Every maritime power has a material without which its fleet remains a drawing on paper. You can build a hull, cast the guns, train the crew — but without strong rigging and sails a ship goes nowhere. For centuries that material was hemp fibre, known in Russia as penka. From it people wove ship's cordage, spun sails and braided rigging — the whole array of lines that hold the masts and catch the wind. And it so happened that, for a long stretch of history, it was Russian hemp that rigged the ships of half of Europe.
What hemp fibre was, and why it held the masts
Penka is a coarse bast fibre obtained from the stalks of the hemp plant. After the stalks are retted and scutched, the soft tissue separates from the fibre, leaving long, strong strands. These were twisted into ropes, and ropes into cables as thick as a man's arm. Hemp was prized for two qualities that decided a ship's fate on the open sea.
- Strength. Hemp fibre was markedly stronger than cotton — by some estimates up to ten times — and could bear the strain of rigging under full sail in a storm.
- Rot resistance. Tarred rigging (the «tarred rig») resisted damp and salt water — and it was exactly moisture and salt that destroyed any line the fastest.
In the Age of Discovery and the centuries that followed, sails and cordage were not a consumable but a strategic resource. A fleet whose lines gave way was a fleet bound for defeat and shipwreck. And so reliable fibre was valued on a par with gunpowder and metal.
Peter the Great and the wager on fibre
When Peter the Great built Russia's regular navy, he understood the value of a good line. The shipyards needed not only timber and iron but vast quantities of rope and sailcloth. Hemp became the backbone of the rigging of Russian ships — and at the same time remained a commodity that foreign buyers insistently demanded.
For this, dedicated works were established. In the ropewalks and spinning yards hemp was combed, spun and laid into finished cables of the required length and thickness. Thus fibre from the fields became rigging, and rigging became seagoing power. For Peter, hemp was more than a farm product: it opened the path to naval power and to the maritime trade for which the «window to Europe» was cut.
The road to the sea: northern and Baltic ports
Russian hemp left the country through its northern and Baltic harbours. At first the main window on the world was Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, where foreign ships came for Russian goods. Later the flow shifted toward the new Baltic gates — Saint Petersburg and Riga — from which the passage to European ports was shorter and more convenient.
The buyers were of the highest rank. European navies — the British Royal Navy among them — bought Russian hemp in large quantities. The naval might in which the coastal powers took such pride rested, in no small part, on fibre grown in Russian fields. Rigging flying under foreign flags was often of Russian origin.
«Homespun Rus»: fibre in language and on coats of arms
Hemp entered everyday life so thoroughly that it left its mark on the language itself. People distinguished poskon from penka — different kinds and grades of fibre — and the phrase «homespun Rus» became an image of the old, homespun, peasant country dressed in coarse but sturdy cloth. Fibre was so ordinary that it was spoken of as a matter of course.
This role was also fixed in heraldry. The image of hemp found its way onto the coats of arms of several Russian towns and districts — among them Novozybkov, Dmitrovsk, Surazh, Yepifan, and the Kimovsky district of the Tula region. A plant on a coat of arms marked the chief trade and prosperity of the place: where hemp was grown and worked, there it became a symbol.
The empire's green gold
In the 19th century Russia was the world's leading exporter of hemp, and hemp itself was one of the most important articles of export, bringing the treasury a substantial income. In its weight for foreign trade the fibre stood alongside grain and tallow. Hence the image that clung to the crop — «green gold»: an unremarkable field plant that brought the country real money and lasting trade ties.
Behind this lay not luck but an accumulated way of life: land suited to hemp, peasant skill in working it, established routes to the ports, and steady demand abroad. Whole districts lived by the hemp trade generation after generation, and it was this continuity that made Russian fibre a dependable commodity on European markets.
The decline of naval fibre
Hemp's dominance at sea did not last forever. From the mid-19th century it gained rivals. From distant plantations came the fibre of manila hemp — abaca — and then steel wire rope began to replace vegetable cordage. Metal did not rot and could bear even greater loads, and where a cable had once been laid, a steel one was now increasingly set.
A broader turn of the age struck harder still. Steam engines and iron hulls were pushing out the sail: a coal-burning ship no longer needed vast sheets of canvas or miles of running rigging. Demand for cordage and sails ebbed, and with it the «maritime» meaning of hemp gradually faded. The fibre remained useful to craft and household, but it no longer rigged the fleets.
The same crop — a different side
The story of hemp fibre explains why the crop was called the empire's «green gold» for centuries: one and the same plant yielded both fibre for the fleet and seed. The fibre chapter, the «shipboard» one, has passed into history along with the age of sail. But the same crop has a second, food-related side — the seed, from which oil, kernel, flour and fibre-rich meal are made. And it is to this side that modern processing turns, heir to Russia's long experience of cultivating hemp.
«Makosh» is the first full-cycle deep-processing plant for hemp seed in Russia, a resident of the «Uzlovaya» special economic zone in the Tula region. The enterprise works with the food side of the same crop: it produces kernel, oil, flour and fibre; samples and specifications are available on request.
This is what we make
We make all of this ourselves — a full-cycle plant in the Uzlovaya SEZ, 0% THC.
Hulled hemp hearts (separated)
Protein over 30% · omega-3/6
Cold-pressed green hemp seed oil
Omega-6 : omega-3 = 3.5 : 1
Hemp protein flour
Protein 40–45 g/100 g
We’ll match a product to your production need and send samples with documents.