Not more than one man in a thousand who looked at a ship of the line reflected that her great mainmast had been cut in the forests of Maine… Robert Albion, Forests and Sea Power, 1926


WHEN English explorer Captain George Waymouth brought the Archangel into Pentecost Harbor, near the St. George River in 1605, he found “notable high timber trees, masts for ships of four hundred tons.” By 1609, the Jamestown Colony was sending home the first shipment of masts from the New World.
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Softwoods such as firs and pines are superior to hardwoods for use as masts since they are far more flexible and carry less weight aloft. England’s forests were cut for firewood in the Middle Ages, and by the 17th century, the closest supply for mast timbers was in the Baltic. There she competed with the French, Spanish, and Dutch for the great Baltic firs, prized by the British Admiralty for their resilience and durability.
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But the Baltic was 1,000 miles away and not under England’s control, and the route could be blocked easily at the straits of Denmark. New sources were needed.
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By about 1650, the colonists in America had established a flourishing trade in masts, lumber, and other naval stores to Europe and the Caribbean. They were not pleased when the British Admiralty awoke to the fact that its supply of mast trees in North America was in danger. In 1685, a Surveyor of Pines and Timber was appointed to survey the Maine woods “within 10 miles of any navigable waterway” and mark all suitable trees with “the king’s broad arrow,” the symbol used since early times to designate Royal Navy property. Any “trees of the diameter of twenty-four inches and upwards at twelve inches from the ground” with a yard of height for each inch of diameter at the butt was blazed with the broad arrow. Woe to anyone who damaged or stole the king’s property. The fine was £100! The Broad Arrow Policy was observed with all the enthusiasm that greeted Prohibition more than two centuries later, and the same native ingenuity was applied to circumvent it.
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Mast trees were partially burned in mysterious fires or splintered in unusual gales. Loopholes apparently excluded certain properties, whose great pines were promptly felled and sawn into profitable lumber. And never, under any circumstances, would the floorboards of any colonial home exceed 23 inches in width. The law was tightened again and again, but still the king’s pines continued to disappear.
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Mast trees usually were cut in the fall, when they were full of resin. The trees were carefully felled on prepared beds, limbed, and squared. During the winter, the rough timbers, or baulks, were dragged by brute strength onto sleds and hauled out of the woods by teams of oxen. Since one great tree could weigh as much as 18 tons, this was a difficult and dangerous process, requiring great skill and the efforts of as many as 100 oxen.
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Where mast roads met, communities sprang up, and often the shape of the town square was determined by the clearance needed to turn the long timbers. An example of this remains in Freeport, opposite the L. L. Bean store, where the former Bliss-Holbrook Tavern (now stores) was sited at a strange angle for that very reason.
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Every mast road led to the nearest navigable waters, often a tidal marsh. “Mast Landing” is a title that still appears on charts for many locations along the Maine coast. Here the baulks were delivered to a mast agent, slipped into the water, and towed to a mast depot.
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At the mast depot, the baulks were graded and hewn to the specified 16 sides. Then they were loaded aboard special mast ships through large stern ports for transportation to England, where the final trimming and fitting of the mast was done. Some of these mast ships were of 400 to 600 tons burden and could carry 30 to 50 of the enormous baulks below decks.
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Although the Broad Arrow Policy could never be effectively enforced and the colonists continued to cut mast trees for sale on the black market, the supply of great pines was sufficient to provide a crucial resource for the Royal Navy for 125 years, until the monopoly was finally ended by the American Revolution.