Naval minesweeper wood construction requirement

Magnetic-mine sensors require non-metallic hulls; minesweepers are still built from the same North Carolina oak.

More about that from England — but yes, they would put royal decrees on the forest. In that case they wanted these nice straight pines, but that wasn't the strongest wood to defeat cannonballs on the sides of the ship. So the ship is made with — you selected different woods back in those days for different applications. It turns out they just did a repair on Old Ironsides, and they were having a problem getting the oak from North Carolina. They just did a repair down here in Plymouth on the Mayflower II, and it was like two years delayed because they couldn't get the oak from North Carolina. One Navy officer was in my office a week ago, and he was telling me that the minesweepers are made with this same oak from North Carolina, because it's the strongest wood, best for certain types of shipbuilding. Yeah?