The Timber Web — British Timber Imports 1874

Σall years

British & Irish ports (arrivals)

Origin ports (departures)

shipments (width = count)

drag to pan · scroll to zoom · click a port

showing 1874 + odd years · 1877 omitted (London lists aggregated)

Where Britain’s timber came from

Each band is a supply region’s share of recorded timber shipments to British and Irish ports. Pick a cargo to watch its geography move — pit props hold to France and the Baltic while manufactured goods concentrate in Scandinavia.

Years shown: 1874 and odd years 1875–1899. Even years after 1875 are nearly absent from the photographed volumes, and 1877 is excluded because LONDON’s lists that year used an aggregated format that omits individual ships. Counts are shipments — cargo quantities in the OCR are unreliable and are never summed.

Three eras, one trade

The same map drawn for three periods. Use the cargo chips to see each commodity’s supply field shift — the rise of the Scandinavian trade, the pit-prop pipeline into the coal ports, the long reach of pitch pine.

Flows aggregate the displayed years (1874 + odd years; 1877 omitted) within each era. Circles are ports sized by shipments; arcs are origin→destination routes.