masting operations in New France — for having paid out the money, the product that arrived at the dockyards at Rochefort often proved unusable — if it arrived at all. If the Marine had analysed the reasons for their failure to successfully exploit the mast resource of New France, they might have realised, as we can certainly do from hindsight, that the solution was a considerable investment in the infrastructure needed to support such masting operations — as private British entrepreneurs were later to do.102 And this leads us to the root of the problem: the department of the Marine simply did not have the finances to invest in the infrastructure needed to exploit the mast resource, and the reason for this lay with a level of government outside the control of the Marine and its minister. The ultimate cause of the failure of France to exploit the mast resource of its North American empire, can be traced to the military priorities of Louis XIV and his great grand-son, Louis XV, who in succession occupied the throne of France for 131 years (1643-1774). Louis XIV's political ambitions, and the wars in which it involved him, lay on the continent of Europe — the Hapsburg monarchies of Spain and Austria were viewed as the chief enemym. In these wars the navy was always considered of secondary importance to the army, and as a result it was chronically under- funded.104 The navy got even shorter shrift after the accession of Louis XV in 1715, when, with a rising public debt, the finances of the Marine were squeezed even further.‘°5 Thus the various ministers of the Marine — and from 1723 to 1749 it was the Count of Maurepas106 — were always trying to manage the diverse responsibilities of their department on a severely restricted budget. Except under Colbert in the 16605107, and after the accession of the more navy-friendly Louis XVI in 1774“)", the Marine always had a funding "’2 Eccles (1964) (p. 216) writes: “Considering that [lumbering] was an infant industry, requiring considerable capital outlay, high initial costs were to be expected." But he makes no further comment. "’3 Bamford 1956, p. 5. 104 Miquelon 1987, p. 89. (See also McLennan 1918, p. 295). 105 Bamford 1956, p. 7. 106 Artaud 1861, pp. 401-02; Miquelon 1987, pp. 90-91. 107 Bamford 1956, pp. 4—5. 108 Bamford 1956, pp. 8-9. 171 problem. And it was this under-funding that played a key role in all the attempts to develop a mast supply in the New World. In the end, given the limited funds available, it was safer for the Marine to spend its mast budget in the Baltic market, where, even if the masts were more expensive, their quality was more certain Thus ultimately it was the wider strategic policy of the French government with regard to a perceived foreign enemy, based partly on the whims of the king in an absolute monarchy, that in the 17205 helped to save the pines of Savage Harbour and elsewhere on the island from the axes of the Marine. Whether Prince Edward Island, given its small size and the limited area of its pine forests, would have ever been able to supply a significant number of masts to the French navy is doubtful. And we will never know whether the rest of the island's pine resource would have fared any better with the mast inspectors at Rochefort than did the shipment of 1728. In the end the impact of the operation on the island’s timber resources was negligible. The felling appears to have been confined to a small area not far from the Hillsborough River along the portage to Savage Harbour (see Endnote 1 and Figure 3-1). It had consisted of only a dozen pine trees in 1727, followed by 200 or so in 1728, and the evidence suggests these were all of red pine1°9. We may thus presume that most of the pines at Savage Harbour were left standing. However, they were not to stand for long. Within fourteen years there were two major forest fires in the north-east of the island, in 1736 and 1742“° — "’9 Mézy’s letter of 14 November 1728 implies that the masts in the 1728 shipment were all of red pine. Evidence that red pine was also the species harvested in the earlier masting operation of the Company of lle Saint-Jean is provided by Saint-Ovide‘s letter of December 1725 (Saint-Ovide 1725218 December) in which he says that the 400 to 500 masts taken by the Company were “tous de pin rouge" — the source of his information, he says, being the charpenfier involved in the felling. The same letter also implies that these were taken somewhere up the Hillsborough River. Also relevant is Pensen's 12 August 1727 statement that the survey of that summer (which was preliminary to the main harvest of 1728) was in the same area where the Company had earlier taken masts (Pensens 1727:12 August). Conflicting with the red pine theory however, is Saint-Ovide‘s and Mézy‘s response to the mast inspector‘s rejection of the Company shipment at La Rochelle in 1726 when they said that it was not surprising that the masts failed the inspection as they were all of old scrap spruce (épinette). (Saint-Ovide 8. Mézy 1726228 November, Letter 1 .) (See also Footnote 62.) 11° See the main introduction to this report (pp. 22-24).