Naval Stores

NAVAL STORES

NAVAL STORES, a phrase applied to the resinous products of longleaf and other pines, such as tar, resin, pitch, and, to a lesser degree, turpentine, that were historically used in the shipping industry. Mariners used tar to preserve ropes from decay and applied the pitch of resin to seams in the planking to make them watertight, and shipbuilders used turpentine in connection with paint. Naval stores were important in England's colonial commercial policy, for England had normally purchased these goods from Sweden, which meant an unfavorable balance of trade to the mercantilists and the danger that an enemy might cut off the supply. The vast pine forests in the British colonies of New England and the Carolinas proved a bountiful new resource for naval stores. The British Board of Trade saw obtaining these stores from the colonies as an important move toward a self-sufficient empire and arranged for a bounty to be paid to colonial producers by the Royal Navy. This encouraged production, though members of the Royal Navy felt the American tar was not of as high a quality as European-produced tar. Although a group of German Palatines operated in upstate New York, the major center of naval store production shifted to the southeastern colonies through the eighteenth century.

The British continued to import naval stores from the colonies until the American Revolution, at which point they traded with the Dutch for Swedish products. The tar and pitch were obtained by burning chunks of pinewood in kilns. Turpentine was procured by a team of workers, called "chippers," who tapped a metal strip into a pine, allowed the tree to heal over it, then collected the rosin to be distilled into turpentine. Americans continued to produce naval stores, although eastern forests were being rapidly depleted as the growing population cleared lands and moved west. In the early nineteenth century the southern states, especially the Carolina "tarheels," began to dominate the industry. Naval store production continued in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Florida. By 1900 the pine forests of Georgia and northern Florida produced the major stores of rosin and turpentine.

The original naval aspect of these products ended with the coming of steamships and the introduction of iron-and steel-hulled ships. Although one can still smell the tarred rope in shops serving yachtsmen, naval stores have otherwise lost their nautical aspect and have been absorbed among the numerous products of industrial chemistry. Today wood turpentine is used in exterior paints and varnishes. Tar is used in paints, stains, disinfectants, soaps, and shampoos. Pine tar is used in the cordage industry. Other naval stores are now used in the production of linoleum, shoe polish, lubricants, and roofing materials. There is still a substantial trade based in Georgia, about half of the product being exported.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gamble, Thomas. Naval Stores: History, Production, Distribution, and Consumption. Savannah, Ga.: Review Publishing and Printing, 1921.

Knittle, Walter A. Early Eighteenth-Century Palatine Emigration. Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1936.

Malone, Joseph. Pine Trees and Politics: The Naval Stores and Forest Policy in Colonial New England. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964.

Robert G. Albion / h. s.

See also Industries, Colonial ; Colonial Ships ; Tar .