NAVAL STORES

What are “naval stores” and why were they important to North Carolina?

Ships were the main mode of transportation and required specialized materials to produce them and help them sail.

Naval stores are goods (stores, or things stored for later use) used in building and maintaining ships.

Naval stores are products made from the long leaf pine that is plentiful in NC.

It is tar, pitch, and turpentine.

NC became a key supplier to British ships.

Naval Stores were central to NC’s economy.

Tar was put on riggings that held masts and sails in place.

Pitch was painted on the sides and bottom of wooden ships to make them watertight.

By the 1770s, North Carolina was responsible for 70% of the tar exported from North America and 50 percent of the turpentine.

Naval stores were the colony’s most important industry.

So, What is a Tarheel?

A Tar Heel is a native North Carolinian. There are several possible origins of the expression that has appeared over the years.

Making tar and pitch was messy. Workers stacked the logs, covered them with earth, and burned them. Tar ran out through the channels dug in the lower side of the log pile and the tar that spilled onto the ground stuck to the workers’ feet.

Another tale is set during the Revolutionary War. After Lord Cornwallis’s British troops crossed the Tar River in eastern North Carolina in May 1781, they had tar on their feet. Patriots had dumped tar into the river to prevent the British army from capturing the waterway. The men looked at their gooey shoes and said that anyone who waded through North Carolina streams would wind up with tar heels.

The most widely known version comes from the Civil War period.

During one of the fiercest clashes of the war, at Gettysburg, a unit of North Carolinians fought alone after all others had been driven from the battlefield.

It was said they stood their ground like they had tar stuck to their feet.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee, upon hearing of how the NC 26th regiment stood its ground while others left, said, “God bless the Tar Heel boys.”

In 1893, the students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill founded a campus newspaper and named it The Tar Heel.

Even though the name is more closely associated with the university now, all people who are born in the state of North Carolina are Tar Heels.