Boris Gudenuf
Deity
To quote "The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652 - 1862" from the journal, Mariner's Mirror, Volume 38, 1952 Issue 1:
"a British ship-of-the-line in the eighteenth century . . . her great mainmast had been cut in the forests of New England or Canada; her topmasts had been grown in the Ukraine; the lesser spars came from the slopes of some Norwegian mountain . . . the planking of her sides had floated down the Vistula to Danzig, while the curved frame timbers which gave shape to her hull . . . had come from tough hedgerow oaks in Sussex . . ."
So, yes, they had to go far afield to get enough of the right kind of timber to build a wooden warship. I believe the rule of thumb was that just the hull framing required 40 acres of 'mature oaks' which is why several thousand acres of oak forest in England was set aside for the sole use of the Royal Navy in the 18th century.
Specifically, Britain lacked the "long cold winters and the short hot summers essential to the growing of good mast timber . . ." - so the use of timber from Canada or New England, two areas that fit that climate description, should come as no surprise.
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