French term (edited): � pieces perdues

Il existe deux types de flottages :
• le flottage à pièces perdues : le bois est mis à l'eau et descend librement le cours d'eau en suivant le courant ;
• le flottage en trains : les troncs sont attachés entre eux et forment un immense radeau de 72 à 75 mètres de long et de 5 mètres de large (un train) qui descend le courant. Ce type de flottage se faisait par exemple sur la Seine
[http://apella.ac-limoges.fr/sitehc/bortjj/hist_commerce_flot...]

Often times, the milling of logs into lumber was done at distant locations. Depending on the size and shape of the water-body either individual logs, log rafts, or raft of sawn timbers were formed and floated down to these mills (the later being called a deal).
[http://www.longleafalliance.org/teachers/teacherkit/lografts...]

This film is a lyrical description of how timber is transported by loose-floating in the Kemi river and it's tributaries in northern Finland. The film was shot on the Ounasjoki, Kitinen, Luiro and Kemijoki rivers. Apart from its ethnographic viewpoint, the film contains a strong mythical theme: after his death, the old riverman turns into a half-sunken log, a deceased floating gang leader, following the timber down river. The film is a tribute to the unique symbiosis between nature and man. The various phases of the work of loose-floating and the cycle of the seasons provide the dramatic framework of the film. Loose Floating is a functionalist documentary attempting to convey the essential experience while keeping explanations and narration to a minimum. A tale of life and death, it also describes the fate of the tree.
[http://www.der.org/films/loose-floating.html]

WOOD HARVEST AND TRANSPORT - LOOSE FLOATING, DRIVING AND RAFTING OF WOOD
Subject:
Subject:
Geographic Region:

Title: LOGS COMING OVER SHUSWAP FALLS

[http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/im...]
[More photos at:
http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2m/Visual_Records...]


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Note added at 6 hrs 26 mins (2004-05-19 22:34:56 GMT)
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Logs were branded and either tied together or ***floated loose*** down the river to the sawmills at Pt. Washington and Freeport. Logs that sank in the river were referred to as \"deadheads.\"[Dare I say …. oh, never mind …]
[http://www.newsherald.com/articles/2000/07/30/lo073000f.htm]

Mr. J. C. KERR, formerly of KY, but now a citizen of this county, has bought a large number of popular trees on Jerry’s creek, three miles north of this place. He is having them cut and the logs hauled to the bank of the Pound River, where they will lie till a rafting or floating “tide” comes; then they will be rolled into the stream and ***floated loose*** till they pass over the falls at the “Breaks”. Here the logs will be caught and rafted, and
then floated on to market, perhaps as far as Cincinnati.
[http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/va/dickenson/newspapers...]
[I wonder what species those popular trees were …]


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Note added at 6 hrs 35 mins (2004-05-19 22:44:03 GMT)
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A distinction DOES appear to be made, in some cases at least, between \"rafting\" and \"floating\" of logs, but the situation becomes confused since \"rafting\" can both the creation of rafts and the floating of those rafts downriver, while floating applies (specifically) to loose floating but ALSO to the operation of \"rafting\" (or floating logs) downriver: <<The new roads led to a boom season for the settlement, largely due to the lumber industry. Large quantities of logs ***rafted down*** the Trent River to the village, where they then ***floated down*** the St. Lawrence in massive drams.>>

From another site, and purely out of interest in these \"drams\", I offer the following:
<<Less known, but just as colorful, were the rafts that sailed the St. Lawrence. Timber traffic on the St. Lawrence ended in 1914 after a century . The faster current and heavier oak logs, as opposed to the lighter pine used on the Ottawa, called for the construction of sturdier log drams.
Usually referred to as cribs, a dram was made up of 600 to 700 pieces of wood (sticks), lashed together to make a 20-metre wide vessel, that measured anywhere from 80 to 120 metre in length.
Several drams were then attached to make a raft. Barely above water when ready to sail, due to the weight of the oak, the rafts started their journey, described by American poet Will Carleton as \"the funeral march of trees\" attached to the end of a steamer\'s towline.
If conditions were perfect, the trip from Kingston to Montreal would take three days, if not much longer.
Sometimes carrying adventurous passengers, each raft had a dram with a cabin, four sleeping bunks and a cookstove, while a second ram had either a wooden or canvas cabin containing eight bunks.
Equipped with 10-metre long oars for steering in the rapids, sails, an anchor, rowboat and pikepoles, the rafts were provisioned with salt pork, bread, hardtack, potatoes, dried beans and peas, dried fruit, tea and lots of ready cash to pay for casual labor through the rapids.
Negotiating Galops and Rapide Plat without being separated, pilots and their men began to come aboard the raft, near Aultsville to run the Long Sault Rapids.
Unable to pass these rapids through slides as was done on the Ottawa River, the timber drams were separated out in a long line above Cat Island.
Taking the southern channel rather than the North Sault favored by thrillseeking passenger steamers, the drams were now ready to be steered through the channel. Unlike the steamers that were said to go over the rapids, the drams went through them.
And even though the South channel presented less turbulence than the North, as many as 50 men would be secured to footholds at the end of their long oars, steering with all their strength.
T.R. Glover wrote, \"It took expert use of the long oars at bow and stern to make the drams take the turns. At the foot of Long Sault Island...the drams went through the only sharp pitch of the South Sault.\"
Through the Sault, the rafts were reassembled at Cornwall, where they would let off their crews under the direction of such men as Cornwall police chief and partime lumberman Allan Cameron. The rafts would now continue on their way to Lake St. Francis, Montreal and finally Wolfe\'s Cove at Quebec City.>>