Short Trees and Short Timbers
Nantucket, Massachusetts island lies 30 miles off the southern coastline of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1775, Nantucket was the largest whaling Port in the world, and the third largest port in Massachusetts. However, dominance in this most adventurous, dangerous and potentially lucrative of all maritime trades was not supported by an extensive, local, ship building industry. Early Nantucket Forests were unusual and determined the scope of indigenous and colonial wooden ship building on Nantucket Island. Nantucket island has not been home to forests of tall trees for at least 4,000 years. Continual salt spray and the absence of a rich loam soil forced an unusual dwarf morphology on trees such as oak, beech, cedar and pine. Architectural and ship building timbers of large size were not available to the early European and American colonists of Nantucket island nor to the indigenous Wampanoag who made canoes and used offshore waters, rivers and streams to hunt and fish throughout the year.
Read more about this topic: Nantucket Shipbuilding
Famous quotes containing the words short, trees and/or timbers:
“I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man’s power for life only from a present capricious inclination.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Bright yellow, red, and orange,
The leaves come down in hosts;
The trees are Indian princes,
But soon they’ll turn to ghosts;”
—William Allingham (1824–1889)
“I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg- shell on the rocks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)