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Timber rafting is a method of transporting felled tree trunks by tying them together to make , which are then drifted or pulled downriver, or across a lake or other body of water. It is arguably, after log driving, the second cheapest means of transporting felled timber. Both methods may be referred to as timber floating. The tradition of timber rafting cultivated in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, Poland and Spain was inscribed on UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022.
Timber rafts were also used as a means of transportation of people and goods, both raw (ore, fur, game) and finished.
Theophrastus ( Hist. Plant. 5.8.2) records how the Ancient Rome imported timber by way of a huge raft propelled by as many as fifty masts and .Lionel Casson (1995): "Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World", Johns Hopkins University Press, , p. 4, fn. 2
This practice used to be common in many parts of the world, especially North America and on all main rivers of Germany. Timber rafting allowed for connecting large continental forests, as in southwestern Germany, via Main, Neckar, Danube, and Rhine with the coastal cities and states. Early modern forestry and remote trading were closely connected. Large pines in the Black Forest were called "Holländer," as they were traded to the Netherlands. Large timber rafts on the Rhine were 200 to 400m in length and 40m wide and consisted of several thousand logs. The crew consisted of 400 to 500 men, and the rafts were provided with shelter, bakeries, ovens and livestock stables. Beschreibung eines großen Rheinfloßes Timber rafting infrastructure allowed for large interconnected networks all over continental Europe. The advent of the railroad, steam-powered vessels, and improvements in trucking and road networks gradually reduced the use of timber rafts. The practice is still of importance in Finland. In Spain, this method of transport was used mainly in the Ebro, Tajo, Júcar, Turia, and Segura rivers, and to a lesser extent in the Guadalquivir. There is documentary evidence of timber rafting as early as the sixteenth century, and its use was extended until the middle of the 20th century. In Russia, the use of elaborate timber rafts called belyana continued into the 1930s.
Raft construction differs depending on the watercourse. Rocky and windy rivers saw rafts of simple, yet sometimes smart, construction. For example, the front parts of the logs were joined by wooden bars, while the rear parts were loosely roped together. The resulting slack allowed for easy adaptation for narrow and windy waterbeds. Wide and quiet rivers, like the Mississippi River, allowed huge rafts to travel in caravans and even be chained into strings.
These types of constructed log rafts used for timber rafting over long distances by waterways to markets of large populations appeared on the Atlantic coast about 1883. They were there sometimes referred to as Joggins-Leary log ships because they were financed by businessman James T. Leary and originated at Joggins, Nova Scotia. "A Big Raft Comes By Sea", New York Times, August 25, 1883 They seem also to have been employed on the Rhine River as early as September 14, 1888. Their use on the Pacific coast was first contemplated by the capitalists James Mervyn Donahue of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad and John D. Spreckels of the San Diego and Arizona Railway when they formed the Pacific states coast Joggins Raft Company on September 21, 1889.
Most rafts were sharp-chute, that is, V-bowed, rather than square-bowed. Raftsmen had learned that with a V-bow a raft was more likely to hold together and glance off if it drifted out of control and hit the river bank. As one old-time raftsman put it: “With a square bow you were compelled to hold the raft in or near the middle of the river: if it butted the hill it would come to pieces. The sharp-chute could be put together so it would not come apart. And it saved a lot of hard work. Raftsmen didn't mind letting it go to the hill. They’d say: ‘Let’er shoot out.’”
Rafts were assembled in sections. Each section was made up of round or squared timbers, all of the same length except for the outside, or “boom logs,” which extended aft a few feet to enclose the following section. Thus the sections were coupled together. A fairly typical raft would be one of three, four or five sections, each section having timbers twenty to thirty feet in length.
Most rafts were made up of squared timbers, either hewn square by hand or sawn square by upcountry sawmills. Some timbers were carefully, smoothly hewn, and there was a demand for them, especially in England, after steam sawmilling became common. On the Altamaha, for many years during the rafting era, most rafts were made up of “scab” timber, that is, logs roughly squared by broad ax for tighter assembly and for gang sawmills which could cut flat-face timber only.
Although, on the Altamaha, there was rafting to some extent before the Civil War and after World War I, the Altamaha's rafting era is generally considered to have been the years between those wars. During those years, Darien, a town at the mouth of the river with a population of perhaps a couple of thousand, was a major international timber port. Reports of exports from Darien were included in the New York Lumber Trade Journal along with reports of exports from such large ports as New Orleans, Mobile, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk.
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