The Aroostook War of 1839 was the last armed clash in Maine, with Britain, over mast timber. The boundary with New Brunswick (Canada) was set by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. During the remainder of the Age of Sail, America's own demand for masts & spars finally exhausted the easily-available supply of appropriate timber in the USA's Northeast. (easily-available meant relatively-short oxen-teaming distances to-or-from those lakes-&-rivers that could offer relatively-easy access toward the seacoast.) Therefore, the quest for easier-to-get mastwood gradually proceeded ever-westward.
Technically, the term spar is superior to & more generic than mast, a mast actually being only a tall vertical spar. Spars are defined in nautical dictionaries as being the general term for masts, yards, booms, gaffs, bowsprits, etc. -- anything pole-like, in any direction, that supports rigging & sails. What follows here now are excerpts from an 1893 newspaper account of a Portland man's sixty-year career in making spars of all sorts, from start to finish, from tree to ship. Please remember that the present in this account means over a century ago to us today.
PORTLAND TRANSCRIPT, 6 September 1893 / PILLARS OF PORTLAND, #36
JOHN BRADFORD -- SIXTY YEARS A SPAR-MAKER (excerpts only)
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"John Bradford was born in Portland in 1809 and is therefore 84 years of age. After a boyhood in the common schools he began to work with his father, who was a spar-maker. But the latter died when his son was 16 years old, and John worked at his trade for other parties until he was 20 years of age when he began for himself in a small way.
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"His business steadily increased. Along in the fifties [1850s] he was employing twenty to thirty men in his yard, and was the leading spar-maker in the city. At that time his old account books show that he was 'sparring' every year from twenty to thirty of the little brigs and barks and ships then engaged in the West India trade. Reckoning twenty-five spars to a vessel, gives a total of from 500 to 750 huge forest giants to be hewn into shapely columns. At the least estimate it cost the owners $500 to have a vessel 'sparred' which gives a total of from $10,000 to $15,000 worth of business annually, to say nothing of the extensive repair work and various other accessories; and that amount meant more than it does today.
"Contrast the situation with the present time [1893]. Nine years ago [1884] Mr Bradford retired from his business, after sixty years of unremitting and successful devotion to it. His son, John K, almost an old man himself now, has taken his place at the old shop. Now there is not even an average of one vessel 'sparred' in a year; where the elder John Bradford could once see from his shop door six shipyards close at hand on the shore, each with a vessel in the process of construction, that he was to complete with his shapely spars, the younger John Bradford sees none at all. But when he does 'spar' a vessel now it means more than in the olden time. Our great schooners are bigger than the ships of before the war [Civil War] and their masts are almost fabulously valuable compared to prices of that time.
"The last vessel 'sparred' in Portland was about two years ago [1891]. It was a four masted schooner. The 'sparring' cost the owners $2400. For the four masts themselves, without the topmasts, Mr Bradford paid $1700. They came from Oregon and were 94 feet in length and 37 inches in diameter. There is a little incident about them. During the great fire on the Berlin Mills lumber wharf they lay at the head of the wharf. Everybody advised Mr Bradford to roll them into the water and many men proffered assistance, but he refused to do so. The docks were full of blazing timber and he knew that the great logs would be spoiled. Left where they were (they were too immense to be hauled away) they might escape. And they did, as the fire did not reach them.
"Since Mr Simonton removed from the city, three years ago [1890], Mr Bradford has been the only spar-maker here. For a decade before that there were only those two. The work now is only repairing and not much of that. The son employs but three men where his father once employed thirty. Across the harbor, on the Cape shore [South Portland], is another spar shed that has not been used for twenty years. Once the son directed the labors of fifteen men there while his father had as many more on the other side. xxx During the war [Civil War] there was a great deal of ship building and as prices were high his [JB sr's] business was more generous at that time than ever before or since. Masts brought $450 then, that sold for only $250 afterward.
"During Mr Bradford's 60 years of spar-making he has seen the forests stripped of mast timber from one side of the continent to the other; that is, has seen the source of his supply of raw materials change from Scarboro, Gorham, and Bridgton to Oregon. In the beginning of his business, back in the thirties [1830s], he procured his timber in the forests surrounding this city [Portland]. In the next decade he began to look to Canada for a supply and before the war [Civil War] he sent to Pennsylvania after the Susquehanna masts, so called. Since the war the forests of Michigan have been stripped of mast timber and now the majority of the masts of our great schooners are the red pines of Oregon, that cost not infrequently $500 apiece when delivered here on the cars [railroad].
"There is a great difference in the nature of the wood from these different localities. In the early days, if one of the great white pine masts that grew in Maine or Canada, began to rot after ten years of service, it would have been declared rotten when first placed in the vessel. Mr Bradford has seen many 15 years old as sound as when felled in the forest. But the Susquehanna and Michigan masts frequently had to be replaced after four years. The Oregon masts however are declared to be imperishable. They do rot sometimes, but nevertheless are quite as durable as the 'pumpkin' pine of Maine.
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"The following incident illustrates something of Mr Bradford's business methods in the early days. He made his profits by buying his mast timber at a good bargain. During the winters he spent most of his time in the woods in Cumberland and York counties getting out his timber. On one occasion he learned that some Saccarappa [Westbrook] lumbermen had bought a forest lot in Bridgton for $10 a thousand. He found that among the trees were an unusual number of masts. He offered the men $20 a thousand for all the 'masts' on the lot. They agreed. He was to exercise the usual custom of discarding a tree after it was cut if it did not prove suitable for a mast. It was of no consequence to the owner of the lot since all but the masts was to be sawed into lumber. Another man took the contract to cut the timber and haul it out to Sebago Lake to be rafted across and sent down the Presumpscot. Mr Bradford felt that he must look after this man or he would lose many of his masts, for the reason that it is very much easier and cheaper to haul a tree if cut up into sections than in one entire piece. He went to Bridgton and found, just as he expected, that the man was cutting up the masts with the rest and hauling them out to be sawed up by the mill. His protests were in vain, and since he couldn't stay there and watch him he knew very well that the other had the better of him.
" 'See here, Goodrich,' said he, 'you know I've contracted to buy all the masts in this lot, and that I can't help your cutting them up, because it's cheaper for you to haul out this timber in that way. I'll give you $250 if you'll save my masts.'
" 'Bradford, I'll do it,' said Goodrich.
"This illustrates how valuable and how scarce mast timber was even in those early days. Mr Bradford made an excellent bargain when he bought those Bridgton masts for $20 a thousand.
"It remains only to be said of Mr Bradford's business life that he became an extensive owner in shipping by taking his pay for masts in shares of the vessel, and at one time owned [shares] in ten different ships, and also that during his six decades of extensive operations he was never [financially] embarrased in a single instance. He has been somewhat prominent in municipal politics as a Republican in years gone by and served two years in the city council. He was also one of the board of governors of the poor for many years.
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"None of the white pines of Maine or the red giants of Oregon that he has prepared for service has ever been a more substantial pillar...than has he himself [Mr B] for the business interests of Portland.
"If when now he visits the quiet spar-yard and reflects with sadness upon the busy scenes of the past that will never return, he should remember...with...satisfaction, 'I have lived a good life. I have finished my work.'"
[The 1893 article-in-full was both transcribed from microfilm printouts (an arduous task) and most graciously given to me (AHM) for use in this website, by maritime historian Nicholas Dean of Edgecomb, Maine. His generosity has made possible an immensely greater circulation of this tasty slice of the past than ever could have been imagined by its original writer or subject. John Bradford, may your masts & spars never rot on the sea of Cyberspace! -- AHM]
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