Kenchington

Photographs of Bluenose in her racing days show her cap rails as pale from bow to stern. The images were in black & white, of course, so I cannot say whether the rails were actually white, though that is very likely. In the same images, her bowsprit appears in a medium grey, so definitely not painted white. Most likely, it was finished as oiled wood -- hence a light brown stain in a model. Trevor

Only one-third as long as my pram has sat waiting to be finished! Hope to be back at that before too much longer.

Try Rodger's "The Wooden World" for an authoritative explanation. He is explicit that his book deals with the RN of the mid-18th Century, and the social structure of the navy had certainly changed by the time of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, but the seniority of captains and admirals had not. Another complication, which may account for your cases of individuals "skipping colours", was that the number of admirals in each rank and colour increased over time. In the 17th Century, with three colours and three ranks (full, vice and rear), there were only nine admirals in all. By the mid-18th, there were 30: one Admiral of the Fleet, six Admirals (three each White and Blue), eight Vice (not sure why that wasn't nine!) and 15 Rear (five of each colour). By the end of the long wars, in 1815, there were, by one claim, 219! With everyone stepping up according to seniority, each expansion of the total number will have meant a lot of officers skipping steps in the hierarchy. I can't immediately find any source that says when the RN changed to merit-based promotion of Rear, Vice and full Admirals. The final advance to Admiral of the Fleet (which very few achieved, of course) was mostly by seniority as late as 1914, though there were individual cases of exceptions from the 1890s. Trevor

Not so in the Royal Navy through to Nelson's time and beyond. The last promotion any commissioned sea officer could have was to Post Captain. Thereafter, everyone moved up by strict seniority, based on the date of being Made Post. Hence, a Rear Admiral of the Red was always senior to a Rear Admiral of the Blue because the former had been Made Post earlier. Likewise, any Vice Admiral was senior to any Rear Admiral, by date of being Made Post, besides the difference in their ranks. Commodore was certainly a temporary appointment but it did not give the individual authority over more senior officers. Instead, Admiralty had to go to some trouble to ensure that all other officers in a fleet or squadron were junior (in the date of their having been Made Post) to the chosen commander. If the latter had already achieved his flag, he served as Admiral. If insufficient vacancies had emerged at the top, the Captain chosen to command was appointed Commodore. It was a cumbersome system, that only worked because pragmatic adjustments were made to get around a rigid tradition. But it did work, more often than not! Trevor

Some are models of Bluenose II and, though she was launched before the Maple Leaf became Canada's flag, most of her long career has been after the adoption of that one. As for those kits which place the Maple Leaf on a Bluenose with fishing gear aboard: I'd just blame the arrogance and ignorance of kit manufacturers who can't be bothered to get the details right. I wonder how many kits of USN sailing warships (aside from Constitution, when portrayed as a museum ship) come with 50-star jacks and ensigns? How many representations of 18th-Century RN ships have post-1803 jacks and ensigns? How many have white ensigns when on a station where the C-in-C was a Red or Blue Admiral or when in independent service? There's more than enough kits sold with instructions calling for a jack at the main truck or the ensign staff! Sad. Trevor

Rvchima: No questioning the beauty of Bluenose! Maybe one day I'll have paired models of her and Puritan and get to study their differences. Ahh!!! Just what I needed this evening: An excuse to explore some vexillology! I've thumbed through some of MacAskill's photos of the racers. Curiously, the Canadians seem to have followed yachting etiquette and hauled down their ensigns when racing, while the Yankee schooners appear wearing the Stars and Bars. Odd. There is, however, at least one photo showing Bluenose when out for a sail with a crowd on board (some sort of outing for someone, I guess) and she then wore, as expected, the old Canadian ensign -- the defaced Red Ensign that later became a national flag. According to Wikipedia (OK: Never the most reliable source!) that was approved for use on British ships registered in Canada from 1892 (when there was, in law, no such thing as a Canadian ship). However, there was no official, nor standard, form of the defacing until one was adopted in 1922. Still, unless you wanted to be pedantic about showing Bluenose as she was in the first months of her life, the 1922 ensign would be the best one. Again following Wikipedia, it looked like: Note that the maple leaves were then green, as they remained until 1957. Trevor

Here in Nova Scotia, I'm likely to get burned in effigy (if not in person!) for admitting it, but Bluenose did not win every race she was entered in. She did not even win every series of races, though she did win every International Trophy series, from 1921 on. Besides, Puritan would have left Bluenose astern in anything but a hard blow, if Ben Pine hadn't run the big halibutter onto the Sable Island bar before she could race. No shame in that: The halibut fishery landed their huge flatfish fresh (on ice) and the schooners had to get their catches home to Gloucester before they deteriorated. The Lunenburg salt-banking fleet had to lie on Grand Bank, slowly filling their holds with split and salted cod. The two fisheries needed different schooners and, when racing-fishermen were developed from the two types, the one led to a light-weather flier, the other to a powerful vessel better able to use winds that were uncommon on the summer-time racing courses. Trevor And a P.S.: Please don't use either of those crude parodies of the modern Canadian flag! Bluenose never wore the Maple Leaf, which was only adopted many years after she was lost!

Last year, I got to drive 12-inch bronze carriage bolts lengthwise through 4-inch square teak sheet bits. The bits were glued from separate halves (4 by 4 teak being unobtainable here), so I started the bolt holes on the router table, making half-round grooves before gluing, then cleaned them up with an auger bit before trying to get the bolts through. It was still terrifying! What if the bolts stuck when half way through? There would be no way to get them out again. Fortunately, with the right lubricant and the capability to screw the bolts through, all went OK. But compare that to the drift bolts (no screw threads) that MacKay's men drove! Worse, consider Great Western, the first of the big purpose-built Atlantic steamers. She had four rows of iron bolts driven fore-and-aft through her floors and futtocks, the bolts in each row overlapping one another. Each bolt was 1.5 inches in diameter and 24 feet long. How on Earth did they bore the holes precisely enough to be sure that the bolts would not bind long before they were driven home? Come to that, how do you pound the end of a 24 ft bolt with a sledge hammer and drive it into its hole, without the exposed part of the bolt bending? And yet the job was done. Trevor

Sorry, ClipperFan, but I don't agree that the published dimensions are inconceivable. I'm not saying that they were correct, just that they could have been correct. A 46-inch total depth of keel, with 7-inch thick garboards and 39 inches of the keel outside those garboards would mean that the floors sat flush across the top of the keel. That wasn't the universal way of building a wooden ship but it was one way. The other option was to notch the floors so that they hung over the sides of the keel as far as the inboard edge of the rabbet (either of which options could have the added complication of a deadwood between keel and floors). Notching the floors meant starting with a very deep, very expensive piece and then cutting away strength where it was most needed, so there was a major incentive to lay the floors flat on top of the keel, if that could be arranged without either critical weaknesses in the structure or extra costs elsewhere. Note that the published report says that the garboards were through-bolted (each bolt passing through both garboards, edgewise, and the keel between). Thus, there was no need for solid timber to take fastenings driven from outboard, through the garboard and into the keel -- though I don't doubt that the garboards were trunnelled (from outboard) to the floors, which themselves were bolted to keel and keelson. Then again, all those copper bolts will have been expensive, not to mention the labour for boring the bolt holes and driving the bolts. Trevor

March ("Sailing Trawlers") detailed what was lashed to what else in the smacks of the early 20th Century (i.e. several decades after Ranger) but said nothing of what knots were used. His photographs are not clear enough to deduce how things were tied. Ashley (with a focus on practices aboard larger vessels) gives three alternatives: his #2119, #2120 & #2121. All of them require an eye of some kind in the end of the boat gripe (the strap, sennet or other broad material that contacts the boat without digging in to its gunwales). The lanyard is attached either to that eye or else to the ringbolt in the deck, then a bight of it is led through the other of those, the free end passed through the bight, forming a crude tackle, and heaved tight. The end is secured with a half-hitch or two, often slipped so that the boat can be freed swiftly when needed. I'd not want to suggest how to replicate that at 1:64. The simple thing would be to tie off at the ringbolt with a round turn and two half hitches, but that wouldn't look much like the full-size version. You could try a trucker's hitch: Tie an overhand loop in the rope at about the right spot, pass the free end through the ringbolt, then through the loop just tied and tighten up. (It's a brutal way to abuse rope but that's not much of a concern in a model.) Trevor

I don't think so. What looks to have been the upper edge of the angled strip is still p[resent and outside the lower edge of the plates on the garboard. Could be. I was looking at: I think that's one of the staples (is that the right term?) holding the false keel. The copper plate on the side of the keel looks to be overlying the staple, while there seems to be a break in the nailed strip along the lowest edge of the keel, where the staple passes. But, even if I am interpreting the image correctly, the bottom of the keel could have been coppered, then a rabbet cut (so that the staple would lie flush) into keel and false keel, cutting through the copper in the process, with the coppering of the side of the keel following. There's probably multiple other examples along the surviving keel remains, so whoever is working on the material may be able to figure out the sequence. Trevor

Thank you for those images! I think they will help lot of us. Back in the day, I and many others picked over the wreck of the frigate Tribune -- ex-French but captured, refitted and in RN service when lost while entering Halifax in 1797. I think (though I'm not certain) that I have some bits of her copper kicking around, if anyone wants measurements of distances between nail holes or the like. Interesting that Braak had the nails in the midst of each plate set at the corners of squares, rather than diamond fashion. It's been a long time since I paid much attention to the detail but I remember a diamond arrangement as normal. Maybe I'm wrong on that or perhaps there was a change over the decades. That's how it looks to me. Yet the narrow strip is gone, presumably from being more vulnerable to long-term corrosion. I wonder whether bending it to fit the angle between keel and garboard introduced micro fractures, which then promoted corrosion. Or perhaps the narrow strip came from a different batch of copper and electrolysis across the dissimilar metals attacked it. Yes, it looks that way. And the copper on the keel seems to cover the (bronze?) staple that held the false keel, where that lay across the keel but not where it lay on the false keel, so the copper plate was presumably trimmed around the staple. Yet that would mean that the false keel was in place when the coppering was done, so the edge of the lowest plate would have been pushed in, between keel and false keel, then nailed. A detail I would never have guessed! Always good to learn something new every day 🙂 Trevor

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