Lumber convoys as strategic prizes

Did Britain consider burning French naval forests to damage enemy shipbuilding?

Plans existed, but capturing lumber shipments was usually preferable because seasoned ship timber was a valuable strategic prize.

A listener jokes about sending agents to burn French forests, and versions of that plan were considered. The Royal Navy generally preferred to capture timber because mature, seasoned wood was too strategically valuable to destroy. Ships carrying oak to dockyards could be taken as prizes, giving their captors useful material and prize money. British supply vessels carrying the same resources needed warship escorts even while the main fleet blockaded France. Timber convoys belonged to maritime economic warfare.