Gedanken zur Holzversorgung von Werften an der Nord- und Ostsee im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit

Abstract

"In the early Middle Ages, ships could be built wherever a limited range of wood types (primarily oak) was available on the coast. The larger ships of later centuries, however, ideally required the wood of several different types of trees. The hulls were built of oak; the crooked oak wood used in constructing the bent frames of the hulls was increasingly obtainable from the copses that grew near the large cities and on the rivers of Central Europe. Due to its much lower volumetric weight, coniferous wood was much better suited for masts. This wood can be more easily transported by floating, and ships built in part with coniferous wood are lighter and easier to maneuver. Coniferous wood was not uniformly available to the shipyards in the various port cities of Central Europe. Pine, spruce and fir trees in Southern Germany provided the softwood that was floated to the mouth of the Rhine. Shipbuilders on the mouth of the Elbe imported it from Bohemia and the pine forests of Eastern Central Europe. It was also possible to transport the wood of pines and spruces on the rivers flowing into the Baltic Sea further east. ln the Baltic Provinces, Finland and Scandinavia, spruce and pine wood grew quite near the coast. On the other hand, little or no coniferous wood could be floated down the rivers Ems and Weser. Scotland was the only area of the British lsles with a natural supply of pine wood. The discrepancies in the availability of wood were most apparent during the High and Late Middle Ages, a period when the volume of wood trade by sea was still limited. At that time, the shipyards of the Netherlands were thus clearly at an advantage with regard to wood supply. ln later times the differences in wood availability on the coast were compensated by seaborne wood trade." (author's abstract)