The Wood Age by Roland Ennos
This is good. This is very good, and full of bits and pieces of information, fun comments and a breadth of knowledge that is so rich.
Most enjoyable.
A quick quote, the discussion was of the problems of acquiring straight tall trees for masts for sailing ships....mind we're an island and the masts and sails were the engines of the great ships....anyway, but the mid 1600's we were importing them from the virgin American forests....Pepys wrote,
"There is also the very good news come of four New England ships come home safe to Falmouth with masts for the King; which is a blessing mighty unexpected, and without which, if nothing else, we must have failed the next year. But God be praised for thus much good fortune, and send us the contiunance of his favour in other things.
Ah, but the tale doesn't end there, because the Colonists themselves were in need of timber and it was much easier to cut it up than extract and export huge balks.....so the British Govt., interfered, and instead of being smart and buying land and actively managing it themselves imposed a moratorium on the colonists felling anything bigger than 24" diameter...that belonged to the King, and was marked with an arrow made of three axe strikes into the tree....the symbol still used for British military goods
I love this kind of minutiae, of detail, of connections of how it all came about.
Good book, well written, eminently pick up-able and catch up again later.
). I am a big fan of this collection and this explains why I read most of those authors...in French.
