Glen McGuire

The Jenny was an early 1800’s 3-masted English schooner.  In 1822, she left the Isle of Wight for a journey to Peru.  Late in the year, she became trapped in ice on the return trip while navigating the Drake Passage.
 
Seventeen years later, a whaling boat named Hope spotted a large schooner drifting among broken ice floes.  The Hope’s captain and several crew members boarded her and discovered it was the long-lost Jenny.  Her entire crew was found dead with their bodies well preserved by the cold.  The Jenny’s captain was frozen at his desk hunched over his last log entry, “May 4, 1823. No food for 71 days. I am the only one left alive.”

Adding to the intrigue, there's uncertainty about whether the story is true or legend.  Jenny’s tragic plight was written about in several periodicals during the 1840’s, but none cited credible sources.  There is also speculation that Jenny’s story was really about another ship named Octavius that was found near Greenland 50 years earlier.  

For my presentation, I tried to make the Jenny appear as the Hope would have found her – thawing out form a deep winter freeze while showing 17 years of weather-beaten effects. 
 

The Wa'a Kaulua is the Hawaiian name for a traditional double-hulled ocean voyaging canoe.  They were built by native Hawaiians for travelling between islands of the Hawaiian archipelago.  The design of the Wa'a Kaulua evolved from earlier Polynesian ocean canoes called Vakas that navigated thousands of miles throughout the south Pacific.  The Wa'a Kaulua was propelled by both sail and oar and adapted to the unique Hawaiian geography.
 
My Wa'a Kaulua is constructed from all native Hawaiian woods.  The hull is made from koa, which is the same tree the original hulls were carved from.  The deck is queensland maple.  The masts and rails are bamboo.  And finally, the sails are dried leaves from a pineapple plant.
 
For my presentation, the bottle nestles up to a secret Hawaiian waterfall hidden somewhere among the islands.  Cool waters from a crystal stream cascade down the rocks and into the bottle providing a calm float for the Wa'a Kaulua. 
 

This project was inspired by a fantastic build log on MSW – Ian Grant’s version of a working quadrireme.  My build is a ship-in-bottle diorama of sorts depicting the Roman Siege of Syracuse during the second Punic war, circa 212 BC.  The ship is a single-masted Roman quinquereme equipped with 180 oars, 6 scorpio artillery weapons, a corvus and an archer’s tower.  The main sail is emblazoned with the inscription, “Senatus Populusque Romanus” (translated The Senate and People of Rome).  The quinquereme rows thru choppy seas inside an empty bottle of Texas Pot Bourbon from a local distillery here in central Texas. 
 
The bottle is snagged by a mechanism invented by the Greek mathematician, Archimedes.  During the 2nd Punic war, King Hiero tasked Archimedes with devising a defense for the seawalls of Syracuse. The king’s concern was an amphibious assault from Roman quinqueremes.  Archimedes’ solution was to build a mechanical contraption which became known as the Claw of Archimedes.  
 
The claw hooked the prow of incoming Roman quinqueremes, lifted the front of the ship out of the water, then suddenly released it causing the ship to crash violently back into the sea.  The Greek historian Polybius described the result as such, “ Many of the vessels heeled over and fell on their sides: some completely capsized; while the greater number, by their prows coming down suddenly from a height, dipped low in the sea, shipped a great quantity of water, and became a scene of the utmost confusion. "

 

This project was inspired by a friend that gave me an empty bottle of Kraken rum combined with memories of an iconic piece of Texas garage sale art from the 80’s – a stuffed armadillo lying on his back holding a bottle of Lone Star beer like he was fixing to drink it.  I thought it might be interesting to put a ship inside the rum bottle and have a sculpted Kraken using its tentacles to hold the bottle above the ocean.   
 
The ship is the Oseberg, a Norwegian Viking longship discovered in 1904 during the excavation of a burial mound in Tonsberg, Norway.  The Oseberg was believed to have been built in 820 AD and buried 14 years later as a funeral ship containing the skeletons of two women of royalty.  The Oseberg was almost entirely made of oak, about 70' in length, 17' wide at midpoint, with a 30' high mast.  There are 15 oar openings for 30 rowers.  

For the Kraken, I based it on Jules Verne’s description from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:
"It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long.  It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea green…The monster’s mouth—a beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot—opened and closed vertically. Its tongue, also of horn substance and armed with several rows of sharp teeth, would flicker out from between these genuine shears. What a freak of nature! A bird’s beak on a mollusk…Its unstable color would change with tremendous speed as the animal grew irritated, passing successively from bluish gray to reddish brown."
 

This is my illustration of the Zheng He Treasure Fleet.  Zheng He (pronounced "Jung Huh") was a court eunuch in the Ming Dynasty and an accomplished mariner of the early 1400’s.

In 1403, The third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, ordered construction of a massive fleet of ships which would later be known as the Treasure Fleet.  The fleet was a large collection of 250 - 300 ships manned by an estimated 25,000 crew members.  The main ships of Zheng He’s fleet were called “treasure ships” and they were massive – each one was nearly the size of a football field according to some accounts.  Other (smaller) ships in the fleet included equine ships, supply ships, troop transports, guardships, patrol boats, and water tankers.  

The purpose of the Treasure Fleet was to display the power and majesty of the Ming Dynasty while conducting trade as far away as Africa.  From 1405 – 1433, the Zheng He Treasure Fleet made seven far-reaching voyages to coastal territories and islands in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, and the East coast of Africa.

My presentation includes 3 junk ships - a 9-masted treasure ship, a 4-masted guard ship, and a single-masted patrol boat with an oar deck.  The bottled fleet rests on a historical Chinese sword holder.
 

This is my presentation of Captain Kidd’s Adventure Galley.  Captain Kidd was a pirate hunter turned hunted pirate.  He began as privateer commissioned by England to hunt pirates.  He weighed anchor in the fall of 1696.  Two years later, he took his greatest prize, the 400-ton Quedah Merchant, which was an Indian ship carrying a large treasure of gold, silver, silks and other valuables.  Shortly afterwards, Kidd was declared a pirate by the same English government that had given him his commission.  He was lured to Boston with a false promise of clemency, but not before he supposedly stashed much of his treasure near Long Island, NY.  After surrender, Kidd was extradited to London in 1701 and hung for piracy and murder.
     
Captain Kidd’s main ship was called the Adventure Galley, a 284 ton, 3-masted frigate equipped with 34 cannons and designed for a crew of 150 men.  After capturing the Quedah Merchant, Kidd scuttled the Adventure Galley and took over the Indian ship, renaming it the Adventure Prize.

Captain Kidd is one of the few pirates that actually did hide his treasure (or at least part of it).  Some of his loot was found on Gardiner Island outside of New York before his hanging.  But rumors that Kidd buried additional treasure at various points along the Jersey shore persist today.  
 

This is my tribute to the USS Independence, the first ship of the line commissioned by the United States Navy.  Launched in 1814 during the War of 1812, it was outfitted with 90 guns on 3 decks, but saw no action in the war as it was blockaded in port along with the USS Constitution.  
 
In 1836, the Independence was razeed down to a single gun deck because her lower gun decks were too close to the water line when fully outfitted.  The razee version of the Independence became known as a powerful and fast frigate.        

The SY Aurora was a barque-rigged steam yacht built in Scotland in 1876.   Launched originally as a whaler, it was purchased in 1910 by Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson for his Australasia Antarctic Expedition.   Thereafter, the Aurora became arguably the most reliable ship during the golden age of Antarctic exploration.  
 
Between 1911 and 1917, it made five trips to the continent, four under the command of Captain John King “Gloomy” Davis.   The only Antarctic voyage not under his command almost ended in disaster after the ship got caught in pack ice supporting the Ross Sea Party of Ernest Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition.   King returned to command for the subsequent rescue mission of the ill-fated party.  The Aurora disappeared in 1917 on a cargo run delivering coal to Chile.   I t is suspected that the ship was a late casualty of World War I.  
 
My presentation of the Aurora is a tribute to Captain Davis and Sir Douglas Mawson for their extraordinary leadership and heroism during the Australasia Antarctic Expedition.   It highlights the ship and the treacherous pack ice that Captain Davis’ navigated as well as the man-hauling sledges that Mawson and team used during their multi-hundred mile exploratory treks across sastrugi.           

My first effort at a ship in bottle project.  The Amati kit was relatively easy to work with.  This was a lot of fun! 

This is my first effort at a scratch build.  The bottle (which used to be full of peach cider) was a gift from a friend named Morgan.  So I thought it would be appropriate to put a ship named Morgan inside the bottle.