The ports supplying William's fleet required thousands of people to fell trees, split trunks, and shape planks entirely by hand. A suitable tree might yield only about four planks under the period's methods. Builders did not have the pit saws or later mechanization familiar from age-of-sail shipyards, so axes carried nearly the whole production burden. That low yield made the invasion fleet a vast timber, supervision, and manual-labor undertaking before any ship reached the water.
Chapter · 31:52-33:17
The fleet began with a vast manual timber effort
Norman port communities turned whole trees into only a few hand-split planks, so William's rapid shipbuilding program required a huge workforce.