Floating of logs to Paris

This morning I went by bike back to Clamecy (about a 10 minute ride), to buy some veggies and a baguette) and to go back to the museum seeing, yesterday, we got there shortly before it closed at lunch time and the receptionist told us we could come back in on the same ticket, we wouldn’t have to pay again (the entrance fee was €4 each).  Yesterday we saw only the room on the “flottage du bois” (floating of the wood) and today I took a look at all the other rooms and discovered there is a wealth of archaeological sites in this area, both Gallo-Roman and Merovingian (6^th and 7^th centuries).

When I got back Ian told me he had had a long chat to the lock keeper here, who speaks good English, and apparently this marina was stopped not because of complaints from the neighbours but because archaeological artefacts were discovered when it was under construction.  A political row ensued and no more digging has taken place (yet) but it is unlikely that this project will ever be completed.

I spent a couple of hours reading about the log rafts which were floated all the way to Paris.

It all started in the 1500’s when Paris had consumed all the forests in its immediate vicinity for heating and cooking fires.  They needed to search further and further afield and one bright spark, in 1546, suggested using the rivers to float the wood from the the Morvan forest, almost 300 kms distant (where we are now, only 200 kms as the crow flies but 300 kms of meandering rivers).

In 1547, an experimental “train” of logs reached Paris successfully and so the industry that lasted almost 400 years was born.  This is how they did it.

Trees, mostly beech, oak, hornbeam and birch, were felled in the winter, cut into logs 1.14m long, split and left to dry until November.  On All Saints Day there was a timber fair at Chateau-Chinon when the forest landowners sold their logs to local traders.  The ends of each log were then marked with the new owners stamp 

Hammers with the owners' mark

and the logs were thrown into the still shallow waters of the many tributaries of the Yonne, the Beuvron (which flows into the Yonne at Clamecy) and the Cure (which joins the Yonne at Vermenton).  

At the head of each small tributary there was a dam and in the first week of November the sluices were opened and “the little flood” allowed a flow strong enough to carry the logs downstream to 22 ports where they were stopped by barrages and hauled out of the water until March.  Controlling this “lost wood”, as the individual logs were called, was dangerous because they could get caught up on rocks and roots which caused them to damn up and men with poles balanced at the edge of the banks to keep them moving. 

Casting the logs back into the river

In March “the great flood” carried the lost logs to Clamecy and Vermenton where whole families, women and children included, turned out to haul the logs from the water and stack them in piles according to the owners’ marks.  

The river of wood arriving in Clamecy

Hauling the logs out of the water

Loading the logs onto special wheelbarrows for stacking

Row upon row of stacked logs

A family taking their lunch break

There the stocks of wood dried out until the summer.  From here to Paris the rivers are navigable and the logs were formed into trains, 72m long, 4.5m wide and about half a metre high.  

It took a week to build a train

A branch: 2 long poles on the bottom were stacked with logs, separated into sections by "couplers", strong cords which held the top and bottom poles together.

4 branches were tied together to form a "coupon"

A coupon under construction

7 to 9 cooupons were tied together to from a "part"

Between Clamecy and Auxerre the trains were in 2 sections called “parts”.  Each part was navigated by an experienced “flotteur”  (floater) at the front with a long iron pole, and his apprentice, often his son, at the back with a lighter pole. 

At Auxerre 2 parts were joined together and were then navigated by the 2 flotteurs and the apprentices walked home.  The journey from Clamecy to Paris took about 11 days.  Along the route they had to shoot the rapids at barrages and manoeuvre through narrow bridges.  This required great skill and if it went wrong there was a high chance of drowning.  

A flotteur, look at those strong hands!

A part negotiating a barrage

A train

At the ourskirts of Paris they handed their trains over to Parisian flotteurs and walked home in 4 days, stopping overnight at St Mammées, Joigny, and Auxerre; then immediately set off with another train to Paris.

When the trains reached their destination at the docks below Paris, the rafts were broken up, the logs cleaned, and stacked into enormous piles called theatres, waiting to be sold.

Enormous "theatres" of logs

In the early 19^th century the log floating trade began to drop off with the opening of the St Quentin canal which allowed the transport of coal by barge to Paris from the mines in the north of France.  The last free log float took place in 1923.