionary War featured an emblem of the White Pine, and the tree remains on the Vermont State Flag. Throughout New Hampshire, roads that are named “Mast Road” were once the path used by oxen pulling the masts to a river.