I read a book about the underlying issues of the American revolution. One of the military needs back in the day was naval vessels which were made out of wood. One of the critical parts is the bow where the sides come together at the bow. They would use the crotch of a full size tree to tie the two sides together. So the bow of a boat consisted of a stack of these unique chunks of wood and were necessary for boat building.View attachment 1421775 You can stumble around on the East coast yer whole life and never see wood like this.
One of the complaints of the Americans was that Britain would send teams over here who razed entire forests and took only the critical crotch of the tree. There were entire ships whose only cargo was these future bow pieces.
The Americans couldn’t have a boat building industry or a navy if they could not have the raw materials to produce them