Seasonal rivers, carts, and timber barges

How much log flotation was used in eighteenth-century Britain when many naval forests were not beside large rivers?

Some timber moved on seasonal floodwater, while much of it went by cart to barges that carried larger loads to the dockyards.

British timber did not need a major river beside every forest to move by water. Later water management changed the landscape: some small rivers once flooded seasonally and could carry timber when water levels rose. Elsewhere, carts moved felled wood to loading points and barges carried larger quantities onward to dockyards. At the destination, the same timber economy supported ships, furniture, carts, and barges. Forest supply was a multimodal logistics chain, and present-day geography can mislead a reader about eighteenth-century transport.