Radio Script #1097

Little Talks on Common Things
October 24, 1976

Last Sunday we told you something about Maine’s past in the War of the Revolution. Let us have a bit more today. The population of the entire District of Maine was then so small that its number of men sent into the Continental Army was equally small, and of course all of those were attributed to Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a part.

As for the causes of the Revolution, we have read since schooldays about the Writs of Assistance, the quartering of British troops in colonial residences, the Stamp Act, the Boston Tea Party, and other incidents. What is not so widely known is Maine’s significant part in a conspicuous factor in bringing on the Revolution – the King’s Broad Arrow. That was the mark placed on the largest and straightest white pines, reserved for the British Navy.

It may be of some interest to consider, in this broadcast, how Maine pines came to be marked with the King’s Arrow, and what it had to do with the Revolution. When, near the close of the 16th century in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the British Navy defeated the marauding Spanish Armada, the woods of England had no trees suitable for masts in the largest warships. In fact, by this time, ship masts were brought to England from Denmark and Sweden and even the smaller Baltic firs were being pieced together to make navy masts. The British Navy got along with such wood until 1652, when in England’s brief war with Holland, the Danes closed the mast trade.

That turned the Royal Navy to the rich forests of New England, even though the cost of transportation across the Atlantic was large. We hear so much about those great pine masts from Maine that we little realize how scarce they were, despite the vast extent of Maine forest. Numerous trees were sometimes cut to get one good mast – on one occasion, in what is now the town of Durham, Maine, in 1762, there were cut 106 trees, of which 102 were found useless for masts, yielding only four good ones. Other trees were damaged at falls or rapids as they were floated down to a port. In the middle of the 18th century, a good Maine pine mast brought as much a $100, equalling at least $1,000 in today’s purchasing power.

At first, there was no royal claim on particular trees. The masts were supplied under a contract system, and their shipping points are preserved to this day in such names as Mast Landing at Freeport. Although in the latter half of the 17th century, the mouth of the Piscataqua at Portsmouth and Kittery was the chief shipping point for masts, by the middle of the 18th century, Georgetown, Jonesport, and Portland saw many tall pines brought to their landings. It did not take long, for lands near the coast to lose all their big pines, and lumbermen had to go farther and farther inland for the best masts.

As we have already said, carrying masts across the Atlantic was more of a task than transporting even smaller timbers across the Baltic and the North Sea. That caused the development of specially built ships, many of which were constructed in New England.

They were vessels of 600 to 1,000 tons burden, and were for that time so large that they became the ocean liners of their day, carrying passengers, wood, general cargoes, and mail. To prevent interference from the French and Dutch, the New England mast ships often sailed in convoys, protected by a British frigate.

The first official act to protect the mast trees came in 1685, when the British government ordered Massachusetts to support a Surveyor of Pines and Timber in Maine. Six years later, the new Massachusetts royal charter of 1691 reserved to the Crown all pines measuring 24 or more inches in diameter 12 inches above the ground. But that act applied only to trees on land not previously granted to any private person. The difficulty with this seemingly innocent act was that, as late as the close of the first quarter of the 18th century in 1725, there was little private land in Maine. Most of it was in the public domain, as yet ungranted by the Massachusetts government decreed

So what was known as the Act of 1729 was the cause of future trouble. That allowed in any township now laid out or to be laid out hereafter in Maine, the Surveyor of Pines and Timber should mark as property of the Crown such pines of more than 24 inch diameter as he should deem fit for Naval masts.

To the Maine colonists, for whom lumbering was a major, and in many instances, the only remunerative occupation, the great pines had many uses other than masts. Thus many fine mast trees went to the local sawmills. For the royal edict to interfere with colonists’ rights on land they received by grant or purchase was considered intolerable by those early Maine pioneers. Every time a Maine settler went into the woods and saw every big pine marked with the King’s Broad Arrow, his resentment increased. That resentment, added to British treatment of Boston and the imposition of various taxes, brought on the Revolution.

Now for another aspect of the influence of the Revolution on Colonial Maine. Even before the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, there had been setup throughout New England what were called Committees of Correspondence, sometimes representing a single town, sometimes a group of towns. They were designed to encourage common cause in interests of defense, but they often became media of complaint to the government in Boston. All too frequently such a committee appealed to the Governor to be relieved of taxes or of any further demands for clothing and food for the Continental Army.

In one instance, near the close of the Revolution, a whole Maine county sent such a petition to Boston. In February 1872 the County of Lincoln’s petition said in part: “The uncommon scarcity of bread two years since drained our inhabitants of the little silver they had. Large quantities of masts, spars and other lumber, procured at great expense, have for several years been decaying on our shores for want of opportunity to export them. Last summer we had the most severe drought since this settlement was made. By it, every product of the earth was greatly diminished, and many of our people are now destitute of bread and have no prospect of procuring it. Our farms, by no means sufficient to afford the necessities of life in the best seasons, have seen the little they usually produce devastated by drought and swarms of worms. We are already greatly in arrears to many requisitions from the government supply because we could not comply with them in our extreme distress. Your petitioners therefore humbly entreat you to grant us exemption and relief.”

That petition, and there were many others like it, makes it all too clear that it was poverty, not lack of patriotism, that made many Maine communities contribute little to the Revolutionary cause. It is not remarkable that they did little; it is remarkable that they did anything at all. In the then tiny community around Fort Halifax, the women knitted stockings and other garments, cloth laboriously woven on hand looms was contributed, and in-at least one instance, a dozen barrels of salted beef went to the Continental Army. In support of the struggle for independence, the nearly destitute Maine settlements did all that they could.

It is true that Maine’s larger towns, all the way from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec, had by 1770 three distinct classes of people: first, the wealthy merchants, traders and mill owners; second, the few well educated men, some of them, even including the clergy, also men of means; and third, the great majority of the people, poor and ignorant. Take for example Pownalborough, the first town established on the Kennebec above Merrymeeting Bay. As early as 1762 its handsome three-story courthouse had been built in what is now the town of Dresden. In 1770, Pownalborough had about 150 families, but no school. Destitute of secular instruction, though they did have a minister, the people were mostly illiterate and very poor. They lived in wretched huts, many without chimneys. Many children had to go barefoot all winter. Beds were commonly heaps of straw on the dirt floor.

Yet, in that same frontier town were three members of the Harvard Class of 1755- Charles Cushing, the merchant and landowner; Jonathan Bowman, the court magistrate, and Rev. Jacob Bailey, the minister.

When the Revolution broke out, many a Maine town had in it wealth and poverty, learning and ignorance, side by side.

It is hard for us to comprehend how small and scattered were Maine communities at the time of the Revolution. In 1765, the British Lords of Trade ordered a Massachusetts census. Previous to 1760, there had been only two counties in the Massachusetts District of Maine – York and Cumberland. Then in 1760 was created Lincoln County with Ponwallborough as the county seat. That county had a huge area, much different than Maine’s Lincoln County of today. It contained all the rest of Maine from the Androscoggin and Kennebec to the St. Croix and the Bay of Fundy. In that entire huge area the provincial census of 1765 showed only 4,347 people.

Why did that petition of 1782 complain about rotting lumber on the shores of Maine? The petition said, “lack of opportunity to export it.” What that statement meant was that trade was greatly hindered by the seizure of Maine vessels by British navy and privateers. But in spite of the risk, there was considerable trade along the coast. Ironically, we know that because of the record of ships captured by the enemy.

Ships in process of building were small. There was always danger that a raiding British vessel would land a crew near a shipyard and burn the vessels under construction. That happened at Castine, at Machias, and even some distance up the Penobscot in 1778.

But relief came with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, Maine lumber no longer had to rot on the shore.

Year: 1976