trippwj

79 years ago today 5000 vessels took part  in the largest combat landings ever made.   Ships and sailors from MANY countries took part and many made the ultimate sacrifice along with their soldier brothers,  Pics below are from our recent visit May 23 -25, 2023
  
 

Some of you may be familiar with the on-line, open access CORIOLIS: Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime Studies. During a visit to their website today I found the following notice:
"The last issue of CORIOLIS was indeed the last issue of CORIOLIS. The journal has been a home for both seasoned and new scholars alike and the range of subject matter produced has been a treat. In the place of CORIOLIS, Mystic Seaport Museum will be producing a new peer-reviewed journal called MAINSHEET. See the description at https://www.mysticseaport.org/mainsheet/ CORIOLIS articles will be available at ijms.nmdl.org for the next year at which time the archives will transition to Mystic Seaport Museum's website. Thanks for your support over the last thirteen years."
 
From the Mainsheet website:
"In September 2023, Mystic Seaport Museum will launch an exciting new initiative, Mainsheet, a biannual peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal, available simultaneously online and in-print. The goal of Mainsheet is to fill a gap in refereed scholarship on maritime studies that has been left open by the dissolution of the American Neptune and other like-minded journals over the last 20 years. While several excellent journals still exist internationally, Mainsheet will be the only publication of its type produced by an American maritime museum. What will also set Mainsheet apart are: its multi-disciplinary perspectives; its accessibility to a broad global diverse audience on issues past, present, and future; and its freshness of design and distribution. The editorial board will represent a national and international team of invited expert scholars from various fields and partner institutions, with guest editors for special editions."
 
The Coriolis archive can be found here: https://ijms.nmdl.org/index
 
 
 

Some of you may be familiar with the on-line, open access CORIOLIS: Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime Studies. During a visit to their website today I found the following notice:
"The last issue of CORIOLIS was indeed the last issue of CORIOLIS. The journal has been a home for both seasoned and new scholars alike and the range of subject matter produced has been a treat. In the place of CORIOLIS, Mystic Seaport Museum will be producing a new peer-reviewed journal called MAINSHEET. See the description at https://www.mysticseaport.org/mainsheet/ CORIOLIS articles will be available at ijms.nmdl.org for the next year at which time the archives will transition to Mystic Seaport Museum's website. Thanks for your support over the last thirteen years."
 
From the Mainsheet website:
"In September 2023, Mystic Seaport Museum will launch an exciting new initiative, Mainsheet, a biannual peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal, available simultaneously online and in-print. The goal of Mainsheet is to fill a gap in refereed scholarship on maritime studies that has been left open by the dissolution of the American Neptune and other like-minded journals over the last 20 years. While several excellent journals still exist internationally, Mainsheet will be the only publication of its type produced by an American maritime museum. What will also set Mainsheet apart are: its multi-disciplinary perspectives; its accessibility to a broad global diverse audience on issues past, present, and future; and its freshness of design and distribution. The editorial board will represent a national and international team of invited expert scholars from various fields and partner institutions, with guest editors for special editions."
 
The Coriolis archive can be found here: https://ijms.nmdl.org/index
 
 
 

One of my father’s interests/ hobbies was raising Aberdeen Angus cattle.  The hub of our farm was a large bank barn;  hay loft on top cattle down below.  When we bought the place the barn was painted red.  We later had it painted white.  The cattle didn’t appear to know the difference!  😀
 
Roger

From Nautical Research Journal, Volume 19- 1972
 
An extract from US Navy-  “Fitting out of Naval Vessels 1842”.   
 
“ Black and White are the only colors for the outside of vessels.  White, straw or green inboard.”
 
 

Green being an unlucky colour on ships must be an 'americanism'   Over here in Europe, green was a common colour on ships throughout the 19th century. At a time, when the wales were picked out in colour, one band was usually either green or blue. Some ships also had green hulls and it had been the 'corporate identy' for at leas one sailing ship and one steamship line in Germany. Below is a painting from 1833 by the foremost Danish marine painter C.W. Eckersberg of the corvette NAJADEN that shows green bulwarks, gun carriages, skylights, etc.:

Source: Wikimedia.
 
Who sailed those cooling steamers that transported bananas from South and Central America to all over the world ?
 

I think red was the cheapest color available. Also the reason most barns in New England are painted red.
 
Regards,
Henry

Ah, but Constitution is only 30 years younger than Victory.  Her original wood will be there for many years to come.
 
Regards,
Henry

Here is the HMS Victory Conservation Management Plan (13 MB pdf) which dates the various parts of the ship.
victory_cmp_volume_01-.pdf

The CG question/comment is a bit of a red herring. If the CG was so high that it alone caused the ship to topple in while dry dock, there’s no way that ship should ever even have been allowed near water to begin with.  

As an engineer I’m sure you already know that an object on solid ground will not topple over unless its CG is forced outside of its footprint on the ground.
 
For anyone else who’s unsure:  if you consider a transport truck (or lorry, whatever your personal terminology preference), regardless of how high the load is, the vehicle remains stable provided the centre of gravity remains somewhere between the outside edge of the tires (tyres).
 
In the case of this ship in dry dock, correctly shored (or blocked) the CG would have had to shift laterally, beyond the ship’s side (or outermost row of blocks) for it to topple. If the shores were fixed to the ship’s side, the CG would have to shift beyond where the shores meet the dockside.
 
I’ve seen the docking plans for the dry cargo ships I’ve worked on. Most of them just show the required block placement, the drain plugs for the various tanks, as well as other various inlets and outlets in the hull (pump intakes, etc). I don’t recall seeing much on shoring, as it has become an extremely rare form of dry docking.
 
For what it’s worth, even on an extremely shapely hull form, like the Petrel, there was enough of a flat bottom that an outboard row of blocks could have been placed (even if it was only in the midship area). She didn’t specifically need to be dry docked as she was.
 
I agree, though, that it will be interesting to see what the MAIB has to say.
 
Andy

There's an interesting article in the 30th March edition of the London Review of Books about the pirate settlements and retirement places in Madagascar. It points to the fact that they did in fact establish democratic and libertarian societies there, which in turn led to the emancipation of women. So not all tales of pirates were fanciful.
 
For anyone interested in a good read, go to https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n07/francis-gooding/when-thieves-retire,
 
The article is free to read, although if you want to read more stuff in the LRB you'd have to contribute.
 
Happy reading!
 
Tony

If you can find a copy, “Sloop of War, 1650-1763” by Ian McLaughlan is a great resource. 

Andy

Vasco da Gama - first round the Cape of Good hope to India in 1497-1499. So yes, these spices came the traditional way - over land and through several middle men.
 
Gribshunden was a royal carrack, as far as they've been able to make out. She was the king's flagship. But nomenclature varies - as far as I'm aware, what we call a carrack was referred to in Scandinavia as a Kravell (from caravel). Here's her dragon (griffin-hound, actually) figurehead being retrieved from the Baltic:
 

 
Steven

Interestingly (or not 😉) we overcame this in the Electricity Transmission sector with the guys who climb the lattice towers / pylons, they are equipped with two very large Caribiners on separate lanyards and the mantra was ‘clip on clip off’ with the alternate lanyards so you were always secure.  Watching them climb was like watching a mountaineer using an ice pick in each hand only a lot faster!
 
Fair play to anyone who climbs heights, I like to cuddle terra firms whilst watching others.
 
Gary
 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spices-500-year-old-shipwreck-baltic
 

To the best of my knowledge there are no copies outside of the British Library, although it is possible that researchers have been allowed to photograph it. Barker (2002) indicates that some of the text was published in the following ( I have not checked into it to see if that may be true)
Albertis, Enrico Alberto d’, Le Costruzioni Navali e l’arte Della Navigazione al Tempo Di Cristoforo Colombo, 1893 <https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/shipbuilding/Alber_Le-co_01_1893/index.meta&viewMode=auto&pn=1>  
There are many references to it, such as this listing:
‘The Trombetta Manuscript – The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library’ <https://shiplib.org/index.php/collections/historical-sources/treatises-on-shipbuilding/the-trombetta-manuscript/> [accessed 27 March 2023] This post discusses the manuscript briefly:
https://www.doaks.org/newsletter/news-archives/2021/shipwrecks-mathematics-and-manuscripts
Anderson describes it here:
Anderson, R. C., ‘Italian Naval Architecture about 1445’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 11.2 (1925), 135–63 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1925.10655310> and
Anderson, R. C., ‘Jal’s “Memoire No. 5” and the Manuscript “Fabbrica Di Galere”’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 31.3 (1945), 160–67 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1945.10658920>  
Also see
Rieth, Eric, ‘First Archaeological Evidence of the Mediterranean Whole Moulding Ship Design Method: The Example of the Culip VI Wreck, Spain (XIIIth-XIVth c.)’, in Shipbuilding Practice and Ship Design Methods from the Renaissance to the 18th Century: A Workshop Report, ed. by H Nowacki and Matteo Valleriani, Preprint 245 ([Berlin]: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2003), pp. 9–16 <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P245.PDF>  
A brief side note, the author is actually NOT named Trombetta - he is a "Trumpeter of Modon" Possibly named Zorzi di Nicolò or Giorgio. I recall there being a later Mariner's Mirror note that corrected Anderson, just can't put my fingers on it right now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Typically these indicate a cross-section between the arrows. The arrows show from which direction the cross-section is viewed.

To the best of my knowledge there are no copies outside of the British Library, although it is possible that researchers have been allowed to photograph it. Barker (2002) indicates that some of the text was published in the following ( I have not checked into it to see if that may be true)
Albertis, Enrico Alberto d’, Le Costruzioni Navali e l’arte Della Navigazione al Tempo Di Cristoforo Colombo, 1893 <https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/shipbuilding/Alber_Le-co_01_1893/index.meta&viewMode=auto&pn=1>  
There are many references to it, such as this listing:
‘The Trombetta Manuscript – The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library’ <https://shiplib.org/index.php/collections/historical-sources/treatises-on-shipbuilding/the-trombetta-manuscript/> [accessed 27 March 2023] This post discusses the manuscript briefly:
https://www.doaks.org/newsletter/news-archives/2021/shipwrecks-mathematics-and-manuscripts
Anderson describes it here:
Anderson, R. C., ‘Italian Naval Architecture about 1445’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 11.2 (1925), 135–63 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1925.10655310> and
Anderson, R. C., ‘Jal’s “Memoire No. 5” and the Manuscript “Fabbrica Di Galere”’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 31.3 (1945), 160–67 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1945.10658920>  
Also see
Rieth, Eric, ‘First Archaeological Evidence of the Mediterranean Whole Moulding Ship Design Method: The Example of the Culip VI Wreck, Spain (XIIIth-XIVth c.)’, in Shipbuilding Practice and Ship Design Methods from the Renaissance to the 18th Century: A Workshop Report, ed. by H Nowacki and Matteo Valleriani, Preprint 245 ([Berlin]: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2003), pp. 9–16 <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P245.PDF>  
A brief side note, the author is actually NOT named Trombetta - he is a "Trumpeter of Modon" Possibly named Zorzi di Nicolò or Giorgio. I recall there being a later Mariner's Mirror note that corrected Anderson, just can't put my fingers on it right now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To the best of my knowledge there are no copies outside of the British Library, although it is possible that researchers have been allowed to photograph it. Barker (2002) indicates that some of the text was published in the following ( I have not checked into it to see if that may be true)
Albertis, Enrico Alberto d’, Le Costruzioni Navali e l’arte Della Navigazione al Tempo Di Cristoforo Colombo, 1893 <https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/shipbuilding/Alber_Le-co_01_1893/index.meta&viewMode=auto&pn=1>  
There are many references to it, such as this listing:
‘The Trombetta Manuscript – The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library’ <https://shiplib.org/index.php/collections/historical-sources/treatises-on-shipbuilding/the-trombetta-manuscript/> [accessed 27 March 2023] This post discusses the manuscript briefly:
https://www.doaks.org/newsletter/news-archives/2021/shipwrecks-mathematics-and-manuscripts
Anderson describes it here:
Anderson, R. C., ‘Italian Naval Architecture about 1445’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 11.2 (1925), 135–63 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1925.10655310> and
Anderson, R. C., ‘Jal’s “Memoire No. 5” and the Manuscript “Fabbrica Di Galere”’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 31.3 (1945), 160–67 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1945.10658920>  
Also see
Rieth, Eric, ‘First Archaeological Evidence of the Mediterranean Whole Moulding Ship Design Method: The Example of the Culip VI Wreck, Spain (XIIIth-XIVth c.)’, in Shipbuilding Practice and Ship Design Methods from the Renaissance to the 18th Century: A Workshop Report, ed. by H Nowacki and Matteo Valleriani, Preprint 245 ([Berlin]: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2003), pp. 9–16 <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P245.PDF>  
A brief side note, the author is actually NOT named Trombetta - he is a "Trumpeter of Modon" Possibly named Zorzi di Nicolò or Giorgio. I recall there being a later Mariner's Mirror note that corrected Anderson, just can't put my fingers on it right now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To the best of my knowledge there are no copies outside of the British Library, although it is possible that researchers have been allowed to photograph it. Barker (2002) indicates that some of the text was published in the following ( I have not checked into it to see if that may be true)
Albertis, Enrico Alberto d’, Le Costruzioni Navali e l’arte Della Navigazione al Tempo Di Cristoforo Colombo, 1893 <https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/shipbuilding/Alber_Le-co_01_1893/index.meta&viewMode=auto&pn=1>  
There are many references to it, such as this listing:
‘The Trombetta Manuscript – The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library’ <https://shiplib.org/index.php/collections/historical-sources/treatises-on-shipbuilding/the-trombetta-manuscript/> [accessed 27 March 2023] This post discusses the manuscript briefly:
https://www.doaks.org/newsletter/news-archives/2021/shipwrecks-mathematics-and-manuscripts
Anderson describes it here:
Anderson, R. C., ‘Italian Naval Architecture about 1445’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 11.2 (1925), 135–63 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1925.10655310> and
Anderson, R. C., ‘Jal’s “Memoire No. 5” and the Manuscript “Fabbrica Di Galere”’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 31.3 (1945), 160–67 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1945.10658920>  
Also see
Rieth, Eric, ‘First Archaeological Evidence of the Mediterranean Whole Moulding Ship Design Method: The Example of the Culip VI Wreck, Spain (XIIIth-XIVth c.)’, in Shipbuilding Practice and Ship Design Methods from the Renaissance to the 18th Century: A Workshop Report, ed. by H Nowacki and Matteo Valleriani, Preprint 245 ([Berlin]: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2003), pp. 9–16 <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P245.PDF>  
A brief side note, the author is actually NOT named Trombetta - he is a "Trumpeter of Modon" Possibly named Zorzi di Nicolò or Giorgio. I recall there being a later Mariner's Mirror note that corrected Anderson, just can't put my fingers on it right now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I doubt the ship was dry docked for that amount of time. That would cost a fortune, and cost the commercial shipyard a lot of lost business having a dock occupied for that amount of time. Tied up at a lay-by berth is what they’re referring to.
 
Modern dock supports are steel with wood bolsters bolted in place on top.
I did read that there were high winds at the time the ship was knocked off the blocks so it’s possible that either the blocks were not in the right place, or the ship shifted during the pump out and didn’t land correctly on the blocks. I wouldn’t speculate any further until the MAIB or whichever investigation authority is overseeing this incident, publishes its report.
 
Andy

On the other hand, modern authors have to draw on either printed sources of the time or on archival material.
 
Over the last few years many, if not most, of the printed sources have become available as digital copies through national libraries. Unfortunately, for most of the works that were digitised on behalf of Google they did not bother to unfold the plates/tables and, therefore, such copies are often pretty much wasted effort. The BnF usually does a good job in digitising their works.
 
The main value of modern works is having evaluated archival material (if really done), as this typically (still) is not accessible remotely. Archival work is time-consuming and costly, when involving travel.
 
Otherwise, if the research was done properly, the reference list may be the most valuable part in modern works - useful to give indications where to look further.

I guess it is time to get the Admiral involved as she is a retired French teacher.   HOPEFULLY the naval terminology will not throw too many clinkers into the fire.
Allan

In a way you've never seen it described before ... 😜
 
 

Certainly looks like a headsail, Martes. The ship is being warped along and, to take advantage of the very slight breeze almost abeam, perhaps this is taking advantage of it. The main and fore yards cannot be slewed around far enough to take advantage of this. The mizzen topsail appears to be able to, but the crossjack yard must have been let loose from its parrel and is controlled by the slings. Possibly it is even lashed to the mizzen shrouds as well?
 
Where is this image from?