Introduction

In the long eighteenth-century (1688–1815) global wars against the Dutch Republic and France prompted the emergence in Britain of new state institutions for revenue extraction and mass mobilisation. This “fiscal-military state” reached an early peak in the two-decade struggle that marked the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.Footnote ¹ Nowhere was this more evident than in servicing the Royal Navy, by far the Exchequer's largest expense. Launched in 1765, HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, required a crew of nine hundred and cost five times the capital invested in the renowned Crawley ironworks.Footnote ² By the time of the Peninsular War (1808–1814), the Royal Navy had 156 such ships of the line and almost 800 smaller vessels.Footnote ³

The extractive capacities of this transformed state were not limited to finance and recruitment, nor were they solely confined to the United Kingdom and Ireland. In particular, servicing the fleet required an unremitting and systematic extraction of relatively cheap high-quality timber. To acquire this commodity, through merchants, diplomats, and commissioned agents, the power of the British state reached globally, reshaped ecological relationships, and integrated new landscapes to the Imperial economy. The needs of the navy were immense. Some six thousand mature oaks selected from the forests of Kent and Sussex, the equivalent of a hundred acres of forest, were needed to build Victory alone. In addition, softwoods such as fir and pine—all unavailable in sufficient quantity on the home islands—were imported for the building of the keel, decks, masts, and topmasts.

Until the early years of the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy could rely on the forests of South England for its hardwood and on Baltic ports for its softwoods. However, a combination of ecological and political crises forced the Admiralty into a worldwide scramble for timber. Not only was the traditional timber trade in the Baltic jeopardised by war at sea and Napoleon's European conquests, but the yield of the forests of South England seemed diminished in volume and quality.Footnote ⁴ The requirements of military shipbuilding and the appetite of the royal dockyards for timber demanded a systematic survey of new forestlands. Landscapes that had been regarded with little interest in the metropole now appeared essential to the business of warfare. Those areas could then be surveyed and potentially exploited and integrated in secured networks of trade.Footnote ⁵

The endpoint of this global hunt for timber, the transformation of New Brunswick and Lower Canada into virtual timber colonies, is well documented. The influence of the timber trade on British strategic thinking in the Baltic and North Atlantic has also long been recognised. However, such accounts tend to focus on eighteenth-century military logistics or to begin with the North American timber boom of the 1830s.Footnote ⁶ The process through which the forests of the Laurentian Plateau and the North Appalachians came to fuel the dockyards of England and Scotland is taken for granted. As David Armitage notes, because of contemporaneous configurations of trade and exchange, the economic integration of the North Atlantic is often seen as inevitable.Footnote ⁷ This tendency is apparent in R. G. Albion's still widely quoted Forests and Seapower. Albion claims that despite the quasi null usage of North American timber from the years following the American War of Independence, British North America remained, in the mind of Admiralty strategists, a natural insurance policy in the event of timber shortages.Footnote ⁸ Despite ongoing reassessment of Albion's monograph, naval historians have not questioned this interpretation.Footnote ⁹ Yet numerous alternatives to the Baltic were considered. Admiralty agents surveyed and sampled forests from Burma to the Cape, toured the Black Sea, and felled in Portuguese South America. Only with the eventual failure of these other ventures did British North America come to be seen as a viable reservoir of timber. In the process, contingency, diverging political and economic interests, indigenous environments, and local actors frustrated Imperial planners and shaped a globalising economy.

The decision to turn to North America for timber had far-reaching economic, environmental, and political repercussions. The commodity quickly emerged as an economic staple and an essential linkage between colony and metropole in the decades following the battle of Waterloo.Footnote ¹⁰ Bulk economic transfer increased substantially, therefore providing cheap fares for incoming settlers; seeking profit, timber companies quickly emerged as boosters of settlement.Footnote ¹¹ This significant moment in the political economy of North America, it is argued, can only be understood by placing a seemingly localised process in relation to occurrences in areas of formal or informal British imperial rule. Only by taking stock of the influence real or imagined timber shortages had on official planning and by considering the multiple failed ventures to develop and maintain the extraction and trade of timber for naval purposes can we fully account for the decision to turn to New Brunswick and Lower Canada. As such this article aims to contribute to concerted efforts, initiated in the last two decades, to take better measure of the imperial factor in Canadian history. In 2001, Adele Perry called for the writing of Canadian history as colonial history while others, such as Anthony Hopkins and Francine McKenzie, have worked to integrate the histories of Britain's settler colonies into larger narratives of imperialism and globalisation.Footnote ¹²

Furthermore, focusing on nature as a target of imperial drive points to the importance of C. A. Bayly's “imperial meridian” to the economic and political development of British North America.Footnote ¹³ This moment of blunt expansive imperialism backed by a strong metropolitan state is usually associated with Britain's “second empire” of viceregal rule. Yet forests across Britain's formal and informal spheres of influence experienced London's expanding reach. Richard Grove has argued that imperialism should not necessarily be associated with mercantile resource extraction. He points out that from the 1660s to the late nineteenth century European colonial science developed hand-in-hand with a conservationist ideology.Footnote ¹⁴ Yet with the imminent threat posed by Napoleon, conservationist and scientific ideology collapsed under the immediate needs of the Admiralty. Securing adequate forestlands was a conspicuous policy and deforestation, as well as the management of forestlands, concomitant to warfare and imperial expansion.

****

Britain's global search for timber stemmed from metropolitan anxiety over local and international supply. Following the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens in 1803 and France's success against the Third Coalition, Napoleon hoped to cut British trade with the continent. The Berlin and Milan decrees of 1806 and 1807 installed a large-scale embargo on commerce between Britain and France's satellites. Baltic countries not occupied by France, such as Russia and Sweden, were also at various times coerced into joining the “Continental System.” This posed problems to the Navy Board, the administrative body under the authority of the Admiralty responsible for the supply of naval stores and the construction and repair of ships. Merchants had hitherto been commissioned to acquire timber on its behalf in Baltic ports such as Riga, St. Petersburg, and Memel. All were now legally closed to British trade. The effectiveness of this novel form of economic warfare is disputed. The classic account of the blockade highlights France's limited ability to enforce the embargo amongst its sometimes-uncooperative satellites.Footnote ¹⁵

To bypass the embargo and acquire timber in French-controlled ports, the Admiralty encouraged smuggling. Through Admiral Saumarez, commander of the Baltic fleet, it distributed false papers, relied more heavily on ships and intermediaries from neutral countries, and signed secret agreements with merchants in French-occupied territories. Shipowners were reminded that subject to exception, cargo-bearing vessels were required to sail in convoys. Measures were also taken to help shipping firms arm their vessels and procure basic fighting training for their crews.Footnote ¹⁶ The overall strategy was a success. Yearly financial statements sent to the Admiralty from the royal dockyards in this period show a consistent consumption of timber.Footnote ¹⁷

Further, a year-by-year breakdown of timber imports from the Baltic over the whole period of blockade (1806–1814) shows a marked decline only in 1808 and 1812, the years when France's political clout over the continent was at its strongest.Footnote ¹⁸ Contracts for Riga and St. Petersburg timber were renewed for several years in 1806 and a squadron was sent to protect the trade.Footnote ¹⁹ Following the capture of the Danish fleet near Copenhagen in 1807, shipping would continue relatively unhindered. For most of the war years, hundreds of ships crossed the Sound in escorted convoys bound to Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham, Britain's main centres of naval shipbuilding.Footnote ²⁰

British success in maintaining access to the Baltic prompts historians to caution that the menace to the timber supply should not be overstated.Footnote ²¹ Such an interpretation however fails to consider the psychological, political, and bureaucratic settings in which Imperial and metropolitan decision-makers operated. Timber shortages already troubled official thinking before the blockade. Napoleon's decrees exacerbated these concerns. A 1776 directive mandated that a three-year supply of timber be held in the dockyards. In 1805, a report pointed out that the quota had never been met. Mismanagement and difficult cooperation between the Navy Board and private suppliers were identified as the cause.Footnote ²² A stroke of misfortune or lasting French hegemony in Europe could threaten the Baltic trade, thus leaving the dockyards without reserves and the Admiralty without ships to check Napoleonic ambitions. Pamphleteers and newspapers reminded the British public of this dire strategic equilibrium.Footnote ²³ To make matters worse, yearly financial statement from the dockyards only arrived in the winter or the spring of the following year. The Board could not know how much timber remained at any given time and thus possessed only partial information about the overall state of supplies. As a result, a tone of urgency and near-panic pervades official correspondence on the matter.Footnote ²⁴

Continued reliance on the Baltic was also increasingly unsustainable. From 1795 to 1811, the average price paid by the Navy Board for an imported load of “Russian planks” more than doubled, triggering debates over the need to seek cheaper naval stores elsewhere.Footnote ²⁵ Piracy, the risk of interference by enemy vessels, the United States’ own restriction on trade with belligerent countries, and the concomitant heighted cost of freight and insurance similarly affected worldwide commerce.Footnote ²⁶ A representative of the Russian Company, which directed the masts trade in Riga, St. Petersburg, and certain East Prussian ports, highlighted the alarming rise in freight and insurance costs in an appearance before the Navy Board.Footnote ²⁷ The concern was shared in official circles. The Earl of St. Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1803 to 1804, warned that the war could prompt Britain to procure its timber in Indonesia or Southeast Asia, “in a way similar to the Dutch.”Footnote ²⁸ It is therefore no coincidence that the Navy Board's first contracts for the imports of non-European timber since the American Revolution were signed in the months following the Berlin decree.Footnote ²⁹ Seapower would now demand, as Lord Melville, St. Vincent's successor at the Admiralty, put it, “recourse to a considerable extent, either to the timber of other countries or to ships built in other countries.”Footnote ³⁰

The closure of the Baltic was only one of two dimensions of the Navy's timber problem. Vice-Admiral Collingwood, who inherited the Mediterranean command after Nelson's death, wrote: “What I am most anxious about is the plantation of oak in the country. … I plant an oak whenever I have a place to put it in. … I give trees to any gentleman who will plant them.”Footnote ³¹ Intensive shipbuilding in the second half of the eighteenth century cleared the southeastern coast of quality hardwoods. From 1775 to 1810, the tonnage of the British Navy increased by 48 percent, reaching unprecedented levels and exhausting British forestlands. By the turn of the century, England and Wales were the most deforested areas in Europe, with less than 2 million acres of woodland.Footnote ³²

Contemporaries were not aware of the extent to which the demands of warfare had brought about ecological change, but did notice that quality English oak was increasingly scarce. A survey of the Royal Forests conducted in 1804 found such an unexpectedly low quantity of oaks trees that the Navy Board dismissed it as incorrect. Particularly alarming was that most trees seemed to have stopped growing before reaching their projected height. A survey conducted four years later reached similar conclusions. The Navy Board had little choice but to accept that the supply of hardwood could be jeopardised in the coming years.Footnote ³³ The yield of the Royal Forest increased from 2,350 loads to 5,322 per year (a tree providing about half a load) between 1801 and 1808, but officials were cognizant that such high levels of felling were not sustainable. Most of the oaks felled were believed to be past improvement at an earlier time than expected, thus providing timber of lesser quality and undermining the lifespan of commissioned vessels in the long run.Footnote ³⁴

The Admiralty's perception of woodlands, what William Cronon would define as an “ecological relationship,” was thus shifting.Footnote ³⁵ Yields of oak from the Royal Forests now appeared finite as a result of overexploitation. The importation of timber in the war years was not only meant as a substitute to the Baltic trade, but also as a new source of hardwoods.Footnote ³⁶ For the remainder of the war, forest preservation policies were introduced in the Commons. Those included the survey of forestlands in Scotland, which were administered from London only since 1801, the displacement of deer herds (deer are particularly fond of acorns), the planting of trees in forests not belonging to the Crown, and more severe lumbering prohibitions.Footnote ³⁷ Interest in monocultures, prevalent in France and Germany from the influence of the physiocrats, also grew.Footnote ³⁸ Similar preservation measures had been enacted in the past, but rarely were they thoroughly implemented.Footnote ³⁹

In 1815, the twenty-six British colonies of 1792 had grown to forty-three, occupying small islands in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and more substantial territories such as Guyana, the Cape, and Ceylon.Footnote ⁴⁰ Expansion provided opportunities to secure a stable and cheap timber supply, but also paradoxically increased and complicated demand. Moreover, pressure to secure new sources of timber was not alleviated by Britain's successive victories at sea. Although celebrated by patriotic historians, the Royal Navy's tactical successes did little to change the overall strategic picture. Close blockade of French ports and convoy escort, Britain's own way of waging economic warfare, necessitated an unprecedented utilisation of the fleet. The result was greater wear and tear on ships as they remained at sea for longer periods. Blockading Atlantic ports such as Brest and Cadiz also meant that vessels remained at sea in the stormy months of autumn. Smaller and more manoeuvrable ships were required, as large ships of the line, the staple component of the Royal Navy, were ill-equipped for these unconventional operations. The Admiralty thus commissioned hundreds of smaller ships while maintaining larger ones in parallel. This amounted to a complete overhaul of the navy's composition.Footnote ⁴¹ Moreover, as soon as Napoleon lost a fleet, he built or acquired another one by conquest. According to Edward Ingram, had the Napoleonic Wars not ended when they did, France would have soon outnumbered Britain through an ambitious construction programme and the amalgamation of Europe's navies.Footnote ⁴² Notwithstanding the accuracy of this scenario, the British did navally challenge Napoleon again and again, as in Lisbon in 1807, or at Aix Roads in 1809. Further, until the Russian campaign of 1812, a substantial number of French troops were stationed in Antwerp in preparation for an assault on Britain or Ireland. This acted as a constant decoy which forced the reinforcement of the Channel squadron's numbers and contributed to British overstretch in other waters.Footnote ⁴³

****

Crises at home fuelled expansion and activity abroad. In searching for timber, the Board mobilised and diffused the administrative, political, and economic power of a mutating state. Indeed, during the French and Napoleonic Wars, British bureaucratic practices were the sites of important administrative centralisation and rationalisation drives. A streamlined cabinet, with specific ministers at the head of individual ministries, emerged; court and ecclesiastic figures gave way to parliamentarians and officials in higher political spheres, thus simplifying decision-making and allowing greater central control of daily operations and of the lower administrative echelons.Footnote ⁴⁴ Revenue increased with the gradual acceptance of public debt and, from 1799, with the introduction of an income tax.Footnote ⁴⁵

At the Admiralty, a new generation of clerks and bureaucrats mirrored these structural changes. Permanent staff grew from forty-five to sixty-five between 1792 and 1813.Footnote ⁴⁶ Inspired by the utilitarian principles of the age, civilian clerks and administrators cognizant of their power hoped to make the navy increasingly efficient. Notably, Samuel Bentham, brother of the utilitarian philosopher, served as Inspector General of Naval Works from 1796 to 1805. Under his tenure, the Navy Board launched the Commission of Naval Inquiry, which conducted a minute visitation of all the dockyards. Navy infrastructure, personnel, and properties were inspected. In 1803 and 1804 contracts were revised, overaged or unaccounted personnel discharged, superfluous lands sold, and clerical procedures rationalised (for instance with the appearance of double entry bookkeeping). This centralised the decision-making process and strengthened the Board's control of the yards at home and abroad. Commissioners, the highest-ranking civilians in the dockyards, lost most of their decision-making power, becoming instead the Board's eyes and ears.Footnote ⁴⁷ Bentham was adamant in making the navy more cost-efficient. Although unpopular in establishment circles, he found useful reforming allies in the Earl of St. Vincent and a coterie of younger officials and engineers, which he supported and formed.Footnote ⁴⁸ After 1805, Bentham spent most of his time in Russia and the Black Sea region on freelance missions, hoping to find cheap sources of timber that could be brought to Britain through the Mediterranean. He was also convinced, until Russia joined the Continental System, that ships of the line could be built in Odessa to reinforce the Malta squadron.Footnote ⁴⁹ The broader implications for Board officials were twofold. First, they were imbued with a sense that they could control and rationalise commercial relationships further afield. Second, officials were now more sensible to the appearance of mismanagement. Spending scandals, such as those that led to Lord Melville's impeachment, also contributed to the Board's centralising drive.Footnote ⁵⁰

For these officials, the intuitive response to the timber problem was to turn to politically stable areas of formal rule in North America or of political paramountcy in South Asia. The Board hoped that this would allow for the supply to be controlled and monitored entirely from London. Ventures on the Indian subcontinent seemed to hold greater potential. Indian teak was considered the best wood in the world, while British shipbuilders were prejudiced against American timber. Indeed, teak is immune to dry rot, a fungal timber decay, and requires shorter periods of seasoning. Yet on the subcontinent, the Board's ambition to control and exploit the Indian forest met environmental, geographical, and political resistance.

By the 1790s the East India Company had on its own already attempted to procure local teak for the dockyards of Bombay and Calcutta. Officials had in vain searched as far as Malacca. The well-known forests in Western Ghats were too remote to organise an effective and cheap supply.Footnote ⁵¹ Enticing reports had however come from Burma. An embassy headed by Major Symes of the Thirty-Fifth Brigadiers reported that teak grew “in abundance and in considerable magnitude” in the Kingdom of Pegu.Footnote ⁵² A surgeon among the expedition was of the opinion that those trees could substitute for oaks to build the hull and upperworks of ships. As for softwoods, Symes's report added: “European and American spars are often bought for these purposes [building masts] at a very exorbitant price, an inconvenience which the fir of Ava, if conveyed to the market, would probably obviate.”Footnote ⁵³

The East India Company did not initially pursue Symes's plan, but his report was published in England in 1800 and brought to the attention of the Navy Board six years later.Footnote ⁵⁴ Two concerns arose upon assessing Symes's account. First, transporting timber to Bombay, Madras, or Calcutta—where it could thereafter be shipped to dockyards in Britain—posed problems. The land route from the northern forests of Ava to the port of Rangoon was inadequate for such a voluminous trade. Symes's claim that the great Irrawaddy River was a perfect waterway to float timber down to the coast also required further investigation. In addition, doubts were raised about the quality of timber. The Board would not commit to imports until samples of wood were evaluated in Britain. Burmese teak was eventually positively assessed, but the Navy's agent concluded that distance remained a problem.Footnote ⁵⁵ Only by the 1850s would Rangoon become an important node in the global timber trade. The quality of timber, the distance between forests, and the presence of a suitable port were always to be the main variables in the Board's evaluation of timber ventures.

Altogether teak was too prized a commodity to be abandoned by the Navy. Forestlands across the subcontinent were investigated. There were excellent teak forests in areas such as the Northern Circars near the port of Rajamundhry on the east coast. There the Mughals had for some time reserved the best trees for the emperor.Footnote ⁵⁶ It was however on the west coast that the Board set its sight. In 1808 Major Johnson, a Board agent, travelled from England to investigate reports that a substantial supply could be secured north of Bombay. He also followed through on investigations made in Malabar, which had been conquered in 1792. The investigation in Malabar proved a disappointment, forcing a negative revision of estimates.Footnote ⁵⁷ Nonetheless, samples convinced the Board and by 1809 Indian teak was contracted for in Britain.Footnote ⁵⁸ Unlike in Burma, bringing felled timber to the coast was not an issue. As the Company extended its power in campaigns against the Marathas and Mysore, it became increasingly aware of hydrographic networks. The British used the rivers to move troops inland, relay intelligence across their dominions, and transport commodities from and to the coast.Footnote ⁵⁹

From 1809, great inroads were made at the expense of the Indian forest. Yet a sufficient volume of timber could never be supplied to the dockyards in Britain. Quality teak was scarcer than expected. More importantly, a humid climate meant that felled timber decayed quickly. The intricate river system also accounted for many losses. In total, only one log in ten made it to a dockyard.Footnote ⁶⁰ As a result, merchants rescinded their engagement, citing the difficulty of guaranteeing a constant supply.Footnote ⁶¹ Transport to Britain also brought its own set of issues. Shipping companies retained by the Board for troop transport, victualling, or store supplies were often too small to organise large-scale operations to India. For instance, Michael Henley and Son, the largest shipping company in Britain, could only charter one or two ships a year to the Indian Ocean.Footnote ⁶² Only through the utilisation of Company cargo could a large-scale supply have been organised. Company officials and merchants were however reluctant to hinder their trade for the greater cause of the war effort. The Board's request to reserve cargo space for timber was unsuccessful, as the price demanded was too high.Footnote ⁶³

Securing Company cooperation was also difficult even before any trees were felled. Metropole and local interests had various competing perceptions of Indian forestlands. Some Company officials held a negative view of woodlands as a result of recent military history and the agricultural revolution. As Eilen McCracken notes, military officers serving in India had been accustomed to clear wooded areas to deny coverage to Irish rebels. The same had been done in the Scottish Highlands. The cutting of trees and the cultivation of lands were seen as signs of progress. In Ireland and Scotland, Britain's “European Empire,” agrarian improvement also played a crucial role in breaking common systems of tenure.Footnote ⁶⁴ For the East India Company, rolling back the forests to make way for agriculture was thus seen as a mean of extending control. Forest dwellers were associated with disorderly conduct whilst agricultural plots tied people to the soil, permitting them to be taxed and counted.Footnote ⁶⁵ In contrast, Board officials were specifically interested in exploiting and managing forestlands themselves. Securing woodlands for naval timber required that specific species be grown and cut on a regular basis. Ideally, trees would reproduce and be felled only when reaching a required height and diameter. In some areas, clearing land for agriculture was thus incompatible with the medium-term needs of the Navy. Politically, this posed the question of who controlled the land. In Malabar, Company men resisted what they considered to be an infringement on their prerogatives by the Navy Board. A Conservator of Forests had been appointed in 1807 to secure tracks of land for the Navy's use. Yet, in connivance with local merchants and notables, Company officials bypassed the official and claimed all the land in both Malabar and Travancore.Footnote ⁶⁶ Timber was to be sold on the public market and the best trees felled immediately. Only a formal Board complaint forced the Company to discipline its officials.

India's main contribution to naval warfare would in the end be through local shipbuilding. Similar tensions however hindered cooperation between Board and Company over the management of the Bombay Dockyards. The Admiralty at first planned for an ambitious and timely production schedule.Footnote ⁶⁷ Not only was teak more easily procured for local production, but the skills of Bombay's great Parsi shipbuilders, among whom Jamsetjee Bomanjee Wadia was the most renowned, were held in high regard in London. Bombay-built Indiamen anchored on the Thames attracted admiring crowds and were reputedly superior to those built in Europe.Footnote ⁶⁸ With the construction of dry docks beginning in 1801, the manufacture of larger ships of the line seemed imminent. Yet, as with the management of forests and the shipping of timber, Company and Board officers did not see eye to eye. While the Admiralty expected initiative coupled with willing and gracious cooperation with Imperial defence, Company directors in Leadenhall saw the dry docks as means to recalibrate failing finances and liquidate the Bombay Presidency's debt. Bickering over pennies spent resulted in stoppages and delays. Nevertheless, from 1803 to 1815, the Royal Navy was to have three ships of the line and five frigates built in India.Footnote ⁶⁹ Another four ships of the line were begun in Bombay in 1815, but launched only in the following decade.

The Board's attempt to turn India into a timber colony was a partial success. The presence of the powerful East India company-state complicated the acquisition of forestlands and the organisation of transport. Further, geography and climate led to immense waste. Large-scale extraction nonetheless eventually occurred, having a considerable impact on Indian forests. In 1812, the Quarterly Review estimated the yearly consumption of hardwoods in the Calcutta and Bombay dockyards at 115,000 tons. This would be equivalent to a quarter of the hardwoods consumed by shipbuilding in Britain.Footnote ⁷⁰ The number does not include the small amount of timber imported to England, nor that lost in transit from the forest to the dockyards. By the 1820s, the inroads made by the Board in the preceding decade bore fruit, as a constant supply of teak finally reached the dockyards in Britain. This was in part attributable to a significant fall in the price of freight insurance following the war, which caused the overall price of shipping to drop.Footnote ⁷¹ Lumbering accelerated and deforestation came to local attention. In 1830, the Raja of Nilambur in Malabar lamented the clearing of coastal areas since the British conquest and warned that regulations were urgently needed.Footnote ⁷² His pleading would go unnoticed and the inland retreat of the Indian forest accelerated throughout the century.Footnote ⁷³ Indeed, by 1851 exports of Indian teak to Britain were running at 11,000 to 18,000 tons per year.Footnote ⁷⁴

In parallel to searches for timber in India, the Navy Board investigated reports from the North American colonies. There, favourable political and environmental conditions, in addition to the largely unchallenged deployment of London's bureaucratic power, allowed the Admiralty to set and control the conditions of the trade. Importantly, the absence of a powerful entity holding differing opinions on the use of forestlands, such as the East India Company, facilitated the process. Metropolitan control was however mitigated by early nineteenth-century technology and a porous southern borderland.

Until the American Revolution, North America had provided a cheaper complement to Baltic timber. White pines from Vermont and Massachusetts, although disliked in the dockyards, had been reserved for the Crown since the early eighteenth century, until the new Republic barred Britain from acquiring the commodity.Footnote ⁷⁵ However, the Loyalists who fled north to the remnants of British North America, many of whom had been merchants involved in transatlantic commerce, saw an opportunity to develop a new trade. The first shipment of timber left newly created New Brunswick in 1789 and the Board ordered Captain Henry Duncan to organise surveys of the forests between the Bay of Fundy and the St. Lawrence River.Footnote ⁷⁶ Quality was however an issue and the Board notified its agent that “[their Lordships are] hopeful it will not be necessary to apply to America for … any shipbuilding [materials].”Footnote ⁷⁷ Timber imports to the United Kingdom would continue, but mostly to serve the demand for fuel and low-grade building materiel. The Halifax dockyard would only occasionally seek supplies from its hinterlands.Footnote ⁷⁸

Reports of potential timber ventures in New Brunswick nonetheless continued to reach the Board. In particular, forests along the tributaries of the Miramichi, St. Johns, Richelieu, and St. Croix rivers seemed enticing to entrepreneurs and commissioners in the yards at Halifax and Antigua.Footnote ⁷⁹ London however had the final word, and those reports were not investigated until Napoleon's decrees of 1806 and 1807. From then onwards, agents were again sent into the woods and contracts were hastily signed to procure timber from known coastal areas. Incoming reports were encouraging. In 1808, an agent claimed that the forests of New Brunswick would last “several centuries,” while trees were deemed “of superior quality than Riga woods.”Footnote ⁸⁰ A shipmaster at Deptford Yard confirmed that New Brunswick timber could be used by the navy, but nevertheless explicitly stated his preference for Baltic timber.Footnote ⁸¹ The amount of timber imported from North America steadily grew, but initial contracts signed there by the Navy Board were seen as temporary measures in hopes that the menace to the Baltic trade would recede. Four years later, a London paper mocked the Admiralty for such wishful thinking.Footnote ⁸² Yet, the preference of the dockyards is understandable. Baltic timber was indeed more resistant, more easily shaped, and less prone to dry rot. A frigate built entirely with woods from North America tended to have a shorter lifespan than one made from Baltic woods. In addition, logs often decayed in the longer transoceanic voyages across the Atlantic. Only the extreme circumstances and the increasing cost of Baltic woods convinced the dockyards to work with inferior materials.

For a modernising Board, the cheaper price of North American timber was enticing. In addition, it could serve as a mechanism to lower prices for Baltic wood. Indeed, diversifying and increasing supply was projected to cheapen the better timber, whose price was increasing at a rapid pace. An 1806 memorandum asked whether “[the Navy Board] not do more to bring Canada Timber into general use and create that Competition so desirable and necessary to the lowering of the Price.”Footnote ⁸³ Initial imports, however, were not sufficient to substantially lower prices.Footnote ⁸⁴ Furthermore, 1808 marked the apogee of the Continental System. The pressure of securing a voluminous and constant new supply was amplified. Despite the Board's willingness to buy timber from New Brunswick (and after 1808, from Lower Canada), merchants were reluctant to migrate to the North American trade. High prices paid for Baltic timber meant higher profits. Wartime demand indeed made the Navy Board a rich, spendthrift, and captive client. Shipping firms, essential partners in any import venture, preferred the shorter sail from Baltic ports to any other potential voyages. Crews and ships were available for more profitable voyages if they remained in European waters.Footnote ⁸⁵

The Admiralty alone could not force merchants to procure materials in new areas. But once forests promising satisfying timber supplies had been surveyed along the rivers of New Brunswick and above Montreal, dampening fears about supply and quality, the Board could attempt new incentives. Parliament and cabinet were convinced to heighten duties on Baltic imports. Major enactments came in 1809 and 1810. In the following years, import taxes paid by merchants for timber arriving from Memel more than doubled.Footnote ⁸⁶ The overall profitability of the Baltic trade decreased. By 1812, timber imports from North America had surpassed those from the Baltic. Yet the extent of the shift should not be exaggerated. Timber from the Baltic remained in use in the dockyards for some years, but the relative importance of North America increased steadily until the free trade movement eliminated import duties thirty years later.Footnote ⁸⁷ Through the use of fiscal mechanisms and its ability to acquire information about forestlands across an ocean, the British state had created an entirely new timber market and secured a safe supply for its navy. The associated environmental impacts were significant. In 1811 alone, 23,000 pine trunks, 24,000 boatloads of oak, and 52,800 loads of fir were shipped from the sole port of Quebec City. By 1830, the old-growth forests of New Brunswick had disappeared and Navy Board contractors had moved south, down the Ottawa and Richelieu rivers, and north into the Laurentian Plateau.Footnote ⁸⁸

Unlike in India, direct rule made it easier for the Crown to claim the best trees, although Board's venture did generate political and economic friction. The central issue revolved around the work undertaken by the Surveyor General. Although technically not an Admiralty official, most of the Surveyor's work in North America was undertaken for the benefit of the Board. In a way similar to commissioners in the dockyards, he relayed information regarding forestlands covered by his mandate. The Surveyor was also required to reserve tracts of land for naval timber and subsequently to protect these areas from private interests lumbering with or without patents issued by the colony. Local assemblies and executives opposed such legal appropriation of the forests and acted in open defiance.Footnote ⁸⁹

On many occasions, the Imperial parliament reemphasised the Surveyor's authority to reserve land, as well as the fact that large white pines fitted for masting were not to be considered private property.Footnote ⁹⁰ Efforts were made to confiscate timber illegally felled and to find and prosecute illegal fellers. On 13 July 1809, Edward Winslow, a loyalist appointed Surveyor General of the Woods, received information that one John Arbeau had “cut and manufactured about 200 t[o]ns of red pine.”Footnote ⁹¹ Similar reports were received almost monthly between 1807 and 1812. Illegal lumbering never imperilled the timber supply and was at most an irritant, but important efforts were deployed to eradicate it. The Board and its agents had the means and the motivation to control and preserve the trade. Formal complaints against uncooperative authorities were raised in London and the colonies. In December 1809, a “prominent resident of Charlotte County” was found guilty of illegal felling. Fines for such offences depended on the width and age of trees felled and could be as high as £100 per tree, close to twenty-five times the price of the most expensive masts.Footnote ⁹²

The Board's urge to control the timber trade is apparent in the whole supply chain, from the timber's growth to its arrival in England. Outside Crown lands, where it could not directly manage wooded areas, the Board paid a premium for high-quality softwoods. In exchange, landowners were expected to plant and protect certain types of wood. This mirrored economic behaviour in Europe. Land enclosure and the aristocracy's control of most forested areas made the protection of certain woods a valuable and cheap investment. Once located, trees were cut and dragged to riverbanks in winter by horses or oxen. Logs were then lowered into the water and carried downstream with the heavy spring river flows. Before reaching the river's mouth, they were diverted into mast ponds. There mastwrights “graved, trimmed, seasoned, and measured” the timber. Agents licensed either by the Board or its contractors supervised the whole process until the masts, yards, spars, and planks were loaded for the royal dockyards.Footnote ⁹³

All contracts to supply the dockyards in Britain and abroad were processed by the Board. Thus a commissioner in Halifax could not directly contract for timber with a supplier in Quebec City. Instead, yards had to request timber from the Board through quarterly reports.Footnote ⁹⁴ To guarantee quality, a certificate of provenance was issued to ship captains before they left North America. Only by presenting it could they avoid paying custom duties and have their cargo evaluated (and hopefully paid for) at the dockyards.Footnote ⁹⁵ Quality was also guaranteed by identifying the logs themselves. This was usually done by the Surveyor General or his deputies before felling by carving a recognisable mark on the best white pines and Canada oaks.Footnote ⁹⁶ Yet the inland provenance of timber was impossible to ascertain before loading, as certificates offered limited guarantees and were easily fabricated, while anyone could imitate the surveyor's mark on a log.Footnote ⁹⁷

Illegal trade was thus a fairly common and open practice, leading to smuggling across the American border. As such, despite Jefferson's Embargo and Non-Intercourse acts of 1807 and 1809, which were intended to restrict American trade with warring European powers, and the 1812 war, timber from Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire made its way to the Royal Navy's facilities in Britain via ports in New Brunswick and Lower Canada. The loyalist influx remained a recent phenomenon. Kinship and business networks crisscrossed a largely porous border.Footnote ⁹⁸ Moreover, the hydrographic network of the region made it easy to smuggle timber by water. In particular, Lake Champlain, as well as the Richelieu and St. Croix Rivers offered easy unguarded ways into British territory. At St. Croix, one only had to claim that timber came from the northern bank of the river to make it “British.” The volume of illegal trade is difficult to assess, but British merchants routinely complained about southern competition. Shipmasters knowingly loaded timber from the United States, and newspapers reported fights between aggrieved French Canadian loggers and smuggling Americans.Footnote ⁹⁹

Other areas were surveyed for timber in parallel to the still exploratory ventures in North America and South and Southeast Asia, especially as the sense of crisis reached its peak between 1808 and 1812. The scale of these efforts should alert us to paths not taken and highlight that procurement from North America was far from a foregone conclusion. The immense task at hand required, in addition to the usual cast of Board agents, the conscription of diplomats, army and navy officers, and of course merchants.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Dispatches about the availability of timber from such places as New Zealand, Botany Bay, and Sierra Leone flooded the Admiralty. Wellington's officers stationed in the Iberian Peninsula even inquired about the quality of firs in the Minho region in northern Portugal.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Reports from Brazil and the Cape warranted the most serious consideration. Portugal, Britain's last European ally, was for all intents and purposes, a protectorate of London. Napoleon's turning against Spain in 1808 therefore opened the whole of South America to British trade. Merchants and officials eagerly sought extra-European ventures for Britain's manufactured goods. If an interesting trade could be developed, Board agents and merchants envisaged ships loaded with manufactured products leaving England for South American ports to return with quality timber.Footnote ¹⁰² For four years, at least three British subjects operated on behalf of the Board in South America. One agent spent three years in Portuguese territory in an attempt to spark timber exportations.Footnote ¹⁰³ The possibility of turning Santos, Rio, Paranaguá, or San Sebastian into a new Danzing or Riga was seriously contemplated. Some even considered having ships built in South America for the navy, as in India. Yet quality timber was scarce, difficult to access in plateaus, and distant from main watercourses. Maybe more importantly, reports sent to the Board cautioned against trusting Portuguese notables as intermidiaries. Captain Walker warned that they had little geographical knowledge of the hinterland and were “ignorant about what the country produced.” Acquiring reliable knowledge of the forestlands would therefore require extensive surveys. Walker further expressed doubts about the workforce. Portuguese slaves, in part because of their masters, were deemed unreliable and prone to “excessive indolence and indifference.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ By 1812, the last Board agent was ordered home from South America.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

As for timber from the Cape, it at first elicited sincere enthusiasm. Permanently annexed by the British in 1806, the new colony already possessed important lumbering operations. Dutch labour and know-how were held in relatively high regard. A report dating from 1798, in the time of the first British occupation, wrote enthusiastically about the forests around Plettenberg Bay on the Western Cape. After 1806, they were seen as having even greater potential than those of India and North America.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In a letter to Vice-Admiral Bertie, the officer in charge of the South African station, the Board hoped that “a [new] dependence on masts could be placed upon a supply from Plettenburg [Bay].”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The Cape's location on the route to India simplified shipping requirements and made vessels available for convoy protection. Moreover, the construction of important naval and military facilities in Cape Town and around Simon's Town already fuelled local timber demand. The Board hoped that this would lead to economies of scale.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Instructions were given to fell and stock naval timber even before samples could be evaluated. In the meantime, the Abraham sailed to Portsmouth with samples, orders to assess the overall cost of home consumption, and responsibility for making arrangements to organise a permanent supply.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

Planning a global chain of supply required the Board to head a vast information network. Reliable information was essential to make informed decisions. A miscommunication or a lost letter could mean immense delays. In the case of the Abraham’s mission, the first timber samples were branded with their Dutch names, and the shipwright at Portsmouth was incapable of completing his task—uncertain of the types of wood he was asked to evaluate. Further correspondence and delay were required until appropriate identification could be made. In the end, the samples were judged unsatisfactory.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Excitement for Cape timber lasted little more than a year.

****

The navy's timber demands also extended beyond England and required supplying bases from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic and the West Indies. Repairs requiring dry-docking were conducted in England and made possible through an intricate system of ship rotations. Smaller works were however completed in outposts such as Malta, Jamaica, and Halifax. Such global logistics fuelled more anxiety, as reports from outlying bases emphasised the poor conditions of ships. Captain Whitby, the Admiralty's agent stationed at Malta in the months before Trafalgar, shared his doubts that the masts of Nelson's squadron could sustain a full-force engagement with the French. He added that “three ships out of four are usually stripped [of masts or topmasts].”Footnote ¹¹¹

Occupied by 1803, Malta soon proved to be one of Britain's most important territorial acquisitions. It allowed the Royal Navy to project its power in the Mediterranean, protect the Eurasian route to India, check the French fleet in Toulon, and gain leverage over the future of the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ¹¹² A yard was constructed on the island and attempts were made to provide it with neighbouring timber. In addition to the usual impediments to developing a secure supply, those ventures were vulnerable to the changing war-politics of the region. Unstable circumstances required flexible policies and adaptation, which brought conflict between a centralising Board and creative agents on the spot. Yet success at supplying Malta with timber also highlighted the vast array of possible alternatives to the Baltic.

Normally, the Board advertised its needs in London, Liverpool, and Portsmouth newspapers. Contracts were awarded for up to three years.Footnote ¹¹³ However, when new sources of supplies were sought, or when supplies originated from areas outside traditional commercial routes, someone needed to be sent directly to organise the trade. This left considerable latitude to the “men on the spot” to spend, contract, and influence on behalf of the Board. Following the capture of Malta, the Navy Board posted John Leard as its agent in the Adriatic.Footnote ¹¹⁴ After some surveys, he reported that coastal forests in former Venetian territories annexed by the Habsburgs in 1797 seemed an interesting option, as they had once supplied Venice's naval timber.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The land was property of a friendly power or of its vassal gentry. To facilitate transactions, Leard was made British consul in Ragusa, one of the last remaining neutral polities in the Mediterranean. From there, it was hoped he could oversee a vast and safe trade. By the end of 1805, thirty thousand trees had already been contracted for. The Board believed that if sustained, the supply could cover the entirety of Malta's needs, and an important proportion of England's. However, local circumstances threatened operations. Private owners demanded to be paid the moment trees were felled. Usual practice in the Baltic, and subsequently in North America, was for the Board to pay only once the timber arrived in the dockyards. Large merchant houses involved in those trades possessed the necessary capital flow to organise supply before receiving payment. In comparison with Austrian nobility, these merchant houses did not however possess the necessary political leverage to impose conditions to contracts. Understanding the situation, Leard made advance payments on the Board's behalf, only to be quickly disavowed. Fearing a financial drain, the Board warned Leard to respect existing procedure, and notified him that such future payments would not be honoured. Centralising tendencies could not adapt to the flexible policies of its agent, despite the overall strategic urgency of the situation.

Leard initially protested and carried on, but the project was interrupted by Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz. French power descended along the eastern coast of the Adriatic and barred British trade from the new Illyrian provinces. Expelled from Ragusa, Leard returned to Malta. There, with some financial backing from the commissioner of the yard but without formal directions from London, new plans were devised to secure timber safe from Napoleon's reach. In 1807 and 1808, Leard travelled to the Morea, Istria, and Albania. After the Battle of Wagram in 1809, only Ottoman territories remained safe for British commerce. Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor of a territory corresponding roughly to contemporary Albania, Thessaly and Northern Greece, sold £25,000 worth of timber to the Royal Navy. Early in 1810, after routine assessments in Malta, a growing trade centred on Durazzo (Durrës) was launched.

The Board, which was dutifully kept informed of all proceedings, was astonished at such rebelliousness. It attempted several times to recall Leard. His status as a consul however also made him accountable to the Foreign Office, which was satisfied with his work. He deftly played both departments against each other, leading to epistolary infighting. In June 1810, the Board wrote: “We have signified Commissioner Fraser [at Malta] our astonishment and regret at his having taken upon himself to make such arrangement with Mr Leard,” and asked: “whether he [Leard] is a proper person to be entrusted by any department of his Majesty's Government.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ The insubordinate agent was eventually recalled, but the Board did continue to procure timber in the Ottoman Empire. A new agent was directly sent to Ali Pasha's capital of Ioannina. Albanian oak, fir, walnut, and elm timber supplied the squadron in Malta until 1813. Citing the high cost of shipping, the Board discontinued the trade. The decision also coincided with the eviction of French power in the Eastern Mediterranean, which arguably diminished the importance of the investment. Malta would afterwards be supplied from North America and England, via the entrepôt in Gibraltar.

Despite the Board's qualms, the Mediterranean venture was a relative success. The squadron in Malta remained in operation and did not divert supplies away from English yards. Rather, its sustained presence in the Mediterranean had by the end of the war extended British informal dominion to Greece and the Aegean. Britain had acquired a Mediterranean empire and British capital and logistical organization had entered Albania, stripped its forests of quality timber and transformed it, albeit temporarily, into an essential cog of the greater imperial machinery. Extraction was considerable but short-lived: for the few years of trade, the Navy employed four to five ships, always filled to capacity, in continual round trips between Durazzo and Malta.Footnote ¹¹⁷