Raft and individual floating of shipbuilding wood in the period of sailing navy in Russia
The article is the sequel of previous author’s work. It is devoted to some aspects of the technique of wood transportation. This kind of work were especially important during the period of sailing navies, when the qualities of ships depended on the quality of wood. Most oak wood for Russian navy was brought from the middle Volga region. The Volga was the main river of that transportation, but most woods grew quite far from it and had to be delivered first by smaller revers and horses. The thesis concerns the question of individual floating, its advantages and disadvantages, carrying capacities, labor economy, difficulties of controlling, harm for the environment. It is a common opinion that lots of woods drowned during the individual floating and polluted the rivers, however was practiced for long because it was considered much easier and cheaper as demanding less people unlabored. Actually it was twice as expensive as rafting and the wastage was in average the same if not greater. Rafts collapsed and drowned too, but it was much easier to control their amount.