Naval Logistics In Colonial America

In February 1740, Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, who stayed in Port Royal in Jamaica after the victory in Port Bello, ordered Captain Perceval of the Astrea to transport American masts and naval stores from Boston. This order did not contribute to any glorious victory, but the dispatch of the Astrea to New England during the War of Jenkins’ Ear was the first case that the Royal Navy attempted to provide the overseas naval base with naval stores from North America directly. Therefore, her voyage and the views concerned with the Astrea explicate that the navy’s view about the naval logistics in the 1730s and 1740s and how the navy exploited naval stores production in Colonial America resulting from the naval stores policy in the eighteenth century. The construction and the repair of much number of ships required large quantities of naval stores, such as masts, pitch, tar, and hemp, and the demand for naval stores in wartime escalated rapidly, but Britain could not sufficiently produce these commodities in its main land. Therefore, before the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, England depended on the import from Sweden, Norway, and Russia for almost of all naval stores, and after the Treaties of Utrecht, besides these countries, Colonial America supplied enormous amount of pitch and tar for the British market. Moreover,
The first is that the Royal Navy attached slight weight to American naval stores. Many studies dealing with the naval stores trade and the naval stores policy assert that the navy undervalued American naval stores except for great masts, a large quantity of which was imported from New England until the independence of America, and that the navy preferred Swedish pitch and tar to American commodities on the ground of the good quality of Swedish