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NAVAL STORES: THE INDUSTRY 



JAY WARD 



Naval stores are the derivatives of 

 the crude gum oleoresin that comes 

 from living pine trees, pine stumps, 

 and dead lightwood. Some are byprod- 

 ucts from sulfate pulp mills. The term 

 is limited generally to turpentine and 

 rosin, but it can be said to cover pine 

 tar, pine oil, and rosin oils. In the trade, 

 the product from living pine trees is 

 known as gum naval stores; the prod- 

 uct from stumps, lightwood, and pulp 

 mills is called wood naval stores. In 

 Colonial days, gum was cooked down 

 to a thick tar and used to preserve the 

 ropes and calk the seams of the ships 

 and from that we got the name "naval 

 stores" for the products used now in a 

 hundred ways unconnected with ships. 



The gum naval stores industry, at its 

 peak in 1908-9, produced 750,000 bar- 

 rels (50 gallons each) of gum spirits of 

 turpentine and 1,998,400 drums of gum 

 rosin (520 pounds net weight each). 

 The United States in normal times sup- 

 plies the world with one-half its needs 

 for turpentine and rosin. Since 1938, 

 the production of gum naval stores has 

 fallen off considerably. The industry in 

 1947-48 produced 294,028 barrels of 

 turpentine and 828,128 drums of rosin, 

 bringing a total return to the South of 

 39 million dollars. 



The naval stores industry is rooted 

 in antiquity. It antedates the Christian 

 era in the Mediterranean countries. 

 Early historians wrote of the process 

 then used: How the natives gathered 

 the resins or gums of the trees in that 

 region and cooked them in open pots 

 until a thick pitch was left in the bot- 

 tom; how they stretched fleecy sheep- 

 skins over the tops of the pots to catch 

 the oily vapors that arose from the 

 boiling gum, and then wrung out the 

 wet fleece to recover the oils ; and how 

 the oils were used in many products, 

 one of which was for varnish for mum- 

 mies. Genesis records that Noah was 

 commanded by the Lord : "Make thee 



an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt 

 thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch 

 it within and without with pitch." 



When Columbus discovered Amer- 

 ica, the center of production in Europe 

 extended from Scandinavia through 

 the Baltic countries. From them came 

 quantities of tar and pitch for use by 

 the fleets of wooden sailing vessels of 

 all the European nations. King Phillip 

 of Spain drew from this source for 

 his Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth 

 drew from it for her British fleet. One 

 of the basic commodities sought by the 

 Europeans in the New World was a 

 source of naval stores for their ships. 



Turpentining is one of the oldest 

 and most picturesque of American in- 

 dustries. The production of tar, pitch, 

 rosin, and turpentine started when 

 the first settlers landed on the Atlan- 

 tic coast. The report of Sir Walter 

 Raleigh's first expedition to America in 

 1584 referred to "the great forests of 

 pine of species unknown to Europe 

 until found in the New World." The 

 report of the second expedition men- 

 tioned once again "the trees that 

 yielded pitch, tar, rosin, and turpen- 

 tine in great store." 



In 1608 eight Dutchmen were sent 

 to Virginia to make pitch, tar, soap, 

 and rosin. Two years earlier, in 1606, 

 the French were drawing turpentine 

 gum from the trees of Nova Scotia. In 

 The Maine Woods, Thoreau told about 

 the tar burners of New England. One 

 of the earliest acts of the Pilgrim 

 Fathers was to request in 1628 that 

 "men skylful in the making of pitch" 

 be sent to them from England. The 

 Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Col- 

 onies produced great quantities of tar 

 and pitch from their beginning as 

 colonies, as did all the other North 

 Atlantic colonies from Maine to New 

 Jersey. The first tar burners in New 

 England and later on in North Caro- 

 lina used the dead and down wood, or, 



