Naval Stores
Naval Stores
NAVAL STORES. The term "naval stores" refers to various items, materials, and substances that were essential to building, maintaining, and operating the wooden sailing ships that made up the navies and merchant fleets of the world from ancient times. Many products were derived from pine trees in the southern colonies, including resin, tar, pitch, and turpentine, and were valued for their ability to help ships withstand salt water. The term also included other items, like the masts and spars made from the tall white pines growing in the interior of New England and cordage made of hemp; it sometimes included certain types of insect-resistant timbers from which durable hulls could be constructed. At the turn of the twenty-first century, much of the world's supply of pine-based naval stores comes from the American Southeast, but before the establishment of Britain's North American colonies, western Europe's principal source for these substances, and for the tall, straight pine trees needed for a ship's masts, was the Baltic region. Naval stores were so important to Britain's naval and maritime strength that in 1704 they were designated enumerated commodities that the colonies could send only to the mother country.
SEE ALSO Enumerated Articles.
revised by Harold E. Selesky