Planed timber shaped the small-craft fleet

Did the British prefer steel while the Americans relied more heavily on timber for small boats?

No simple national split applies here. Most of the small boats under discussion were built from carefully planed wood.

The proposed contrast between American lumber use and a supposedly steel-preferring Britain does not hold here. Most of the fast small craft in this stream were wooden boats. That construction choice connects directly to the later Fairmile discussion of lofting, templates, timber control, and distributed manufacture. A navy could expand output by mobilizing woodworking capacity outside the heavy steel warship yards.