Mulberry Trunnels?

Recently, Walt Ansel, the director of the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, forwarded an email he received from David Vasquez, writing from the Norfolk, Virginia, area with the following inquiry: “My question is pretty simple but esoteric. Am working on researching (among other things) what a certain individual was doing as a business in the 1750s to early 1770s, and to that end was looking at the hundreds of court cases they were involved in at the time, which still hasn’t helped. But then I came upon this ad in the Norfolk edition of the Virginia Gazette from 1774: ‘MULBERRY and LOCUST TRENAILS, may be had by applying to Richard Templeman, & Co. July 12, 1774.’ “When I saw ‘trenails,’ I immediately assumed they were the kind most often used to keep beams in houses together. But upon searching the internet a little, I saw that those were usually made of oak, while mulberry and locust were mainly used for ships and boats, perhaps because they’re more pliable? Can you tell me if that is correct? And if so, can one glean anything, at all, from such an ad? Incidentally, this Richard Templeman operated in Norfolk County, which, of course, does and did have deep maritime connections, and his name is most often seen in the court records as a partner with Scottish merchants of the time. In fact, I was surprised to see his name alone in this ad because he is usually seen on paper as a partner with a Scottish merchant. Furthermore, I do know that he owned partial shares in ships—inventories of his property on his death in the 1780s mentions fractions, such as one-eighth, of shares in various ships. I’m not sure if that’s relevant.” Walt added, “This was intriguing. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Certainly, black locust has been our go-to for years. Shipbuilders in Essex, Massachusetts, used oak, and I’ve heard of hackmatack used in Nova Scotia for softwood-planked schooners.” In 2012, I wrote a column devoted to trunnels (WB No. 226). I quote here a segment of that column that deals directly with the question concerning the historic use of mulberry and other woods for trunnels in colonial America: “In the mid-16th century, William Douglas, reporting on British settlements, proclaimed: ‘In shipbuilding, they ought to use only white oak for timber, plank, and trunnels.’ This statement might surprise anyone who knows that black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is the preferred trunnel wood in the United States and has been for a very long time. The contradiction lies in the native range of this tree, which is located in the central and southern Appalachian and Ozark mountains—places deeper into the interior of the continent than had been settled by the middle 1700s. “By 1808, Boston shipbuilders were using trunnels of white oak but also occasionally of locust from Virginia. By this time, builders in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Louisville, Kentucky, were almost exclusively using trunnels made of black locust, while those in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, preferred trunnels of the heart of longleaf pine, when the side planks were of the same species, and of liv