I am curious as to how the trees that were used to produce the masts of the large ships grown?
I assume they had to be very straight with no knots in them. Does this mean that they were specially cared for during their life which I imagine would have been a long time.
Also as a bonus question how did ships who lost their mast during a storm make it to port to get repairs and if they were not near a port how did they do self-repairs?
Hi there, trees for ships' masts (at least in the period I study) were generally selected using standard forest survey methods, then logged. The British navy had contractors who cultivated certain types of timber or selected specific trees for certain parts of the ship (oak trees that had a certain type of bend were used for knees, for example), and trees that were meant for ships were marked with a "broad arrow." Masts for trees came from areas with a lot of pine or softwoods, specifically North America and the area around the Baltic.
I have answered a few questions that may be of interest to you:
About the stepping and setting up of masts
The question above in particular deals with what I think of as a misconception about masts of sailing ships -- for the most part, and after the 1500s in particular, masts were made of several sticks of wood swayed up one above the other and fastened together, not simply from one enormously tall tree.
About navies building ships in their colonies, specifically in India and the Americas
About how a ship's crew repair it if it were damaged
About how damaging a loss of a mast would be to a ship
If you have specific questions about any of those answers, I'd be happy to expand on them!