Kenchington

There's an embarrassing story to that one. For one thing, it was supposed to be the first of a series, each exploring one of the English texts. Then I found paying work in my own field and never did get the second paper finished. The one manuscript that I did submit was a complex tangle, as any account of shipwrightry must be. I was expecting to get an amended typescript back from the editor, after which I could find a third set of words that would express my meaning, while accepting his amendments to my poor expression. Instead, he went straight to typesetting and sent me proofs of a paper, with all of his amendments incorporated -- amendments which made the text much easier to read but introduced many, many technical errors. I had to scribble suggested changes into the margins. I was so disappointed that I have never been able to face reading through the published version to see what was finally produced, whether unreadable, wrong or both! I'd like to be able to offer copies of my original submitted text but I doubt that anything of that vintage is readable with modern software versions. As for Pepys: You are probably familiar with the published version of the so-called "Admiralty Manuscript" from the 1620s. When Salisbury edited that for publication, he was confronted with a difficult manuscript and made an excellent job of correcting problems and inserting missing words. Back in the 1990s, I was in regular contact with David Roberts (translator and publisher of Boudriot's books). Around that time, he was looking through the library at a large country house in England (a still-private collection) and came across what at first seemed to be two unknown manuscripts of shipwrightry. On closer inspection, he saw that they were versions of the "Admiralty Manuscript", so he photocopied them and was kind enough to send me copies. I never completed the task but I started on a three-way comparison of the versions. It was immediately clear that the problems confronting Salisbury resulted from phonetic spellings by clerks who did not understand the technicalities. I could not be sure whether all three versions were produced at the same time but they were very obviously created by one person reading an original (perhaps the now-lost 1620s manuscript), while another (or others) wrote out copies of the dictated words. I forget the details now but at least one version had the initials of the man who wrote it out and they corresponded to one of Pepys known assistants. My guess is that Pepys (who took his position on the Navy Board much more seriously than many another did) gathered what old manuscripts he could get his hands on, while also persuading Deane to write out the then-modern design methods, the better to understand ships and shipbuilding. I like to think of the man himself reading a borrowed anonymous manuscript aloud, while his clerks made a copy for Pepys own collection and perhaps others for presentation to patrons. In contrast, Pepys seems to have acquired Baker's papers, so the originals survive amongst his other material (now in Cambridge), rather than copies. All that was likely in the 1670s (late '60s to mid '80s, anyway), when Baker's work was already nearly a century old -- hence "ancient" to Pepys, though to us innovative new ideas of the very late 16th Century! Trevor

I'm in the same boat, though I my case I wish for translations into English. However, before anyone could translate them, somebody would need to understand them well enough to bring them into modern Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish or whatever, with accompanying explanations of the meaning meaning. Then someone else would need sufficient understanding of modern technical German, English or whichever language is wanted, on order to make the translation. However by that point, we are left delving into somebody's modern interpretation and not the original at all. Trevor

Waldemar, When I got drawn into nautical archaeology (as an amateur in the field), 40 years and more ago now, most professionals working on Post-Medieval sites did not look at the ship-structures under their eyes any more carefully than to (mis)interpret the material in terms of a supposed (but largely erroneous) notion of 19th-Century practice. To read the reports of that era, you would have supposed that the approaches used in the last English shipyards that built in wood had somehow been adopted, fully-formed, when carvel construction reached Northern Europe from the Mediterranean. Some actually declared that there had been no change at all though those centuries. Archaeologists trained in the typology of potsherds did not readily grapple with the subtleties of shipwrightry and preferred to ignore the principal artefacts lying on their sites. I'm glad to say that that has changed over time. Study of the shape of ships has evolved along a similar but somewhat different course. It's not something that can be easily approached through surviving wreck structure, because of the distortions in the available material as well as the difficulty of gathering precise data while working underwater. So it is more in the province of the historian than the archaeologist, though each should learn from the other, if they could but bridge the disciplinary divides. And yet historians struggle with the subject too. We have only obscure writings, in older forms of (modern) languages, using archaic mathematical concepts and notation, which would challenging a modern engineer. Yet understanding those writings needs skills (and patterns of thought) more associated with engineering than with the humanities. In short, recovering knowledge of "ancient shipwrightry" (to borrow Pepys' term!) needs a collaborative approach, spanning disciplines, with flexibility of thought and a willingness to learn -- none of which comes easily to academics, who are necessarily immersed in their own disciplines. I like to think that amateurs, able to dip a toe into each discipline equally, have something to contribute, though they (we: for I am one) have to have the humility to listen to specialist experts, and that's a rare gift too. Doubly rare in a world where books and television "documentaries" get promoted by the notion that an outsider can see what the insiders have missed (reassuring the lazy reader or viewer that they themselves need not study, as everything taught by school or university is wrong anyway, while the "truth" is excitingly different). I no longer have time to keep up with the literature on nautical archaeology, but I think we are all moving forward together and slowly recovering understanding of secrets long lost. I'm no longer making active contributions but, from what I have seen through this thread, your work is making a valuable contribution to the progress! Trevor

Knots for stoppers not to be confused with stopper knots! Nautical English ought to be a model for clarity in technical communication but it is knot not 😎 Trevor

The figure-of-eight is the modern recreational sailor's standard stopper knot, often used at the end of some piece of running rigging to prevent it unreeving through blocks or fairleads. But, while I would not argue with Ashley's statement that it is less likely to jam than an overhand knot, it can still be awkward to release if pulled up tight. I wonder whether your leech and buntlines were secured by stopping the loose end to the standing part, forming a temporary loop with the sheave of the last block caught in that loop. It would only need a few turns of a scrap of marline, tied off like a crude, quick version of a seizing. Then it could be released with a simple knife-cut through the twine. However, that would be a painful way to rig a model, so go with stopper knots instead! Trevor

My guess, and it really is not much more than a guess, is that Sovereign's halfdeck (if I can call it that: The first step up above the waist) did not extend aft beyond the portion exposed to the sky. The next step up (to what might be called the quarterdeck) was not man-high (as is clearly shown in the Morgan drawing and the Payne engraving), so there was no space for anyone standing on a covered portion of the halfdeck beneath the quarterdeck. If I am right, then the space under the quarterdeck was extra high, from upper deck to the quarterdeck beams. When she lay in the Thames for King Charles to visit, that extra-high space would have provided a dramatic lobby, likely with a staircase leading to the upper stateroom and doors opening directly to the lower stateroom. At sea, the same high space would have provided for working the whip-staff, with its rowle set in the upper deck. Lifting off one of the quarterdeck gratings would then have given the helmsman a direct view of the weather leeches of the main tops'l and t'ga'n's'l (if that was set) -- which is what he needed to fix his eye on when steering by the wind. Contrary to some recent claims by people who should know better, it is sure that the tiller port was just under the upper deck beams. Combining Heywood's account of the decorations he had designed for the ship with the view of her stern in the Peter Pett portrait leaves no doubt of that whatever. And a tiller under the upper-deck beams means that the rowle had to be set in the upper deck. Trevor

Two thoughts: Beware other people's drawings of knots. The "Fig 51A" that you posted looks nice but it shows a rope with only one end -- an impossibility. I'll guess that what was meant was that the roband was to be spliced to the sail, leaving a single free end, but (if so) it's not clear where the splice lies, so hard to copy the knot. Also, a roband (or a lacing, come to that) should be made of much thinner stuff than the boltrope on the sail, with strength (in full-size practice) from either multiple robands or multiple turns around the spar. If you make the robands out of thicker cordage, you'll have chunky knots and you won't get the boltrope tight against the spar. Trevor

Yes, I think that's a big part of the story. Half-a-century before, there would have been men aboard deep-water sailing ships whose roots in other regions were in the coasting trades. They would have carried good ideas back home. After 1900, deep-water sail was almost done (not completely before 1939, of course, and not quite entirely even after 1945), so a new innovation in the Bass Strait region would not have reached, for example, the topsail schooner fleet that still operated in England at that point. Not so sure about the speed thing, though. You have quoted: But that's to make the sail-handling quicker (important when racing), not to make the boat go faster. Maybe there were times when swift handling of boom tackles mattered on a trading schooner. (Working through the channel at Port Philip Heads, perhaps?) But I'd wonder whether the concern wasn't more about making do with one less man aboard and saving on labour costs. Trevor

Thank you for posting all of this great information, Waldemar! If you are coming to an end, I must start over and try to assimilate everything you have offered. However, I still get the feeling that I am missing the foundations of your conclusions. Are there earlier threads in which you developed your arguments? Trevor

And interesting that a specific development (i.e. permanently rigging a pendant for the boom tackles outboard) should have spread so widely in its local area without being picked up by the operators of similar vessels in other regions. That must say something about the flow of ideas, locally and across distance, but I'd need another mug of coffee before figuring out quite what it tells us 😎 Trevor

With the forward end fastened to a strong point, it looks like the wire was supposed to take substantial strain. Yet every illustration shows it loosely and lazily draped, with a temporary fastening somewhere towards its after end. My conclusion is that they all show the gear in its "stowed" position, not when it was serving its intended purpose. Given where the wires were attached, my guess would be that, when they were serving that purpose, they projected out from the side of the vessel. Being wire, with no rope tail and no tackle, they would project a set, fixed distance. So what needs such a rig? I'd go with Jim Lad's thought that they were specific to some kind of cargo handling. Did these schooners work with lighters alongside? Maybe with rafts of logs floating alongside? Was there a particular arrangement on the wharfs were they worked, allowing them to be hooked on in some way? Whatever the purpose was, the wires were important enough to the schooners that they were included in the one painting. Photographs capture every detail but artists only include what matters to them or their clients, so the wires were significant to someone. Trevor

Very true! If Henry really was interested in improving ship design (and I have never seen citations of original evidence of that claim), then the key point would have been that a shipwright could afford to make a mistake, because his sponsor desired experimentation. As you say, shipwrights (in contrast to boatbuilders) usually could not afford to step very far outside established bounds, as the costs of failure were too high (and there was no realistic theoretical understanding on which to base advances before the late 19th Century). A king willing to spend in an attempt to leap ahead could have made a big difference. Trevor

Interesting speculations but I would question the existence of a supposed "Spanish" versus Portuguese distinction. San Juan was, as Waldemar has said, Basque. Yes, her builders were (at the time) subjects of the Spanish king but they spoke a (very) different language and lived in a different culture from that of Castile. The Galicians were different again and, to this day, speak a language closer to Portuguese than to the official Spanish of Madrid. On the other coast, Catalan shipwrights were part of western Mediterranean maritime culture and spoke yet another language. In short, Iberia could boast of multiple shipbuilding cultures, not a simple break between Spanish and Portuguese -- while both of those fell under the same king in the time of Philip II, of course. Further north, Henry VIII had a Mediterranean-style galley built and his French opponent went so far as to have a galley-building yard constructed on the Channel, complete with shipwrights brought from his other coast, so there was ample opportunity for design concepts to be exchanged. While invoking Henry, is there reason to doubt the oft-repeated tales of his personal interest in "race-built" ships? If he was, as so often claimed, encouraging experimentation in shipbuilding, then his shipwrights had incentive to gather ideas widely. Trevor

Thanks for that! I wouldn't want to use paint for your application. (Great for small bits of decorative work, but that's very different.) I guess Tandy's "Pearl" waterstain isn't white enough for you? Trevor

Looks like you have visited your local Tandy Leather store! The one near here is my go-to option for leatherwork tools and material, though I've had to reach out through the Internet for some things. I've not tried dying leather white but stronger colours are easy to do, so I'd recommend experimenting on some scrap and seeing whether you can't turn the natural leather to the white that you need. Just a thought though: The Royal Marines (and other British soldiers) or the period you are recreating were issued with pipeclay for whitening their equipment. Did the US Marines do the same? Or was the pipeclay applied to leather previously dyed white? I have no idea of the answers but maybe something to check, if you haven't already. Have fun with the leather! Trevor

In the variant of English I am familiar with, "duckboard" is something rough laid down over wet, muddy ground to stop feet from sinking into the mire. Boats have neat, shipshape "floorboards" where the common herd sit and work, while boats with a bit of class have "gratings" where the elite rest their feet. Yours has very elegant gratings! But English can be a complicated language and I'll not say that the stuff for standing on in a boat's cockpit isn't called "duckboard" somewhere by someone. Trevor

Wow! Beautiful gratings. A few years back, I built a set full-size for my boat and that was hard enough. I don't even want to think about doing the job at 1:12! But don't sell yourself short by calling them "duckboards". They are worth far, far more than that 😃 Trevor

Best way to understand the rudderhead of Sovereign is to take a look at the Swedish model available at: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/three-decker-c-1660-b584d0bf6edd433193f2651b6c71a3c8 That's probably a rather later ship but she (or at least the model) had the exaggerated counter that was fashionable in the mid-17th Century and which is shown in the Museum of Fine Arts illustration of Sovereign. The rudderhead had to curve aft sharply to be clear of the counter when the helm was hard over. Being in Sweden, maybe you could have a look at the model directly but the above link will take you to an image that can be rotated, zoomed and displayed full-screen, so you can get a good idea of how things were arranged. Probably a better understanding than looking at the model inside a glass case! Trevor

And thank you, Waldemar. That helps a lot. I'm not as familiar with 16th-Century ship design as I would like to be, so it is good to see your explorations. One point though: That is certainly very true, as regards paper or scale drawing any other two-dimensional surface. But did English shipwrights of the early 16th Century not make much use of battens and ribbands to complete a faired design full-scale in 3-D? That had been the late-Medieval practice in the Venice Arsenal and it was still relied on in vernacular shipbuilding in 18th-Century New England. With the (Old) English familiarity with clencher construction through to 1500 and beyond, running a board across the futtocks to determine a fair curve to stem and stern would seem a natural choice. If they did "design" parts of the hull as it grew on the building ways, it may be impossible to match the finished shape using only the very simple graphical methods that I would expect so early in the adoption of carvel construction. Your curve of the maximum breadth forward of the main bend, for example, is not an arc of a circle. Either the original shipwright used a more complex curve or he did not draw that at all. Trevor

Waldemar, I have been following along with your thread. You have presented some fascinating material, but I'm a bit lost -- maybe because you started with your finished renderings and then moved on to how you had constructed them. What I haven't seen (though that may be my mistake) is an explanation of how you came to your rules for developing the hull shape. Did you "reverse engineer" the shape from the archaeologists' reconstruction, fitting arcs and other curves to that? Or did you perhaps find an account of the design approach somewhere? You've certainly ended up with a close fit to the reconstruction. I'm just wondering how you got there! Trevor

Looking good!

Thank you, Armchair Seafarer! I will try sending a personal message through this website, though I haven't used that aspect of MSW yet, so I may go astray. I have a pretty good grasp on most aspects of the Sovereign, from Charles' objectives in ordering her construction, through her role in Court masques and public pageants to her failure as a seagoing ship. It would be useful if Busmann has cited hard evidence for some of the more dubious claims made for the ship (ones that I tend to set aside but cannot entirely reject), but at this stage I'm mostly interested in what a specialist can deduce of her as an artwork. I can see much for myself but art history is not my thing! A doctoral thesis will probably be exactly what I'm looking for. Trevor

The frames should have riser heights marked on, though the marks too easily get sanded off. If yours are gone: Lay the thwarts in position across the boat, at the height that has those touch the inside of the planks. The risers should support the thwarts at that height. If your risers end up a little low, you can sand the ends of the thwarts. If the risers are a little too high, very small gaps at the ends of the thwarts are not a problem. Trevor

Thanks, GrandpaPhil! The nearest I have come to that involved typing Danish text into GoogleTranslate. That worked but it was painful! Another time, I will follow your advice and see what I can do with scans. Meanwhile, I aim to tidy up my existing draft and make it available as "Version 1", subject to revision if and when more information emerges. Trevor

I'd have to see the original wording to be sure, but the rake of the after face of the post was a matter of hull design (influencing the run of the planking) whereas the gradient of the inner face was only of structural concern. Even then, the post was only one part of a complex structure involving deadwood, possibly keelson, likely a large standing knee, maybe an inner post and so on. It would make much more sense to quote a single value for the rake if that referred to the after, outer face. Rudders could (and did) function perfectly well on raked posts. Indeed, even a post erected perpendicular to the keel was likely to be raked once the vessel was trimmed for sailing, with the heel slightly deeper than the forefoot. Trevor