II Hall Gravedigger of Hansa

In 1597 Dutch miller C. Corneliszoon built first mechanical sawmill that used windmill as an engine. The power of wind was turning a crankshaft that moved forwards and back a saw. Until now it took two days and two sawyers to make planks out of one log and the quality of product was unpredictable. The Dutch mechanical sawmill now turned out daily perfect planks from no less than 15 logs. The navy and merchant marine of the Dutch Republic now had huge reserves of shipbuilding timber and soon was capable to replace Hansa as the leading trading power of the Baltic see.
Corneliszoons sawmill unintentionally became the gravedigger of Hanseatic League, helping to introduce new trade routes, including those that were leading towards Riga. The Hanseatic League vanished, remaining only as some political and legal relic with no economic importance.

Local sawmills

There is a hypothesis that the introduction of mechanical sawmills in Livonia was delayed by abundance of cheap labour of serfs. Despite of that during the 18th century there appeared quite a few water mills with sawmills in both Livonia and the region of Limbazi. Some large manors even had several such sawmills. Of course, lots of timber still was sawn by hand.