Herzogin Cecilie 1902 by Jim Lad - Four Masted Barque

[KeithAug]

15 minutes ago, KeithAug said:

estate agent!

Realtor - for those that need translation

[Jim Lad]

Keith, I'm actually a little anxious about her at the moment. Our Head of Knowledge (wonderous title that earned him many rude questions) who was the 'Duchess's' champion, has resigned for a post at the State Library, so I'm not quite sure where I stand right now. Hopefully it will all turn out O.K. in the end.

 

John

[Jim Lad]

Another small update. What with the museum being very busy of late and my still working slightly shorter hours as I continue to recover from treatment, work has slowed a little and I have diverted somewhat from work on the spanker rigging to getting a few details done.

 

The problem with the spanker rigging is that I forgot (🤢) that the radio aerial intake fitting and some of the insulators are on the after charthouse bulkhead right under the spanker boom and need to be fitted before the spanker is rigged. At the moment I'm scratching for some material to make these, and I can't browse the hobby shops as everyone is off to the beach over the holiday period.

 

Here are a couple of images, anyway. The first shows the spanker boom and lower gaff with their rigging just lying over the poop waiting for me to do something about the aerial, and the second shows some of the rope coils that I have been fitting. Note that the rope coils have no sort of hitch on them but are simply loose coils over the pins as was common practice on commercial sailing ships and is evidenced by photos of the 'Duchess' herself.

 

John

 

PS. The second image shows some of the muck that tends to accumulate as I'm working. I promise it will all be cleaned up on the completed model, I promise.

 

 

[Kenchington]

Lovely draping of those rope coils!

 

But radio aerials on a sailing ship have always seemed, to me, to be a particularly weird historical inversion of technological advance. I think (though I have never confirmed) that the Duchess and her contemporaries were fitted for receiving radio time signals specifically. Those made possible the checking of chronometers, without needing to take lunar distances -- a very demanding skill that could finally be discarded just a few years before the Panama Canal put an end to new-building of deepwater sailors.

 

Still feels odd!

 

Trevor

[Jim Lad]

She was fitted with radio in 1912, Trevor. I'd rather leave the aerials off, but I need to stay true to the ship.

 

John

[Kenchington]

Of course you should show her as she was! Besides, it will make for a useful educational point for future museum visitors.

 

I doubt that any sailing ships carried Marconi Company operators or those of the few competing companies (though perhaps the Duchess did in her training-ship days?), so I assume they only had receiving capability and nobody aboard able to read incoming rapid Morse. Hence my guess that the intent was mostly about time signals. Wikipedia claims that those were transmitted from 1905 but presumably not with enough range to reach a ship beating around the Horn. Still, an opportunity to check the chronometers before making landfall on the European coast could have made the cost of the installation worthwhile.

 

Trevor

[Jim Lad]

I'm not sure exactly what they used the radio for Trevor. She may well have carried a radio operator as a training ship, but she certainly didn't when she was under Finnish ownership. I believe the range of the radio was only about 300 miles.

 

John

[wefalck]

Wasn‘t it particularly used to obtain weather reports and when getting close to home to get orders to which port to go?

 

[KeithAug]

22 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

as everyone is off to the beach over the holiday period.

Yes John - we spend all our spare time on the beach at this time of year - very bracing. Happy new year to you and all your countrymen. The kids have just watched the Harbour Bridge fireworks before being packed off to bed. So good of you all to arrange 2026 early to facilitate our child care arrangements. We still have 4 hours 15 minutes to go to 2026 so haven't even started on the booze yet.😀

[wefalck]

Two hours and forty minutes to go for us

[Keith Black]

 I don't bother counting down anymore as I'm fast asleep long before midnight. 

[Jim Lad]

Wefalck, the radio wasn't used to get orders for the discharge port as she called at Falmouth for orders the day before she was wrecked!

 

Keith, it's nice to hear that you South Saxons are finally embracing the beach culture. If you like, we'll put on the fireworks a bit earlier next year, then we can all get an early night!

 

John

 

 

[Kenchington]

Discharge orders could hardly have been received without the ship being able to transmit, as nobody ashore would know when she came within receiving range. Transmission would have needed lots of electric power that was not available on a sailing ship -- even if the economics of the operation permitted carrying a licensed operator, which would have been out of the question in the 1930s grain trade. (The meagre freight rates didn't even permit either insurance of the ships or living wages for full crews.)

 

Weather reports might have been possible, if they were broadcast in that era, but would have needed someone able to read morse transmitted at the rapid rate of professional operators ashore. That's a skill that one of the mates might have developed but it was rather specialized expertise.

 

The range at which signals might be received depended on the power of the transmitter (along with much else). Before 1914, Marconi's shore stations were sending signals that were received 2,000 miles away and more -- though perhaps by more sensitive receivers than the sailing ships carried.

 

Trevor

[Ian_Grant]

I do know that the 4-masted barque Admiral Karpfanger ex L'Avenir sent a radio message in Nov 1939 saying all was well as she approached Cape Horn, then was never heard from again, so the radios had good range.

[Kenchington]

At the risk off hijacking Jim Lad's thread ...

 

I had forgotten the sad tale of Admiral Karpfanger. By 1939, very long range radio communication was fully possible, of course, so the notable point for present discussion is that a sailing ship fitted as a German training vessel in the '30s carried modern equipment and a radio officer. Maybe that adds to the odds that Herzogin Cecilie had transmitting capability in 1912-14. We know that neither she nor the other Aland barques did in the 1930s.

 

What of the "Flying P" ships before 1914? Some had aerial spreaders at the mastheads but they were operated as pure cargo carriers, not cadet ships.

 

Trevor