In a time before cars, trains, and airplanes, water was often the easiest or the only means of long-distance transportation. Eighteenth-century ships were sailing ships, and they were made almost entirely of wood.
Naval stores are goods used in building and maintaining ships. Originally, ‘naval stores’ included everything used to build a ship meaning tar, pitch, and turpentine. All of these products came from pine trees, and particularly, the Longleaf pine, which North Carolina had in abundance. For that reason and others, North Carolina became a key supplier to the British Navy, and naval stores became central to the colony’s economy.