State

We Led The World In Naval Stores North Carolinians are called "Tar Heels” for good reasons. By JULIA M. STREET Tar. pilch, rosin and turpentine are listed among the first merchantable commodities by Thomas Hariot. Sir Walter Raleigh's publicist and histo¬ rian of his proposed colonization of the New World. In his "Briefe and True Report of The New Found Land of Virginia." published in England in 1587, Hariot says: "Tar. pitch, rosin and turpentine. There are those kinds of trees that yield them abundantly and in great store. In the very same island (Roanoake) where we are seated, being fifteen miles in length and five or six miles in breadth there arc few trees else but of the same kind, the while island being full." Although the earlier permanent col¬ onists (1660s) in the Cape Fear and Albemarle regions of the Colony of North Carolina may not have exploited the naval stores potential, by the early 1700s the industry had become firmly established. And at the end of the Co¬ lonial period the colony was providing three fifths of all naval stores shipped from all the colonics. From 1720 until well into the later 1800s. according to Colonial North Carolina- Lefler and Powell. (Scrib¬ ners 1973) North Carolina led the world in the production of naval stores — tar. pitch, rosin and turpentine. King's Navy Needed Tar As early as 1705 the English Parlia¬ ment passed the Naval Stores Bounty Act authorizing payment of generous subsidies on tar. pitch, rosin and tur¬ pentine. Tar and pitch were essential for caulking the seams of wooden sail¬ ing vessels and rosin and turpentine for other uses, and England recognized in her colonics, especially North Caro¬ lina. a bountiful source. Thus she was no longer dependent upon Sweden and the Baltic countries for the high-priced commodity. Inspection laws were in¬ stituted. but were more or less winked-at. since the King's Navy needed caulking materials too badly to quibble over bits of trash in the tar barrel. Pine trees that covered tens of thousands of acres in the colony fur¬ nished the raw material for the naval stores industries. There were about ten varieties of pines growing, but the long-leaf pine was the most favored variety for extracting tar and turpen¬ tine. Turpentine was obtained from the living tree by cutting Vs in the bark and collecting the exuding semi-solid re¬ sinous materials, then distilling the crude product into turpentine, much as whisky is distilled in moonshine opera¬ tions. The solids that adhered to the troughs were rosins. Tar from the heart of dead pine wood, known as lightwood because torches made from it were frequently used to furnish light when candles were scarce, was burned out in kilns. Pitch was the concentrated form of tar. Barrel Making An extensive lumber business, as an outgrowth to the naval stores industry, sprung up in the colonies. Trees that were bled dry could be sawed up into lumber and made into barrels, untold numbers of w hich were needed to ex¬ port not only naval stores, but most other commodities such as tobacco and pork. Indeed, barrels were re¬ quired for exporting most products; and as many as a hundred thousand hogsheads and barrels were used in one year in the North Carolina Colony, for naval stores alone. The production of naval stores was well suited to both the plantation owner and to the small farmer. In bad weather or when not needed in the fields, slaves were sent to the piney woods to build sap boxes, ready pine trees for the drip, prepare kilns and fell and chop up used trees for extracting tar. The small landowner, who did his own work, also took to the piney woods when weather was unsuitable for farming. He prepared his own kilns and sap boxes and burned his own tar for sale. He usually had to buy barrels for shipping, made by slaves, but now and then a farmer and his sons went into the cooperage (barrel-making) business, adding substantially their in¬ comes. The farmers' felling of pines for tar¬ burning served another purpose as well. The more trees he cut down, the more acres he could cultivate for food, tobacco and cotton. Other reasons than the great abun¬ dance of pine trees contributed to the \4 THE state. October 1976