Historical Society presents King’s broad arrow

This mark, known as “The King’s Broad Arrow,” was placed onto the tallest, straightest white pine of colonial Maine. Anyone cutting a tree so marked risked serious punishment. These trees were reserved for use as masts and spars of His Majesty’s Navy. If Britannia truly “ruled the waves,” it did so through harnessing the wind into sails held in place by wood taken from the forests of Maine.

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