|
|
|
|
|
In 1623, the first permanent settlement in New Hampshire was Strawbery Banke (now Portsmouth). The Piscataqua River was deep and wide enough for the large clipper ships to dock. New Hampshire was important to England as a provider of the "King's wood", a special size of white pine that the Crown demanded to be for the ships' masts. The King would send his men to mark the White pine with an arrow. This would mean that if anyone cut the trees down, they would be badly punished. These trees, 24 inches in diameter two feet from the ground, weighed more than 15,000 pounds and were more than 120 feet long. By 1671, NH was sending more than ten shiploads of masts, plus lumber, to England. Once the land around Portsmouth, Exeter, and Hampton had been stripped of the large pines, roadways and rivers were used to search out the trees further inland. The white pine were transported between giant wheels, 5 or 6 or even 8 feet tall, pulled by oxen. Sometimes it took as many as 30 oxen to haul the white pine from the forests. Once brought to the river's edge, the pines were loaded on the flat-bottomed gundalows and transported down the rivers, or floated freely down river with men guiding them around bends and over rapids to the port in Portsmouth. The larger white pine were sent to the craftsmen in England, who used them as mast on the ships. As the shipbuilding industry grew in Portsmouth, and the colonists became unhappy with England's power over them, the white pine trees were used on New Hampshire-built ships. |
Picture taken at Hertitage Museum, Glen, NH |
