which is beyond the scope of the present report.” Studies carried out on the timber trade in New Brunswick and other parts of British North America”, indicate that from its beginning, the trade was very much dependant on the demand for wood in Great Britain, and though there was a general increase in the British requirement for wood throughout the nineteenth century, there were also periods of economic depression, sometimes lasting several years, when demand fell. We may thus presume that the ups and downs of the trade evident in the rest of British North America would also have been felt on the island, though an additional factor operating on the island was the limited Supply of timber, especially of the pine and spruce favoured by the trade. Thus in the 18308, when, during a period of expansion of the trade elsewhere and a higher British demand for wood, Samuel Hill (the son of John), as well as others, stated the timber trade to be in decline on the island, due to the increasing scarcity of the natural ’staple' of the trade, i.e. wood suitable for export, this is likely to have been true.616 For there was only a finite supply of white pine, the preferred tree of the ton-timber trade, and other contemporary comments suggest that

6” A preliminary examination of the Prince Edward Island custom

records indicates that there is a wealth of information available in the PARO that has never been analysed. We have the annual summaries of the total wood exported each year from the island, subdivided into various categories — ‘timber‘, ‘boards and planks', ‘spars', ‘staves', ‘Iathwood', ‘scantling‘ and ‘shingles‘ are the most frequently listed categories [PARO: CO. 231, and Journals of the House of Assembly]. More usefully, the data from which these totals were compiled survive elsewhere in the form of the cargo of each individual ship, as declared for customs l have examined these only for the years from 1802 to 1808, and I give as an example of what is recorded the entry for one ship: 20 October 1802, the Penelope, Sam'l Bryan [captain], for London, with a cargo of “237 Tons of Black Birch, Beech, Maple and Pine Square Timber; 12 Tons of Pine; 9 masts; 7 bowsprits; 570 handspikes; 370 pieces of lathwood; 3 spars; 32 pine boards; 86 beech planks" [PARO: RC. 9: Collector of Customs. Shipping outwards, all points, 1802-1827]. In making use of these records, it should be borne in mind that questions were raised about the accuracy of the customs records even by persons of the day (see Bittermann (1991) (p. 33, footnote 27) for a reference to some of the critical contemporary comment in the 1820s.)

6‘5 Lower (1973) and Wynn (1981). 6‘5 Bouchette 1832: “In all new wilderness countries the timber trade is the first object of attraction; but the quantity that has been felled [on the island], and the small proportion of uncleared land that remains, have reduced the timber trade of this colony to a trifling amount"; Murray 1839: “the timber-trade [on the island], [has] decayed, not only from general causes lowering its profits, but because the wood fitted for the market was supposed to be nearly exhausted"; Hill 1839: “The timber trade of Bedeque was once considerable; but little, or no more, of the staple of that branch of commerce remains; it still lingers in the western districts of the island".

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from the 18205 that supply was getting low on the islands”. Though the trade seems to have been later diverted for a time into other woods such as tamarack and yellow birch (see below), by 1860 the statement of a witness to the Land Commission that ”the trade in timber is now done on this Island, so we must now look upon the country solely in an agricultural point of view”, cannot have been far from the truth. 6‘8

It should be noted that early on, as will be described below, the timber trade gave birth to a second export industry based on the forests of the island: the building of wooden ships for sale in the British ship market. In economic terms this was a more advanced industry, going, as it did, beyond the simple exporting of a natural forest product. Instead, utilising — and rewarding financially — island craftmanship and skill, it converted some of that same forest material into a much higher quality and more valuable product, bringing in as a result an even greater income to the island. Not only this, but the ships themselves on their maiden voyage to the English ship markets were loaded with island timber for sale in Britain, while some of the ships were retained in island ownership to participate directly in the timber trade. In addition, an important side-effect of the timber-trade that proved especially beneficial to the island was that the ship-owners, instead of sending their vessels from the British Isles with empty holds, began to actively recruit emigrants to fill the ships, with the result that the timber trade to Britain played a very important role in accelerating the settlement of the island.619

617 MacGregor (1828), while noting that “white pine [had] for

many years formed an important article of export to Britain", added, pointedly, that “there is not however, at present, more growing on the island than will be required by the inhabitants for house- building, ship-building, and other purposes"; while a decade later Samuel Hill (1839) observed that, though “formerly very plentiful", the island's white pine had been “nearly all cut down and exported" — except, he said, “in the district of Cascumpec".

6‘3 Land Commission 1860: evidence of William McGowan of Lots 44 and 45. McGowan in the same submission referred, perhaps with some nostalgia, to “the years pine timber was made" — those years were clearly in the past by 1860.

6‘9 This is a subject into which several historians have begun to make inroads, but it has yet to receive the in-depth study that it merits. For comments on the effect of the timber trade on immigration to the island from Scotland see Bumsted (1982) (p. 192); and especially Campey (2001) (Chapters IV and VII, and pp. 10-12, 47, 78); for its effect on immigration from England, see Elliot (1996) and (1997); also see O'Grady (2005) (p. 163) for an Irish example.