The Royal Navy’s war on trees
STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE
For almost two centuries through the American Revolution, the War of 1812, wars with France, wars with Spain and dozens of other wars, conquests and explorations, Britannia ruled the waves thanks largely to the mighty oak.
At the zenith of Horatio Nelson’s navy in the late-1700s into the 1800s, it took about 4,000 oak trees, or up to 40 hectares of forest, to build a single 100-gun ship of the line. That’s equivalent to 3,750 city blocks of optimum-density oak forest for a vessel that, on average, sailed for 12 years.
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