The Incredible Engineering of the Mainmast: 120 FEET TALL, ZERO WHOLE TREES

The mainmast of a first-rate flagship stood about 120 feet tall, weighed up to 20 tons and was roughly 40 inches thick at the lower deck. Yet there was not a single whole tree at its core: no pine that grew could carry that load on its own. This is the engineering of the 'made mast'. We follow the Broad Arrow pines of New England, claimed for the King's navy under a £100 penalty, the mast ponds of the Portsmouth dockyard, and the joinery that fitted four to eight timbers so tightly a knife blade could not slip between them. Then come the red-hot iron hoops shrunk onto the mast with buckets of seawater, the hidden rot inside a column that could cost £1,000, a storm that drives some three hundred tons of compression down into the keel, the moment the rigging gives way and the mast breaks, and why hollow steel tubes finally replaced it. Sources quoted in the video: Brian Lavery, Robert G. Albion, James Lees, David Steel's 1794 rigging manual.