DRY ROT IN SHIPS.
245
result. One of the subjects to which they paid particular
attention was the effect of the time of felling on the durability
of timber. This problem was constantly to the fore until the
ironclad period. All the dockyards preferred winter-felled oak
for warships, and the reasons given by learned men to account
for its superiority often equalled those given by practical men
to explain their preference. Amongst the ancients Hesiod,
Theophrastus, Pliny and Columnella advocated the winter,
Cato the end of summer and Vitruvius the autumn as the proper
period for felling trees. Winter felling was an invariable practice
in this country until the first year of the reign of James I, when
to encourage tanning it was forbidden to fell between April 1st
and June 30th under the penalty of the forfeiture of the trees,
or double their money value, except for that timber which was
required for the ships, mills and houses belonging to the King.
Pepys "occasioned by something I had observed by him
"said in a History by him lately wrote of Staffordshire" invited
Robert Plot to write a discourse for the satisfaction of his
Majesty touching the most seasonable time for felling timber.
Plot wrote: "It is found by long Experience, that the Trunk
"and Body of the Trees, when barked in the Spring, and left
"standing, naked, all the Summer exposed to the Sun and Wind,
"are so dried and hardened, that the Sappy Part in a Manner
"becomes as firm and durable as the Heart itself." The
Commissioners were informed that the King "would be well
"content that a Trial should be made in the Royal Forests
"of the efficacy of the proposal of Dr. Plot." Bushey Park
was selected, but the King being deposed the following year
the experiment was abandoned. The authorities at Portsmouth
in 1717 even offered a bounty of 5 per cent addition to the
price for oak felled in winter, to compensate for the loss of the
bark.
Buffon in 1738 recommended that trees should not be felled
until the third year after the bark was stripped. Advocates
of the superiority of winter felling gave great weight to the
supposed use of winter oak in the Royal Sovereign. This ship
was built very slowly in 1635-7 with timber from the north of
England assumed by Pepys and others to have been stripped
of bark and winter-felled. Plot, fifty years afterwards, found
the timbers still sound and so hard that a nail could hardly be