The Broad Arrow Policies


Harbour of Casco Bay, Portland, 1720

Harbour of Casco Bay, Portland, 1720
Item 100303   info
Tate House Museum

Great Britain's sailors first set eyes on Falmouth in Casco Bay in the 1650s, at the height of the British mast trade. By 1650, Dutch commercial interests had seriously threatened the British timber supply in the Baltic Sea, where mast agents had harvested pine trees for the Royal Navy since the Middle Ages.

With the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654), the Royal Admiralty sent the first dispatch to New England in 1652 to begin harvesting white pine trees in the British colonies. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was long a source of trees accessible from the Piscataqua River.

By 1727, however, the region had been overharvested and the trade moved north and east, establishing Falmouth in Casco Bay as its center.

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