If you wonder why I’ve turned to the past in so many of my recent columns, it’s simple. There’s nothing going on in Dunvegan, at least at a community-wide level. A perfect example is this past Saturday. In a normal year, it would have been Winter Carnival day in Dunvegan. Hordes of families and friends would have descended on the DRA Hall for a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage and flapjacks drenched in local maple syrup. A few hours later, cars would have started arriving at our place with youngsters, oldsters and everything in between looking for a horse-drawn sleigh ride, skating or tobogganing back at the frozen pond, rousing games of Crokicurl or Snolleyball and the chance to dunk one of Terry’s butter rolls in a steaming bowl of her homemade soup.
However, this year the hall in Dunvegan stood empty. The pond slumbered on under a thick blanket of snow. No jingle of sleigh bells was to be heard on the backwoods trail. And our house was not filled with the buzz of friendly banter or redolent with the aroma of hot chocolate, steaming pots of soup and fresh baked-goods. The only hint that it was the day that our hamlet traditionally holds its celebration of winter (the first Saturday in February) is that we were blessed, as we so often have been in the past, with good weather. At least in the morning. By the noon hour, Mother Nature had whipped up the winds to protest one of 2021’s first lost interludes of community fun.
Rule Britannia
If you’re a history buff, you’re no doubt familiar with the King’s Broad Arrow, a series of three hatchet slashes that agents of the British Crown acting for the Royal Navy would use to mark Eastern White Pines that were suitable for use as masts. The practice dates back to the late 1600s when the charter for a colony in New England included a “mast preservation” clause” that read (as it was originally written): “And lastly for the better providing and furnishing of Masts for Our Royall Navy Wee doe hereby reserve to Vs Our Heires and Successors all Trees of the Diameter of Twenty Four Inches and upwards of Twelve Inches from the ground growing vpon any soyle or Tract of Land within Our said Province or Territory not heretofore granted to any private persons.” One must remember that in New England of the 18th century and Upper Canada in the early 19th century, the Eastern White Pine was not the gnarled, wind-swept waif featured in so many Group of Seven paintings. The native stands of Eastern White Pine were said to be majestic, well over 150 feet tall with branch-free trunks to heights of 80 feet or more. The tallest known Eastern White Pine tree recorded was a staggering 250 feet high, the height of a 25-storey building. Apparently though, the Royal Navy had its eye on more than just Pinus strobus.
I had a call this past weekend from Alexandria reader Brian Proulx and he related two tree-related stories with a Royal Navy hook that had been passed down to him by his father, Benjamin “Benny” Proulx. The first concerns the Eastern White Oak tree, one of the tightest grained woods in North America. Which is why in 1797 Boston shipbuilders used seven-inch thick planks of Eastern White Oak to clad the hull of the American warship USS Constitution.The cladding was so strong that, during the War of 1812, enemy cannonballs are said to have bounced off the Constitution’s oaken sides, which led to her being nicknamed Old Ironsides.
In the early 19th century, it must be remembered that wooden warships were leading edge of technology. Britannia ruled the waves by ensuring her ships were bigger, stronger and faster than anything else afloat. Just as today’s industrial designers use composite materials to maximize performance, naval engineers and shipwrights of the time fashioned their vessels from a variety of species, each one with different characteristics. Because of the enormous stresses these ships endured under full sail, their makers also used framing members that had been pre-formed by nature.
As Brian Proulx explained, his father had learned from his forefathers how agents of the Crown, obviously well versed in shipbuilding, scoured Upper Canada for specific Eastern White Oak trees. They were hunting for trees with natural curves and Y-shaped trunks… shapes that would fit perfectly into the keel and hull of a sailing vessel. Given the relative scarcity of these all-natural building parts, the agents were more than happy to purchase these trees from the settlers of Glengarry and other Ontario counties. It was a much-needed cash crop for early Glengarry settlers.
Brian’s father also told his son another strange tree tale. One that, so far, has me stumped. Apparently, after successfully acquiring their piece of rock-bound Glengarry soil from the Crown in the early 1800s, agents would approach the settlers prior to trees being felled and burned to make room for cultivation. According to Brian’s dad, the agents hoped to contract the settlers for barrels of ashes. But not any old ashes. Just the fine white ash that’s left when Hard Maple is burned. As Brian recalls it had something to do with the Royal Navy once again, but this time involved operation of the ship’s cannons.
This is not an area of expertise for me, so I downloaded a copy of the 596-page overview written in 1986 on all things cannon: British Smooth-Bore Artillery: A Technological Study to Support Identification, Acquisition, Restoration, Reproduction, and Interpretation of Artillery at National Historic Parks in Canada by David McConnell. I don’t pretend to have read this treatise from cover to cover, but I did scour likely sections such as Gunpowder and Cartridges, Projectiles and Fuzes (sic) for any reference to the use of fine white ashes from the Hard Maple tree in the cannon firing process. I found none. There was a fascinating examination of the pros and cons of paper versus flannel wrapping for the charges. Spoiler alert: paper wrapping can leave smouldering residue in the bore of the cannon, which can set off a subsequent shot prematurely. But there was no mention of ashes.
So I turn to you dear reader for help. If you have any idea why the British Crown might have been contracting for barrels of Glengarry Hard Maple ash back in the 1800s, please contact me.
-30-