What wood was used for masts on large ships?

Question

In the 1400's to 1800's?

Did they try and use one straight tree, or did they use multiple trees? Was any type of wood preferable over another? I do remember that many types of pine were not of the right strength. I have had trouble finding this information, as it came up in conversation the other day.

I also had trouble deciding in what category to list this question.

Answer 1

Well here in Maine, there are very few left, but the eastern white pine was sought after by the Brittish Royal Navy. They would mark the trees with an arrow, and it was illegal to cut them down then, and still is today. The old-growth trees in this area (in the 1700's) were far superior in strength to what grows today, so one tree per mast sufficed. I have read that there were as many as 60 - 70 rings per inch in a cross section of a tree from back then, whereas today's trees may have as few as 2-3 per inch. Maine was one of the ship building capitals of the world in those days, and countless books have been written on the subject. Just google Maine shipbuilding, and you will get more than enough to keep you happy.

Answer 2

mark m has the basics right.....in addition: if you look closely at pictures of sailing ships from the 1400's to the 1900's you'll see that there are sections that overlap....that's because masts were in three or more sections, the lower, topmast and topgallant mast; the longest section would be the lower, from keel to where it overlapped the topmast would be around 90 feet; there were enough old growth trees in Maine, Massachusetts Norway and Sweden to provide timber for hundreds of years until steel supplanted wood in the 1900-1940 era.

Answer 3

It looks like a lot of different materials were used in different parts of the world. To chip into part of your question, yellow, long-leaf, and Carolina pines were primarily used for masts in South Carolina during the 18th and 19th century.

Answer 4

they used one large oak tree