A newfound respect

[SeaCat]

Today my wife and I visited the reproductions of the ships Nina and Pinta. The Nina is a full scale reproduction of the original ship while the Pinta is a bit larger than the Pinta would have been. (Both are caravel type ships with the Nina being some 65 feet long with a Beam of 18 feet. The Pinta is 85 feet long.)

Now let me tell you, those boys that were sailing these ships with Columbus had some big balls. Unlike the ships of later times the crew slept on deck, they didn't have any protection from the elements. Oh did I mention that these small ships had a crew of 20-24 people? (The Captain/owner did have a cabin of sorts. A small cubby in the stern with a total of 4 feet of headroom and no ventilation.)

Think about sailing in a ship like that out of sight of land for anywhere up to a month and you get the idea of why I have a new found respect for the crews of these ships.

Cat

 

[sexBandersnatch]

I have seen the ships as well. They crammed dozens of people on those boats along with food, water, and any cargo for the new world. It becomes obvious why co-ed sailing was discouraged. There was no provision for hygiene or privacy of any kind. If you needed to do it, you did it over the side.

Those people were nuts.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Today my wife and I visited the reproductions of the ships Nina and Pinta. The Nina is a full scale reproduction of the original ship while the Pinta is a bit larger than the Pinta would have been. (Both are caravel type ships with the Nina being some 65 feet long with a Beam of 18 feet. The Pinta is 85 feet long.)

Now let me tell you, those boys that were sailing these ships with Columbus had some big balls. Unlike the ships of later times the crew slept on deck, they didn't have any protection from the elements. Oh did I mention that these small ships had a crew of 20-24 people? (The Captain/owner did have a cabin of sorts. A small cubby in the stern with a total of 4 feet of headroom and no ventilation.)

Think about sailing in a ship like that out of sight of land for anywhere up to a month and you get the idea of why I have a new found respect for the crews of these ships.

Cat

Thanks for this thread, SC. The sad fact is that so few appreciate history. I do. Can't imagine the horrors of sailing without TV and such, lol.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

A lack of TV, internet, wifi, etc. wouldn't bother me too much but that lack of hot water and a soft bunk? Uh-uh!!

 

[vixenfurry]

A lack of TV, internet, wifi, etc. wouldn't bother me too much but that lack of hot water and a soft bunk? Uh-uh!!

i agree with that statement. it is almost impossible for me to sleep without something soft under me and i hate not taking a shower at least 3 times a week.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Being female, you can get away with that. As a male type bruin, daily to twice daily is preferable.


http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii177/1volupturary_manque/bears/hottubbear.jpg

 

[SeaCat]

Believe me when I say that on a ship like that you bathed fairly often. Everytime the wind blew nicely and/or it rained. (Remember they slept on deck.)

Cat

 

[SeaCat]

I just looked on YouTube and sure enough they had some videos. This one will give you an idea of the size of these ships.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvryAFXkYjA&feature=related

Cat

 

[TE999]

I've been on those replicas myself...they are totally cool. I've also trod the decks of other ship replicas at Jamestown, Mystic Seaport and Roanoke, VA. It took guts to venture forth across the ocean in any of those craft knowing what the sea's capable of. Sailors couldn't swim either; they figured it wouldn't help much if they did go over the side.

 

[SeaCat]

Here's a comparison. The USS Constitution aka Old Ironsides. (Charleston Naval Yard in Boston.)

Length 175 feet upright to upright.
Beam 43 feet 6 inches

It has four decks and carried a crew of 450.

Then again "Old Ironsides" is a much newer ship. It was started in the 1760's.

Cat

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

Here's a comparison. The USS Constitution aka Old Ironsides. (Charleston Naval Yard in Boston.)

Length 175 feet upright to upright.
Beam 43 feet 6 inches

It has four decks and carried a crew of 450.

Then again "Old Ironsides" is a much newer ship. It was started in the 1760's.

Cat[/QUOTE

Even then a sailors life was difficult. Rations usually were Hard Tack (You learned to rap them on the table to drive the weevils out.) Salt Pork (Need I say more?) Water store in Hogs Head Casks. (You had to skim the algae off once it was broached.)

Major injuries and deaths were an almost daily occurrence.

No liberty when the ship was in port because many were "pressed into service" by Press Gangs."

Ladies of the evening were allowed to come aboard to service the sailors. In the morning the ships Bosun' and his mates would come around and order the sailors out of their hammocks. The term "Show a leg" came from the bosun's cry. A hairy leg had to get up and a smooth leg could stay in the hammock.

Punishment was strokes from the bosun's cat o' nine tales. Antiseptic was provided by pouring sea water over the broken skin.

In today's day and age one might suspect sailors then with all the harshness and privations would not be very effective. In fact American sailors generally out sailed and out shot the British even when sailing smaller and under gunned ships.

During the war of 1812, in which "Old Ironsides" played an important part, the British frigate captains were ordered not to engage American frigates in a one on one ship contests.

To my shipmates from today back to the Revelation I raise a ration of grog to each and every one of you. Bravo Zulu - Well Done.

Cat thanks for this thread. I know I sort of wandered off your original post. Thanks again.

Mike

 

[ishtat]

In 1787 the first fleet of eleven ships under naval supervision to settle Australia sailed to Sydney. Of 1530 people who left England, 23 died on the 8 month voyage and 22 were born. The Death rate was more or less the same as that for land dwellers at the time, the birthrate was much lower owing to the women being less than a sixth of the convicts.

The Second fleet of 6 ships was contracted out to private enterprise and sailed in a couple of years later. 1017 embarked but 260 died in transit. 500 more were hospitalised in Sydney on landing and about half of these died within a few months. Almost all of the deaths were attributable to starvation and disease.

Most of the ships in both fleets were 300 to 400 tons.

One government report of the time suggested, that unlike the transport of criminals to America before independence, the crews lacked a financial incentive to keep the convicts alive!

 

[trysail]

When you see and board the replicas of vessels such as the Niña, Pinta, Susan Constant, Godspeed, Discovery, Ark and Dove you cannot help but realize that the people who sailed those ships were either very brave or ( more likely ) unbelievably desperate. All of the same can be said of Australia's First Fleet, Captain Cook, Magellan, Drake, and the Yankee whalers. You'd have to be partially crazy to have undertaken such foolish endeavors.

When I was young, an older relative who was an accomplished sailor used to sing the praises and marvel at Cristobal Colon's ( a/k/a "Christopher Columbus" ) seamanship. That praise fell on deaf ears. It wasn't until I was older and had accumulated voyaging and passage-making experience that I came to comprehend and appreciate the incredible skill, fortitude, nautical abilities ( and, yes, probable desperation ) of the early maritime explorers.

Navigating uncharted waters and making landfalls on unknown coasts is not for the timid. The incompetent and the foolish were simply never heard from again. The knowledge that one is thousands and thousands of miles from any assistance, that the odds of rescue in the event of grounding on any one of thousands of reefs and shoals was essentially zero, and understanding that your ship is the only means by which one will ever have any chance whatsoever of a return passage has an amazing ability to concentrate one's attention.

As I came to this understanding, I was enraptured by accounts of the explorers and their voyages of discovery. Samuel Eliot Morison wrote numerous books which I devoured, including a definitive two-volume biography of Colon ( Columbus ), Admiral of The Ocean Sea, as well as the two-volume The European Discovery of America which relates the stories of voyagers such as Cabot, Champlain, Hudson. Morison also edited and arranged for the translation and publication of Journals, Documents and Other Items Related to The Voyages and Life of Cristopher Columbus ( which includes first-hand accounts taken from logs and diaries ). Robert Hughes' riveting The Fatal Shore was published at the time of the bicentennial of the First Fleet's voyage to Australia and was a best-seller.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Ni%C3%B1a_replica_-_Morro_Bay_CA.jpg/220px-Ni%C3%B1a_replica_-_Morro_Bay_CA.jpg
Niña
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Maryland_Dove.jpg/200px-Maryland_Dove.jpg
Dove
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Godspeed_replica.jpg/250px-Godspeed_replica.jpg
Godspeed
​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niña
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_María_(ship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_Dove
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(ship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Constant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godspeed_(ship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(1602_ship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet

 

[stephen55]

Here's a comparison. The USS Constitution aka Old Ironsides. (Charleston Naval Yard in Boston.)

Length 175 feet upright to upright.
Beam 43 feet 6 inches

It has four decks and carried a crew of 450.

Then again "Old Ironsides" is a much newer ship. It was started in the 1760's.

Cat

I've got a book on Old Ironsides. My wife picked it up when she was visiting Boston, where the USS Constitution is berthed. It's still a fully commissioned naval vessel.

One story from the book is about one of its captains who reversed the ship during an engagement, backing it up. I didn't know you could do that with a sail powered ship.

 

[trysail]

I've got a book on Old Ironsides. My wife picked it up when she was visiting Boston, where the USS Constitution is berthed. It's still a fully commissioned naval vessel.

One story from the book is about one of its captains who reversed the ship during an engagement, backing it up. I didn't know you could do that with a sail powered ship.

It's sometimes all-too-easy to sail backwards in a square-rigger. It was done intentionally on many occasions.

It was a common tactic used during engagements. Patrick O'Brian's "Lucky" Jack Aubrey and C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower used the tactic many times in their fictional battles.


Tacking one of those square-rigged bastards was ( and is ) an "adventure" because the bow wouldn't pass through the wind easily. It was not difficult to get caught "in irons" ( with headsails flogging away and no forward motion ) which would produce some rather embarrassing results such as sailing backwards and worse— potentially snapping off the rudder. The sequence of steps necessary to properly tack a square-rigger included a carefully-timed backing of the foresails to force the bow through the wind and onto the new course.


Because of the complexity of tacking a square-rigger, it was not uncommon to forego tacking in favor of "wearing ship" which involved turning the ship away from the wind, jibing her, then hardening up on the wind to come up to the new course.

 

[amicus]

Thank you, SeaCat, for another interesting topic....which I, sighs, am about to divert from, but not wholly....four years in the Navy created a challenge of the sea in my soul, for whatever reason, that I could not dispell...thus...to Miami and an old sailboat, a 36ft gaff rigged cutter, full of dryrot, but sound below the waterline. Someone abandoned it at a boatyard on the Miami River, so I aquired it for $1200.00 cash money and spent the next 18 months rebuilding it...

"My boat is so small and the ocean so large..." a quote from someone somewhere, is surely truth, as I discovered over the next few years from Port to Port in the Bahama's.

There is perhaps nothing so totally uncomfortable as the constant motion and the continual dampness of everything on a small boat in the open ocean; and darkness, when it comes, and it does, brings about an overwhelming sense of isolation and aloneness in the vastness of the open sky and the endless sea, that if you maintain your life and your sanity, is surely a means to learning about your inner self.

I too, respect and admire those who venture down to the sea in boats...

ami

 

[Munachi]

yeah, it is impressive to walk on such replicas... i saw the ones at muelle de las carabelas in spain - not sure how realistic they are, as the whole place seemed a bit disney-landish, but it was interesting to imagine how crowded and uncomfortable it must have been...

 

[trysail]

...If the ship's destination is nearer to the wind than she can sail, she has to tack or beat to windward; Columbus called it andar barloventeando, "to proceed windwarding." Modern yachts can do this by making right angles because they can lay up to 4 points (45°) off the wind [ note: Morison wrote this in 1942— today's yachts can sail within 20° or more of the apparent wind]. But Columbus's vessels, as we have seen, could not commonly sail nigher the wind than 6 points (67½°). Consequently, if he were sailing against the wind, the Admiral would have to make up his mind which of two unfavorable courses to follow; it would not do to shift constantly from one to another, for coming about or wearing* requires time and loses headway...


____________
* Coming about means changing tacks through the eye of the wind; wearing ( nowadays more often called gybing) means doing it downwind. The difference is illustrated by the diagram, Fig. 2. There is no evidence in Columbus's Journal as to his practice, but in all probability he wore. Wearing is the more costly in time and distance, but more certain; many bluff-bowed vessels with high forecastles cannot be brought about through the eye of the wind. Perhaps Niña and Pinta could when the sea was fairly smooth and the wind not too strong, but I feel sure that Santa Maria's big mainsail would have made her unmanageable in the eye of the wind.
​

-Samuel Eliot Morison
Admiral of The Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus
Boston, Massachusetts 1942.
Volume I, pps. xxvi-xxvii


A one-volume abridgement of Samuel Eliot Morison's majestic biography of Columbus was selected by "Book of the Month Club" in 1942. This is— by far— the most commonly-found version of the book.

The full work appeared in a two-volume edition that is greatly-to-be-preferred for its inclusion of detail such as the above prefatory description and explanation of piloting, navigation and ship handling methods for lateen and square-rigged vessels ( as well as other material, not least of which was a chapter on the introduction of syphilis to the Old World by Columbus's returning crew ).

 

[Athalia]

I visited a replica of Drakes "Golden Hind" a few years ago when it visited northern California. Like you, I was astounded by the small space that several people had to live in for months at a time, totally out of touch with civilization (at least as they understood it). Desperate men indeed, to have put up with it.

 

[oggbashan]

A one-volume abridgement of Samuel Eliot Morison's majestic biography of Columbus was selected by "Book of the Month Club" in 1942. This is— by far— the most commonly-found version of the book.

The full work appeared in a two-volume edition that is greatly-to-be-preferred for its inclusion of detail such as the above prefatory description and explanation of piloting, navigation and ship handling methods for lateen and square-rigged vessels ( as well as other material, not least of which was a chapter on the introduction of syphilis to the Old World by Columbus's returning crew ).

Modern archaeological research indicates that syphilis was common in Europe long before Columbus. Some of the symptoms of tertiary syphilis were confused with leprosy.

Og

 

[trysail]

Modern archaeological research indicates that syphilis was common in Europe long before Columbus. Some of the symptoms of tertiary syphilis were confused with leprosy.

Og

Og-
I just stumbled on the excerpt below from a transcript of a U.S. National Public Radio science-oriented program(me) called "Science Friday." I know nothing about Dr. Markel, Dr. Leone or their backgrounds. It proves nothing, of course, other than the origin of the disease is still (apparently) the subject of debate. The interviewer is the host of the program(me), Ira Flatow.

__________________

Science Diction: The Origin Of The Word 'Syphilis'
May 27, 2011
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717683/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-syphilis

In a 1530 epic poem, Italian physician and poet Hieronymus Fracastorius coined 'Syphilis' as the name of his poem's protagonist, a shepherd afflicted with the dreaded disease. Medical historian Dr. Howard Markel and STD expert Dr. Peter Leone discuss the disease's history and its resurgence today.

...FLATOW: Do we know, Howard, where syphilis originated?

Dr. MARKEL: One of the great questions of the history of medicine. And you could separate the world of historians of medicine to two fronts: those who believe Christopher Columbus and his band of sailors went to Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic and Haiti today, where they not only discovered but probably raped and pillaged and brought back that infection of syphilis with them from the New World to the Old World.

Now, there are some interesting chronology because right - a few years after that voyage, it starts breaking out in places like Italy and Spain and all across Europe, in France and so on. And a lot of - you can trace a lot of people to the Columbian travels, discovery.

And the syphilis they were seeing back then were incredibly acute and abrupt and gross and deadly in a very short period of time in quite distinction to the modern stage definition that was just discussed. And so these people developed serious skin lesions that were very gross to look at, as well as had rather rapid death. And so this was the pandemic, if you will, of certainly Fracastorius' this time, but all throughout the Renaissance.

FLATOW: Hmm. Doctor Leone, where do you come out on this one?

Dr. LEONE: Well, I'm Italian-American, so that's my disclaimer. And I certainly don't blame the Italians. But I think there's actually pretty compelling evidence now that this was a, quote, unquote, "New World disease" that was brought back to the Old World. Although it's interesting that there are some debate whether or not the organisms that eventually led to T. pallidum, which is the organism that causes syphilis, may have pre-dated in East Africa. And when the slave trade went to Asia, and then from Asia back to North America, where over time we wound up having T. pallidum develop in syphilis. So, you know, we're all interconnected. It just took a lot longer for things to get transmitted from continent to continent back then...


more...
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717683/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-syphilis

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Secrets of the Dead pretty much put paid to that idea. Syphilis has been found in pre-Columbian Britain and in Pompeii.

 

[Handley_Page]

How pleasant to find interesting information in the morning.
Than you, one and all. (I wondered about Syphilis & Columbus).