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Louie da fly

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Everything posted by Louie da fly

  1. You're doing a beautiful job with this, mate. Steven
  2. Looking very good, mate. I wouldn't want to take on all that rope work. Steven
  3. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Dreadful ghastly stuff. Remember visiting the UK and being offered a beer in a pub; as a proud Australian I said "Anything but Fosters . . ." Steven
  4. Nup - it's all about how Bundy is as much an Aussie icon as the other two: http://www.postkiwi.com/2006/bundaberg-rum-bundy-bear/
  5. Nice. I can see that the idea of having a separate mortice for each tenon is a little (i.e. VERY) impractical and that at this scale a single long slot does the job just as well. As usual you try out things that nobody else would dream of taking on. Even the pegs fixing the tenons in place! Steven
  6. As Baker has pointed out in his Pelican build, when the ship left England she was still called the Pelican - she was renamed during the voyage. So in that respect, your model is more correct. On the other hand, I have a feeling that only ships that actually belonged to the monarch would have the right to display the royal coat of arms. My understanding is that though on a royally approved (and subsidised?) voyage, the ship was privately owned. But that's just me being extremely picky. You can actually send a private message to people you want to alert to your build. On the banner at the very top of the page there is a symbol of two intermingled "speech balloons" which allows you to do so. I'd recommend you also contact Baker, whose scratch Pelican build is very thoroughly researched. He's even put a pelican on it. You're quite correct, though; nobody knows exactly what the Golden Hinde looked like. It's all conjecture, or perhaps you could say educated guesswork. There's been quite a lot discovered since this kit was produced, but generally it's a pretty good representation of a "typical" Elizabethan galleon. I look forward to seeing your further progress. I think I'll pull up a chair, break out the popcorn and watch. Steven
  7. I've had a lot to do with oil lamps, made one or two out of pottery, seen any number of them in Byzantine museums. A bit of an unfair advantage . Steven
  8. Very interesting model. That strange swelling at the bow is something I've never come across before. I think the thing is a ship-shaped oil lamp, and that is the oil reservoir. The inscription reads something like "holy/sacred/priest/temple of Athens" possibly "sacred to Athens"? Steven
  9. That's starting to look very interesting, Dick. The cross-section looks considerably more stable in my (admittedly ill-informed) opinion. Have you read "Age of the Galley"? It's a collection of papers on galleys of various eras, including this one IIRC. The issue of protective screens appears in it. I think they suggested it was some kind of wooden lattice, but it's quite a while ago and the rotten local library went and sold the book without offering to sell it to me! Also Prof John Pryor's Age of the Dromon is worth checking out - it contains considerable calculations regarding oar length and angle, and offsets for oarsmen in different banks. He came to the conclusion that the oars of the upper bank should be longer than those for the lower bank. OTOH the builders of the Olympias trireme (IIRC) had them the same length because of issues about pendulums of different lengths having different periods of "swing", so they wouldn't be able to keep in time with each other. Of course that meant the upper bank oarsmen, the thranites, had their oars at a much steeper angle than the bottom bank, the thalamians. Just a few things that might bear thinking about at this early design stage. Steven
  10. There was another liburnian build log but it seems to be a very different ship, but then there's very little known about what they were like, so there's a fair bi of freedom available in interpreting it. Steven
  11. With the level of research and care Dick puts into everything he does, I'm looking forward to seeing the result. Steven
  12. Yes, the galleys recovered from the Yenikapi excavations are incredibly lightly built - though they were about 30 metres (90 feet) long, their keels are made of timbers only 150mmx150mm (6”x6”), the frames 50-60mm (2-2.5") square and 160-200mm (6"-8") apart, and the planks are only 20-30mm (3/4”-1.2”) thick. However, they are reinforced longitudinally with stringers and wales. And yes, storms sank many fleets, not only in ancient but also mediaeval times, as recorded in Byzantine documents. Steven
  13. That's for sure. I've tried to get my head around it several times, with little success. Steven
  14. Granted, but rough seas would surely be likely to cause an unstable vessel to turn turtle more easily by putting the CofG and the CofF further out of alignment. Steven
  15. OK. I think this thread is officially derailed . . . If you want to see some real "ouch!" pics, the martyrdom of Isaiah is a real gold mine. On second thought, you really don't want to see them . . . this is one of the least horrific ones.
  16. I don't really feel qualified to make any suggestions on this - I know too little about this kind of ship, despite being very interested in ships ancient and mediaeval. From what I've seen in your log so far, you're not only following the instructions well, but your ship looks good. Your work is neat and precise, and the ropework in particular raises it above the run of the mill model.
  17. Hmm, interesting question. I can see what you're getting at, but I think the skipper would try to avoid submerging the lower oarports at all - it's impossible to keep the water out, even with leather "grommets" to seal the oarports. Any tendency to heel, and I think he'd head to shore as fast as he could. My first thought was that manning the upper benches when the ship was heeling would move the centre of gravity upwards, making the ship even more unstable. But if they're not on their benches, where would those upper oarsmen be? There's probably not room for them anywhere else. So I think that point is moot. BTW, I studied (Ancient) Greek for a year, so if i can be of help with translation, please feel free to ask. Steven
  18. Bob, you're right that nothing survived of the Sutton Hoo ship's hull except the impression made in the sand. There are plenty of photos showing the excavation which ake this very obvious, apart from books which describe the state of the ship at the time and the procedure used to excavate it. I'm not qualified to comment on the need or otherwise for caulking on a clinker-built ship, but yes, as far as I know (given the minimal information available) the planks for ships of this time and region were split rather than sawn. The only saws recovered from Viking sites are fairly small, and the shipbuilding panels in the Bayeux Tapestry don't show saws in use, only axes of various types, and drills. There is a wonderful manuscript illumination from France in about 1170 of a bow-saw being used to cut the prophet Isaiah in half, which is the earliest illustration I know of showing one in use. But that's a different region, and over 500 years later (a little gruesome, but it's art, so that makes it ok. You ought to see some of Durer's pictures of mass martyrdoms - talk about graphic). Steven
  19. The Sutton Hoo ship replica is now ready for planking, and the builders have put out an appeal for woollen blankets to use for caulking between the strakes. Anybody in the UK who wants to donate blankets, I'm sure they would be gratefully received. https://saxonship.org/?fbclid=IwAR2GOjy1YvC5l2ZmSSgF3cx98Wvs2ZIbasDdh-JLq1Jgz_09ezGK9JZTDMQ Steven
  20. The trireme reconstruction Olympias is apparently very tender - she tips over quite easily. This must make it hard to row her in anything except a flat calm. However, using a theoretical reconstruction to prove anything is fraught with risk - the hull shape of Olympias itself is the result of theorising based on fairly scanty evidence and may not necessarily be correct. But it must be a common factor with all galleys no matter what the era - the flatter the angle of the oars, the more efficiently they use the energy of the oarspersons, so the oarports have to be as close to the water as possible - so if they heel they become difficult or impossible to row. Cross-sections of the Byzantine galleys found at Yenikapi in Istanbul are shown at https://journals.openedition.org/archaeonautica/3684 and perhaps these should be taken into account despite the huge time difference between them and the Mycenaean galleys. Interestingly, the bilge shape seems quite similar - maybe a bit more angled - to that of the bases in Woodrat's photo. Steven
  21. Dick, though it's a round ship and your is a galley, the Uluburun wreck (14th century B.C.E.) might help in determining the underwater cross-section, as far as stability goes.
  22. Very interesting, Roger. So, given the shape of the bilge as indicated by the ancient base, what shape would you suggest for the rest of the hull have as it goes upward from the bilges, to be more stable? Steven
  23. That sounds very interesting, Dick. One thing I've been forced to look up in following this is the periods you're dealing with. So now I know Late Helladic (at least according to Wikipedia) is also known as the Mycenaean age and corresponds to 1550-1050 B.C.E. whereas Geometric is 900-700 B.C.E. and Late Minoan appears to be something like 1500-1100 B.C.E. (that one's a little hard to work out, as the terminology has been revised, but seems to tie in with Late Helladic/ Mycenaean). So the difference in time period between the late Helladic and Geometric is several centuries, in which one can expect quite a bit of evolution in ship types, as well as differences between shipbuilding cultures. So am I right in thinking that the hull shape of the ship you're planning to build is based mostly on the illustrations in your post #7, but with supplementary information from the other illustrations from other periods to fill in details they don't provide? Steven
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