In a previous post, " A Wonderful Confusion" I remarked on the fact that the names used for the various timbers that flute makers used was the ultimate source of the confusion that exists when we try to identify the wood to the species level.
I've been working on two areas to try and narrow things down.
Firstly, improving my botanical skills in physically identifying woods, using magnified end grain and side grain photos.
Secondly, since I've been laid up with a broken leg ( suffered while removing a particularly difficult short F pin ) it's given me the opportunity to do some on-line research, in this case looking at where the timber might have come from, and how it arrived in Europe.
Working on the basis that the most used flute wood, in England at any rate, was cocus. I came across a database which I thought might be useful. Part of the British Online Archive is: Bristol Shipping Records: Imports and Exports, 1770-1917.
The logic behind this was, given that cocus is a Caribbean timber, and that Bristol was one of the main ports for Caribbean trade, then a search of this data might reveal some useful information. Well, like most research, it did...and it didn't.
I first searched for the term cocus, and was delighted to find a lot of entries, and in fact soon discovered that cocus was the only wood mentioned as a distinct species.
The first records of cocus coming into Bristol are surprisingly late. Here's the first, from 5th October, 1848.
The dates show something which I think is quite surprising. After 1848, there are import records, sometimes more than one in any year, but generally one and occasionally two, for 1850, 51, 52, 57, 58, 60, 61, 65, 66 - and then a gap until 1905, 06, and finally 1910. Most of the records show the cocus as being imported as tons of timber. Later, essentially from 1865 onwards, the imports are listed as pieces of wood, and of course, unfortunately, we can have no idea what quantity of timber this represents.
In terms of total tonnage, it comes to 293 imperial tons, which equates to approximately 298,000 kilos. ( in terms of pieces, the total is 1315 )
It might be interesting to think about what this amount of timber potentially represents in terms of flutes.
Firstly I think we must assume that this timber is in log form. Secondly, and not many non wood workers are aware of this, the conversion rate in terms of weight of clean usable timber from a log can be around 25%. It might be even lower given that at this period it was the practice to split billets from the log, and not saw them as is the modern practice. In fact, rereading this, it strikes me that the smaller the diameter of the log, the less usable timber available. If we go with 25% this suggests 298,000 kg of logs results in 74,500 kg of usable timber.
How much timber does it take to make a flute?
From experience I think I can safely say that one kilogram of clean timber is certainly enough to make a keyed flute in C.
So is this to say that the cocus wood that came in through Bristol could have resulted in around 70,000 flutes? In all probability not. We cannot assume that all the cocus wood went to instrument making. Cocus is entirely suitable for all sorts of other treen ( meaning any object turned from wood ). Another assumption we must be careful to avoid, is that all the cocus logs and pieces were big enough to make flutes from, and as suggested above given the small diameter the conversion rate may be considerably less than 25%. Cocus is a small tree, the Wood Database says 30-50 ft (9-15 m) tall, 3-6 in (8-15 cm) trunk diameter. I have to say that that seems rather small to me. It could be that all the larger timber had been logged out by the time this description was published. Have a look at this image from Gilmer woods, which gives some idea of the size of the logs.
Searching google images for Cocus throws up some interesting points. It seems that cocus was used in furniture making, in England at any rate, as early as the mid-17th century, which would appear to be before it was considered as a woodwind material. Its method of use is also interesting, as given it's small size it was often used in diagonal slices as a decorative veneer. [see here and here ]
Other specific names that I looked for returned nothing, but did reveal further the almost total uselessness of trying to pin woods down by the names used for them by importers, instrument makers, and even musicians and scholars.
There was only one record for blackwood, which is in itself interesting given its African source. I suspect though, that most African Blackwood ( D. melanoxylon) probably came in through other ports. It pays to remember that the Suez canal only opened in 1869.
Everything the flute maker needs in the one ship, from beeswax for joints, timber and/or elephants teeth for the flute itself. This a typical early entry. I presume that 30 T. is thirty tons. Niccorago wood is news to me, presume it must be Nicaragua? But did it come from Africa or New York? Probably neither.
Two other timbers which might be of relevance occur often in the records. Ebony gives quite a surprising result. The oldest record is from 1809, and is in many ways similar to the blackwood record.
So, ebony from Africa is not such a great surprise, but the records then take a large jump in time to the first decade of the 20th century, where we see quite large quantities of what's described as ebony coming into Bristol. [ A sea morse, by the way is a walrus)
The problem here is of course, which any botanist will spot, is that ebony doesn't grow in the Caribbean. Without doubt, by the early 20th C., it was well established that ebony was mainly one of two species in the Diospyros genus - ebenum from Southern India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and crassiflora from West Africa. So what was this timber being imported, almost entirely from the port of Kingston in Jamaica? I currently have no idea. Here's a typical record.
The timber itself must have been very dark or black and heavy for it to be thought of as "ebony", but at the moment I can't think of any Caribbean wood that would qualify. Given that the import of this wood commences very late in the 19th C., perhaps a search of the export records from Jamaica might be the way to go?
The only other wood from a trawl of the records that might have flute making significance is rosewood, again a very broad term, but it's all we have to go on. There are very many records dealing with rosewood, but a brief analysis shows that a few early ones show that it's imported from Bahia, which is a province in North Eastern Brazil. The earliest one that appears is, in fact, an import from Jamaica, something that does not appear again in the records.
A few later records show imports from Bahia.
This from 1856...
and this from 1862...
Surprisingly though, the majority of the import records for rosewood show that it was imported from Liverpool in what was known as coastal trade. Obviously Liverpool was not the origin, but why import from Brazil/the Caribbean, and then ship it coastally to Bristol? Currently I have no idea why this should be the case, but hopefully the next stage of this project - looking at the Liverpool shipping records - will prove fruitful.
One caveat for those involved in similar research. There were many hundreds of records in this database, so when I brought them up on-line, I decided to take screen shots, which included the actual shipping record, and the date of the record which was at the top of the page. This worked well for records where the actual shipping record was close to the top of the page. When the entry was at the bottom of one of the rather large pages it required taking a screen shot of the whole page to include the date and the record. However, as I discovered, the resolution of screen shots is very poor, so when I tried to expand many of the records, to read the detail, it proved impossible.
The man who never made a mistake never made anything.
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