el cid

A great project!  In 1964 I was attending the University of  Michigan studying Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and also pursuing a USNR commission with the university’s NROTC unit.  This program required one summer cruise, the 1st Class one.  I received orders to an old WWII submarine in the Western Pacific.
 
It  turned out that the submarine was going “somewhere that I wouldn’t want to go” according to the boat’s captain.  Wherever they were going involved scuba gear and rubber boats which were stacked on board.  After considerable shuffling around and two more flights I found myself aboard the Ocean Minesweeper USS Loyalty (MSO 457) deployed overseas to Sasebo, Japan.  It was my first experience aboard a US Navy warship.
 
The captain was a hard-boiled sort of guy who was determined that the two midshipmen on board would become qualified OOD’s before the end of the cruise. As soon as we got underway, I was assigned to the pelorus and range finder on the bridge and told to keep station on another ship in the diamond formation.  As the ship was fitted with controllable pitch propellers engine orders were given in feet of pitch (all ahead four feet). I was assigned to a regular watch section as JOOD and when we began a mine sweeping exercise with the Japanese Navy we stood four on, four off.  We eventually got to the point where I was to stand an OOD watch by myself.  Upon reporting to the bridge, the fog was so thick that I could’nt see beyond the jack staff but I was doing ok using RADAR.  About an hour into the watch a signal came through to change formation.  In my nervousness about this maneuver which I had little idea how to accomplish I garbled the Radio Transmission.  The captain came boiling out of his sea cabin behind the bridge, pissed off.  I was promptly relieved in disgrace.  
 
Looking back, it was remarkable opportunity.  The combination of the small ship and old salt captain gave me wonderful experience that I wouldn’t have received elsewhere.  
 
After I left her to return to school, Loyalty deployed to Vietnam for operation Market Time and made several deployments after that.  During one deployment she fired her 40mm “main armament” (later replaced by a 20mm) in anger destroying a gun emplacement.
 
Roger
 

Re: the use of CA for photoetch, for bigger assemblies/longer joints, after bending and tacking the assembly together, I run a bead of thick CA along the inside (not visible) side of the joint and sprinkle the joint with baking powder before the CA cures.  The baking powder causes the CA to set quickly and form a filet, making a more solid structural bond.
 
Also, those GLS sets can be pretty challenging (IMHO), so don’t beat yourself up if you find them difficult.  Looks to me like you’re getting the hang of it.
 
Cheers,
 
Keith

Ok, where to start?  First my motivation and why such an obscure ship.  This was my first sea assignment right after commissioning from the Naval Academy.  I spent two combined years on ENGAGE and IMPERVIOUS.  The entire crew transferred from ENGAGE to IMPERVIOUS for Desert Storm.  Being the first (you never forget your first 😉 ), ENGAGE holds a special place in my heart.  It was a tough ship to be on, the crew truly lived up to the mantra "Wooden Ships, Iron Men".  The ships hull was leaky and oil soaked, so as the Damage Control Assistant, I constantly worried about flooding or fire - either one and the ship was going to go fast.  On IMPERVIOUS we actually conducted mine clearance operations in live minefields - very nerve wracking.  That is why I chose a MSO, and why I chose ENGAGE.  The attached photo of ENGAGE is from December 1991, right after her decommissioning.  As you can see the pilot house port holes and bridge windows are all boarded up and the anchor chain is rigged for tow.  She was to depart the next day for Philadelphia, PA.
 
Because this was such an obscure ship, there is not a lot of ship build information out there on MSOs.  Fortunately, in 2007 I was assigned to a command which had a lot, and I mean a lot of mine warfare historical documents.  One of those documents was the BUSHIPS Booklet of General Plans for MSO 441 (pictures attached).  This got me started.  The General Plans were great for profiles and deck layout, but one thing missing from the plans were the hull lines.  Searching through the internet, I was able to find a set of hull lines for a MSO, but they were not to scale.  After much manipulation and trial and error, I was finally able to get those plans to scale (or at least extremely close).  With a good starting point, I set out on my adventure.  It was January 2008.

Hi Dubz
 
        Thank you for your reminder.The picture above is a test made of plywood, not an actual part. The actual parts are different in thickness.

after the disastrous first week of the build, i have made a few conclusions
 
i was totally overwhelmed by the amount of shiny stuff, in the addons, everything had to be opened and played with, im sure others can relate to this
 
Soldering, is my way ahead for this build, no i didn't know haw to do it and never had the right stuff, now sorted and will show in a later post
 
the hull
 
having made up the 4 sections the keel has to be removed and fared into the plates at the bow, also the hull plates are to thick and porthole eyebrows need to be gone,
a bulk of the work has now been done
 
but many more hours still required to make it presentable 
 
 
 
 
 

Team, very excited to share my progress. Since my last update I completed the head rails, Cannons, exterior details and started on the internal details. Plenty of lessons along the way but I'm very happy with it so far. Check out the photos below!
 

Quarter Badges
 
 

Carronades! (I added elevation screws after this photo and they have not been glued or rigged yet) 
 

Long Guns
 

Head Rails.
 

 
Some belay pins placed 
 

 

Head Rails with the Bumpkins and Figure Head
 
 
 
Thanks for taking a look! I'm open to any feedback you have. I'm learning along through out this build and thoroughly enjoying it! 
 
-Joe
Just an army dude that likes ships
 

The next step in this build was coppering the hull. This part was equal parts rewarding and overwhelming. The first step, build and test the press. 
 

 

 

 
I wasn't really sure if I like this, they imprints seamed to large for individual rivets and in fact, they are. However, when taken in the whole, they actually look really good, and so I started the process. 
 
Dear lord, this was a lot of copper plates.... 
 
But four weeks of work, and its complete! 

 



 
and with that, you're all caught up. The next step for me is the hull details. I'm very excited to see where this thing takes me. It's been a huge learning experience so far and I expect I will have plenty more opportunities to learn before I finish this one. 
 
-Joe
Just an army dude that likes ships
 

Modern signal flags are made with a ring spliced into the top of the tack line, which runs through the tabling on the hoist of the flag and extends beyond the bottom of the flag, and a snap hook spliced into the bottom of the line.  The snap hook also has a hole with a sharpened edge that takes the marline that can be used to make up the flag for breaking after running it aloft in a rolled bundle.
 
If you look closely in the WWII flag bags (still used today) you will see that the flags are held in racks of "fingers" that have slots to hold the rings and snap hooks of the flags vertically.  Each set of fingers holds two of the same flag.  The flags are arranged in the flag bag grouped together by type and alphanumerically (letters, numeral flags, numeral pennants, special pennants, substitutes).  In operation you have a flag bag operator and a man on the halyard uphaul.  The halyard uphaul has a snap hook spliced in the end.  The flag bag operator snaps the hook on to the first flag of the hoist and the up haul is hauled pulling the ring out of the fingers.  While the flag is coming out of the bag the flag bag operator is snapping the hook from the first flag onto the ring of the second flag. This continues until the hoist is complete.  The last flags snap hook is then hooked into the halyard downhaul and the hoist is the raised to the required height (at the dip which is halfway up, or close up which is fully raised to the yard arm). Depending on the ship you can fit a half dozen flags or more in a single hoist.  Additional halyards are employed until the signal is complete.  Signals are hoisted from outboard in.  A well trained signal crew can raise a hoist of flags in seconds from receiving the coded signal.
 
Regards,
a USN Signalman

Aftermath
Four masted barque 'Pinmore' with heavy weather damage to her masts and spars.
An interesting career worth looking up
. Watercolour 420mm X 297mm
Jim

A Gun Brig rakes a Privateer in the Transom as she passes round her stern. Withering Fire brings down her Main Mast taking her Foretop Mast with it. Soon it will be “ Away boarders away”
Watercolour 16” X 12”

Finally... an update.
The two remaining small boats are on hold for now.  I needed a change of pace and break from those fiddly things.
 
I've installed the forecastle and quarterdeck beams.  And also installed the pumps.  Clearances have been checked and re-checked for rigging to come at a much later date.
Next up is planking the decks and associated bulwarks.  I'm starting with forecastle.  Here's photos:
 

I had to get the camera repaired and it would appear that the repairs were successful.
 
Till next time.

The 3 to 1 rule (or circumference of line) bending rule has a long history in maritime use (as in pre-dating the 1st edition of Knight's Modern Seamanship).
 
So, a 7" lnie really "wants" a 22" bitt crossbar to not damage the rode.
 
For perspective, a 7" diameter line if a bit bigger than most of our thighs, and, typically made up of individual lines laid against the lay of the rode.  This is not a casual thing to take hold of and fetch up a loop into.  Probably even more so in the limited room of a forepeak.
 
As to bending off the rode before letting go, that suggests hauling up and flaking out a lot of rode.  In a 10 fathom anchorage, you are asking to flake out 50 fathoms of rode--300' [91m] of 7" [17-18cm] line.  Which is rather a lot of line to get out on deck, to let run freely.  (everything I have read of RN practice is that 1:3 was considered short scope, and that 1:5 was considered more prudent, if on ground that was "well holding.")
 
I also have a lifetime of being aroun Bos'un' and CPO (people would would have been Mates, back i nthe day).  A s rule they are a frugal and conservative bunch.  Suppose the tide goes out and you need to take in 5 or 6 fathoms of rode, or lay out another 10 as a storm brews up.  Far easier to cast off a stopper lashed to the bitts and make the adjustments as opposed to figuring out how to take the strain off the rode snubbed on the bitts.
 
But, then again, I might just be crusty and old and garrulous (I rather hope not, but, still . . . )

your progress is really good Kevin    I must admit though.......I haven't heard of too many that has used solder on PE.  I thought about it,  but always ended up using the recommended adhesive...CA.  

Not an expert, but I suspect some artists use their imagination to create dramatic effect.  To me the whole stuns’l apparatus seems rather weak and only suitable for making the most of light winds.  I bet they were quickly doused when winds picked up (more likely with any indication winds would be picking up).
 
FWIW,
 
Keith

I'm getting close to finishing the old 74. It will be a birthday gift for my grandson, with radio, battery everything installed ready to hit the water. But this afternoon, while giving the old 74 a trial run in the tub, I found that she is quite top heavy due to the upper cabin. So in order for her to sit well in the water at the proper water line without tipping over, she will require a tad over a pound of lead or dead weight in order to balance her. I went with a 380 sized motor and a 7.4 2 cell 1500mah lipo battery. I started to put in a 540 motor, I have a few of them laying around an a 3s 3000mah lipo, but I didn't want that much power for my grandson in such a small boat. I really hate adding dead weight, but in this situation, I guess it can't be helped.  

YC,
 
Here is a blueprint for the "flag board" (also known as the flag bag) on a Cleveland class cruiser guided missile conversion in the 1950s. I suspect (but I am not certain) it is the same flag bag that was used on cruisers during WWII and was reused after the conversion. It is the same basic design shown in the photos Bob posted.

This shows the general shape and size of the flag bag, and is an example how it was arranged with respect to the signal mast and halyards.
 
This is a prettty large drawing showing the details clearly, but it looks like the Forum reduces it drastically. Contact me through this link and I'll send you the full sized drawing:
 
https://www.okieboat.com/Contact page.html
 
I might even find some more photos of cruiser flag bags.
 
 
 

I'm getting close to finishing up the rigging on my Yacht Mary, and  was exploring some technique for setting up the several tackle required.
I was wondering about the methods others may use.
 
I set up the final dimensions, and then hang it with some tension on it.  I then wet it down with very thin white glue.
It usually dries overnight before I fit it to the boat..
 

After over ten years of very intermittent work, I'm finally seeing the end of the tunnel..

Morning, 
It's going to be unusually hot and muggy this weekend......to the Shipyard it is!!!!!
Absolutely hate the heat, I'm a New England boy and prefer the cooler weather. 
A sure sign that summer is almost over...…..the New England Patriots report to camp next week! 
 
Update on the James Cannon.
The blackened chains were air dried for a day or two then installed. 

 

She's really filling in. 

A while back I bought some .080 brown rope from Syren…..I sure glad I did!
It looks pretty sweet compared to the "rope" that comes with the kit. 

A few touch ups are next. 

Hope to have this project wrapped up soon!

 
Tom E 
 
 

I tend to stick to one project at a time, but within a project it is necessary to plan ahead. You really need to be familiar with every step of the build before you start, otherwise you may find that you misunderstood how one of the later parts fits into the whole and find that you have to go back and reconstruct something. For me this is very frustrating!
 
In many cases I create my own plans for parts and assembly, even if it is a kit with plans. Kit plans often leave a lot to be desired! I read about how things worked on the real ships. That gives me a much better understanding of what it is I am building, and how it fits into the whole model.
 
For example, on my current build, while I was attaching the channels and chain plates to the hull I needed to know the angle of the shrouds from the mastheads to the channels in order to get the angles of the chain plates right. This required me to determine the heights on the masts where the shrouds attached, and that required a bit of study of the mast assemblies. I didn't actually construct the masts, but I learned how to do it.
 
Having said that, I am planning another 1:96 scratch build project of a guided missile cruiser. No plans existed for the ship so I worked 14 years to research and create a very accurate 3D CAD model to be used to create plans. After that I was pretty much burned out for a while on the cruiser project, so now I am "relaxing" with a revenue cutter kitbash build. But I started the kit build before I began working on the CAD model of the cruiser! One of these days I will restart the 1:96 scale project, and I suspect it will take several years to build it. I may alternate between the two builds in order to get a change of pace. Who knows which will be completed first?
 
The important thing is to enjoy what you are doing. If you lose your enthusiasm for one project, that is the time to put it on the shelf and work on something else. The first will keep, and will be there when you again have interest. Besides, in the interim you may discover something about the shelved project that will help you build a more satisfying model.
 

test
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Because I still was reluctant to continue with gun rigging, I put the transom in place and started on its decoration. While trying to fit the flexible decoration part I found that it was too wide and would not fit around the quarter galleries stern windows. As it was already mutilated after scratching away the elephant I brought myself to cut it in half, taking out about 1,5 mm in the middle. (A similar operation had already worked for Pickles boat so I did it again.)
 
The now 3 parts were painted and glued onto the transom. After much re-gluing, light sanding, touching up again and again with the 4 colours used (black, yellow ochre, white and flesh) and mending Pegasus' broken wing I achieved an acceptable result which even for once looks better on the pictures than in reality. Using only 3 basic colours and just a little more on the central image of Bellerophon on Pegasus looks right to me - not pretentious but with a simple elegance. Again, less seems to be more.
 
After closing the side galleries I could see what benefit I gained from the extra work with hollowing out the gallery frames to give a view into the lower part of the side gallery: Well, not a big one, but I'm still glad I tried it. Next time I should radically cut away as much as possible of the part where it touches the hull.
 
 

3 parts of the transom decoration ready to be glued on
 
 

the yellow ochre looks a bit more golden than in reality
 
 

the transplantation of Bellerophon was quite successful

Hello, everybody. Today, the winch assembly has been verified. It was originally a part cut by laser, but it was found that grinding is very difficult and the parts are very small. The processing technology has been improved. Laser and CNC are used to process. As you can see in the photos, we have pre-processed the angle and assembled it conveniently. We have changed the metal parts into wood parts for the pump assembly. You can see in the photos.

I found the following quite interesting and thought some of the members would as well.  
https://aeon.co/essays/how-european-sailors-learned-celestial-navigation
It follows:
In 1673, in a North Sea skirmish that killed nearly 150 men, the French privateer Jean-François Doublet took a bullet that tossed him from the forecastle and broke his arm in two places. How did the precocious young second lieutenant choose to spend his convalescence? Doublet repaired to the French port city of Dieppe, where he signed up for three months of navigation lessons. 
This might seem a strange decision; Doublet, who had gone to sea at the age of seven, already knew the ins and outs of navigation. Why would he bother paying for lessons? The school in Dieppe – the Royal School of Hydrography – was renowned for the calibre of its lectures, attracting passing tourists as well as naval trainees. Doublet was keen to learn some more advanced techniques from the teacher, Abbé Guillaume Denys. In his memoir, Doublet explains a practical motive too: if he got injured again, he would retire and open his own sailing school.
Bold adventurers had a chance to enjoy considerable profits at sea in the early modern period (the 16th to 18th centuries) but they also risked their lives on every voyage. For Doublet, it was important to have a backup career plan. He never ended up teaching – he would spend the next three decades traversing the Atlantic and hobnobbing with famous admirals before, as a retirement project, writing his memoir. It might seem surprising that Doublet felt that teaching navigation was on a par with privateering, which was essentially legal piracy, with handsome prize money. Clearly, in the late-17th century, even knowledgeable sailors sought out more education. Records of these early schools are scarce – but Doublet’s detailed account of his time in Denys’s classes offers a rare glimpse into the technical education that early modern European sailors might have received
       
During the 16th to 18th centuries, Europeans embarked on thousands of long-distance sea voyages around the world. These expeditions in the name of trade and colonisation had irreversible, often deadly, impacts on peoples around the globe. Heedless of those consequences, Europeans focused primarily on devising new techniques to make their voyages safer and faster. They could no longer sail along the coasts, taking their directional cues from prominent landmarks (as had been common in the preceding centuries). Nor did they have sophisticated knowledge of waves and currents, as did their counterparts in the Pacific. They had no choice but to figure out new methods of navigating across the open water. Instead of memorising the shoreline, they looked to the heavens, calculating time and position from the sun and the stars.
Celestial navigation was certainly feasible, but it required real technical skills as well as fairly advanced mathematics. Sailors needed to calculate the angle of a star’s elevation using a cross-staff or quadrant. They needed to track the direction of their ship’s course relative to magnetic north. Trigonometry and logarithms offered the best way to make these essential measurements: for these, a sailor needed to be adept at using dense numerical tables. All of a sudden, a navigator’s main skill wasn’t his memory – it was his mathematical ability.
To help the average sailor with these technical computations, maritime administrators and entrepreneurs opened schools in capital cities and port towns across Europe. Some were less formal arrangements, where small groups of men gathered in the teacher’s home, paying for a series of classes over the course of a winter when they were on shore.
Illustration of a small Dutch classroom from The Golden Light of Navigation (1697), by C H Gietermaker. Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam In other instances, the crown set up official schools, usually footing the bill for young men who were expected to then serve in the nation’s navy. Many of these were modelled after the first official school, established by the Spanish crown in 1552 at the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación) in Seville. It was counterintuitive to teach sailors in classrooms – most were barely literate – but educators chose to follow the pattern set by traditional universities: lectures, note-taking and formal examinations. Administrators devised ambitious, theory-heavy curricula, but they provided no instructions about how to teach this material.
In the 17th century, navies and trading companies began requiring their mariners to pass an examination if they wished to be promoted – to master, lieutenant, eventually even to captain. While sailors who were already competent navigators might not see the point of sitting through classes dedicated to theory, they were motivated by the prospect of upward career mobility. If you could read and had a head for numbers, you could climb the ladder quickly. A master or navigator (pilote in French, piloto in Spanish, stuurluy in Dutch) earned three times as much as an able seaman, and many would eventually secure commissions as captains. Sailors flocked to the classroom.
Sailors needed to learn the terms that would have been familiar to university students studying cosmography
The first schools in northwestern Europe popped up near the docks in Amsterdam, Le Havre and London. They were run by ambitious entrepreneurs who wore multiple hats: a number of them invented new instruments or wrote introductory textbooks, all of which they hoped to sell to their students. Some were mariners themselves, but most had virtually no experience at sea. Still, they harnessed the power of the printing press, and instruments galore, to help teach new mathematical concepts.
One teacher in Rotterdam, Jan van den Broucke, published a small textbook, Instruction about Navigation (1609). The humble volume was illustrated with the latest paper tools: tables, diagrams and moveable instruments. Van den Broucke offered keen sailors practical advice about how to get up to speed on astronomy. He reviewed basic definitions: what is a pole? Where is the equator? Sailors needed to learn the terms that would have been familiar to university students studying cosmography (the celestial parallel to geography). The Instruction included a list of 12 key concepts – from the signs of the zodiac to charts and compasses. Van den Broucke advised his readers to ‘hang the list over their bed [and] review it every evening for a year’. If they found such memorisation onerous, they could come take classes with him instead.
Van den Broucke taught readers and students a useful technique: how to use the Little Dipper to tell time. The handle of the dipper points at the North Star, and the bowl of the dipper rotates around it over the course of 24 hours. That means that when the two farthest ‘guard stars’ moved 15 degrees, one hour has passed. Once the constellation has rotated 90 degrees, six hours have passed. This functionality was so useful that most early textbooks included diagrams, often with volvelles, moveable discs that help the reader understand the concept.
A Volvelle (Dipper) from Instruction about Navigation (1609), by Jan van den Broucke. Courtesy Leiden University Library Van den Broucke’s Instruction also offered a more elaborate tool for mastering the heavens: the ‘zodiac song’. To help students remember the stars, the song rendered all the constellations in 12 rhyming verses. In the northern hemisphere in March, for instance, you first see Andromeda’s belt rising in the sky, pursued by Cetus the Whale, followed by the ear of Aries the ram. These verses were set to the tunes of familiar hymns. Devout sailors could sing along, or so seemed to be the intention. It is doubtful, however, that many sailors learned the constellations through music. Claas Gietermaker, author of the immensely successful nautical manual Golden Light of Navigation (1660), included two different songs in the first edition of his Dutch textbook. But Gietermaker left the songs out of subsequent printings. He did retain two volvelles, suggesting that sailors found the hands-on spinning discs more useful than the verse and tunes.
By the time Gietermaker published the Golden Light of Navigation half a century after Van den Broucke’s Instruction, nautical manuals had evolved. The definitions that had been so important – pole and equator, zenith and meridian – had become common knowledge, and sailors now focused on a different set of essential skills: addition and subtraction, multiplication and division. The volumes burst with the newest tables and equations. Teachers took their students outside to make observations along the shoreline. Other classes piled into small boats so that they could sketch the coastline, training their eye for estimating distance as well as for cartography. At larger institutions, pupils might get to practise working the rigging of real or model ships. More often, a small group of men would gather around a table with a blank workbook, a set of drawing compasses and a globe. Teachers usually had all of this equipment available for purchase (and might even rent out a storage drawer for a small fee).
The Kaatje training ship in the courtyard of Amsterdam’s Seminary for Navigation. Courtesy Rijksmuseum Classroom activities involved a fair amount of rote memorisation, and students were expected to copy out their teachers’ lectures verbatim. By the 18th century, teachers petitioned central administrators to ask that the students not waste time by copying out the textbooks – let them simply buy a copy!
Students owned manuscript workbooks where they copied out definitions of key concepts and answered questions. Some mariners spent more time on decorating their notebooks with calligraphy or doodles than on mathematics. But the manuscripts are invaluable: they let historians track which topics received the most attention, where students made the most mistakes, and what they did each day in class.
‘What course shall the man of warre shape to finde these pyrates?’ 
The most important textbook questions had to do with the boat’s course and position: ‘If your ship intends to sail west but is forced off-course by the wind … what is your true course and distance sailed?’ Straightforward trigonometry could give the answer. But sometimes a teacher would put more spin on the problem. Richard Norwood, in his Trigonometrie (1631), presented the following scenario:
What is the next step? Naturally to hunt down the pirates! Since the merchant had ‘sailed since at least 64 leagues betweene the south and west, what course shall the man of warre shape to finde these pyrates?’ For more than a century, variants on this ‘pirate question’ appeared in textbooks.
There were also more idiosyncratic problems: one Dutch student carefully drew a trapezoid to answer a question about four old ladies sewing – how far apart were they from each other, and how many yards of cloth did each stitch? One common classroom exercise required students to trace out hypothetical routes for vessels as they zigzagged through a day’s sail. To make this interesting, teachers designed fantastic courses – castles, anchors, hearts – that students constructed in their notebooks, connect-the-dots style.
From the navigation workbook of William Spink RN (c1697-1731). Courtesy National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London Such questions aimed to make technical material as memorable as possible. Textbook publishers, for their part, did not want to dedicate costly paper to these sizeable diagrams – they appear almost exclusively in manuscript workbooks. Here again, the discrepancy between published book and student work tells us which parts of the extensive curricula were truly important. These classroom records reveal the theoretical material that sailors actually used at sea. 
Thanks to the French privateer Doublet, we can get insight into the 17th-century ‘student experience’. We know from Denys’s own correspondence that he had been running a navigation school in his home since the 1650s. When Louis XIV’s main advisor Jean-Baptiste Colbert asked him to convert it to a royal college, Denys sunk money into renovations, for which he was never properly compensated. (Teachers, always underpaid, lodged many such complaints. They often supplemented their income with private tutoring on the side, but this could cause problems; their favourite students never failed the exams.) Denys’s school was on a noisy corner; he reported that it could be hard for the students to concentrate over the din of women selling their wares. Denys grumbled to Colbert about his feud with the merchant who sold the only magnets in town, obviously an important piece of equipment for mariners. Despite these issues, Denys’s hundreds of students evidently loved him, and he stood as godfather for several of their children.
Doublet tells us about Denys’s school itself. In 1673, he paid 50 livres a month for room, board, laundry and the necessary books. (These were almost certainly Denys’s own pioneering textbooks, which introduced trigonometry to French sailors.) Doublet notes that most students started with the basics – the tides, altitudes, and simple instruments such as Gunter’s scale and the sinical quadrant – but Doublet easily worked his way through spherical trigonometry and Euclid’s Elements. The young corsair turned out to be so proficient at the advanced mathematics of celestial navigation that Denys offered to foot the bill to keep him on in Dieppe as a teaching assistant. ‘You would oblige me infinitely by staying, for you would ease the puzzle of this [large] number of students, the majority of whom have heads as hard as stone.’
Denys made typical complaints about students. If some were bright and diligent, others stole school supplies or sold their textbooks for a profit. Absenteeism was a problem. French administrators experimented with paying senior naval officers to attend classes as role models – but that did not stop them from playing hooky. The navy then docked the wages of men who didn’t show up for class. At a Dutch school for officers in Batavia, the best student in class earned a sword.
Doublet needed no such coaxing. When his squadron leader ordered him back to sea after three months, Denys pushed back so that Doublet could stay in the classroom for three months more. Doublet was thrilled: he scored ‘six months of room and board for which I only paid three’.
After this stimulating scholarly interlude, the Franco-Dutch war (1672-78) continued to intensify so Doublet hurried back to sea to harry the enemy. But first, he did something that was increasingly obligatory for sailors: he took his navigator’s exam. (Denys covered the cost.) As was the custom, Doublet stood in front of a panel of ‘Four old captains and four pilots, who questioned me from all sides.’ The bright young corsair passed with flying colours. After a celebratory feast with Denys and his sister, Doublet finally headed back to his squadron.
Captain Dering, an overconfident young Brit, failed to correctly calculate the time of high tide at London Bridge
If Denys was unusually gifted at Euclidean geometry, many other average mariners followed him into the classroom to face the examiners. By the 18th century, sailors spent some portion of their training in a schoolroom. Navigation was no longer an art learned by apprenticeship – it was a science. Textbooks poured off the presses; sailors filled their workbooks with trigonometry. Although exams might not have been mandatory in every locale, mariners were keen to pass them. The Dutch author Gietermaker included a model exam paper in his Golden Light of Navigation. This simple two-page innovation made waves. Other authors quickly copied Gietermaker, and before long, most Dutch textbooks included a practice test.
Soon after this, mariners started cramming for exams. Instead of paying 36 florins for an entire winter of lessons, Amsterdam-based mariners paid just 6 florins for a crash course focused on the oral and written portions of the tests. Later manuscript workbooks confirm this strategy: students often focused on the questions they knew would be on their exam. Teachers at the close of the 17th century were already ‘teaching to the test’.
What were these exams like? Evidence is sparse, and Doublet is regrettably silent on his own experience. Admiralty records do preserve records of those who ran into difficulty: men who desperately wanted to earn their certificate, but repeatedly failed their examinations. Some flunked due to seemingly minor errors, while others persisted, and eventually earned their credential. For instance, Captain Dering, an overconfident young Brit who had ‘pretended to be a lieutenant after having been [on] one voyage to Wyborne’, failed to correctly calculate the time of high tide at London Bridge. This was one of the most straightforward and essential tasks – so he was summarily sent back to his ship, and told to reapply at a later date.
A practice exam in the navigation workbook of C. J. Boombaar (1727–32). Courtesy Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam. In the 1760s, a Dutchman, Frans van Ewijk, already held a position as a merchant captain. Unfortunately for him, the Dutch East India Company passed a rule making exams mandatory even for captains. In October 1768, Van Ewijk presented himself in Rotterdam for the exam – and promptly failed. He was deemed ‘very deficient in theory and practice’, and unqualified to serve as captain. He blamed his servants for distracting him with ‘much confusion and trouble’ at home, but the committee was not sympathetic. Undaunted, Van Ewijk showed up at an exam room in Amsterdam six weeks later. This time, he answered the questions satisfactorily. (Perhaps he had taken a crash course?) The following summer, Van Ewijk once again sailed as captain of a ship.
Another English candidate, Charles Hadsell, wished to get certified as a ship’s master in 1670. Just returned from the Caribbean, he had sailed for a decade with the notorious Captain Henry Morgan. In spite of more than 10 years at sea, he failed the master’s exam – twice! The panel of naval examiners found that ‘he could not give any Considerable answere to moderate questions in Navigation’. Even if he knew every cove and reef in the West Indies, they were clear: ‘We doubt of his Capacity in navigating a shipp on the greate Ocean.’ We cannot know if the Admiralty disliked Hadsell because he’d associated with the notorious pirate, but it seems clear: to please the examiners, he should have studied some practice questions. These mariners needed more than vessel-handling skills – definitions and theoretical concepts demonstrated your expertise to those around you.
In their quest for these credentials, maritime men sought out formal schooling. Pirates, privateers, merchants and navy hands did not just sail a boat from point A to point B; they needed to be able to track its position, to compute time and place. To do this, they needed mathematics.
Fortunately, in the 17th and 18th centuries, practical mathematics took off. For a reasonable fee, anyone who wished could acquire this bookish knowledge. Europeans felt the stakes were high, for their colonial fortunes rested on the shoulders of these navigators. In response, maritime educators developed an innovative hybrid form of training. Early modern navigation students memorised definitions and took notes but also got their hands on instruments, and answered many, many practice questions. Zodiac songs, creative diagrams, hands-on lessons along the beach – this combination of memory and mathematics caught the imagination of mariners, making it easier to grasp the technical skills needed on the high seas. Far from being drunken sailors, these men were clever mathematicians, using traditional approaches alongside the latest technologies to reach the far side of the globe.

That's debatable. My small house is running extremely short of 50-100 cm potential display spaces -- at least ones that the Admiral would be okay with.

I have eleven ship models around the house in scales ranging from 1:150 - 1:24.
Different scales and subjects do allow for more display options, if I built everything I have in 1:48 scale I would have a wonderful collection of models - but no wife!
 
B.E.