WIND AND WATER

This excellent image of USS Constitution shows her with the wind about four points on the starboard quarter. It is a very accurate representation, except for the small pennant on the mizzen mast (the rearmost mast), which is flying in defiance of the wind. Note that the driver, or course, the mainsail is not set, nor the spanker--those are the sails at the bottom of the middle (main) mast and the rear (mizzen) mast. The forecourse (the sail at bottom of the front mast) has two or three reefs taken in it--it has been shortened. The flying jib and the jib are set (the two triangular sails at the very front), and studdingsails have been rigged on the foretopsail. All of these point to a stiff (i.e., a steady) but not terribly strong breeze, which will be stronger higher above the deck. Rigging the main course and the spanker, or rigging any more studding sails would just press her down with out adding much speed with a mild breeze close to the water--more canvas does not automatically mean more speed.

This is a dhow, the workhorse of the middle east, especially in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea (the northwest Indian Ocean, between Africa and India). It can sail very close to the wind, and with the pivoting mast, it can come about very, very rapidly. This style of vessel may be 2000 years old or more, and larger versions carried cargo to what we call Indonesia and pilgrims back to Medina and Mekka, for centuries, for more than a thousand years.

The Norse knorr (or knarr, which is, i believe, the Danish pronunciation) was once the northern European equivalent of the dhow. Used mostly for trading, opportunistic captains might take advantage of an isolated village to turn viking for a murderous raid in the dawn light. Mostly, though, the were trading vessels, and some times colonists vessels. These were the ships which took settlers to Scotland, Ireland and the Faroe Islands, and to Iceland and Greenland. They were also the vessels which tried to colonize North America. The failure cannot be laid at the door of these sturdy little ships.

Note the steering oar at the rear, on the right hand side as one looks forward--that is the origin of the term starboard.

The Flying Cloud a clipper ship built in my old home town of East Boston MA. She set the world's sailing
record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco: 89 days 8 hours. I'm no expert, but it
seems to me that the flags are flying the wrong way.

That's a fairly common artistic convention. It just looks more streamlined that way, even though sails below the flag are billowing forward.

Yes, they are . . . and i just came to post about Flying Cloud.




The captain of Flying Cloud was Josiah Creesy, and the navigator and sailing master was his wife, Eleanor Creesy. Eleanor was a native of Nantucket, and as her father had had no sons, he taught her navigation. In 1853, they broke their own record, making the passage in 88 days, 20 hours. That record stood for 136 years until a racing yacht, Thursday Child, with a radical new, computer-assisted design, beat their time by eight days. A French yacht made the passage in under 44 days in 2008.

One day of the 1851 passage, Eleanor was able to confirm that on one day, Flying Cloud had logged an average of over 14 and a half knots for a noon-to-noon sighting. Almost nothing at sea could match that speed, and certainly not in the difficult passage around South America.

Mark.
Loving it.

Another extraordinary event took place in 1851, when the Royal Yacht Squadron offered a cup to any challenger who could defeat the racing yachts of the squadron in a race around the Isle of White. I believe the original intention was for it to be called the Albert Cup, as Prince Albert, husband and consort to Queen Victoria, was to award the cup. However, some American upstarts showed up in the schooner America, and took the cup home. It became known as America's Cup ever after. American syndicates successfully defended the cup in every race up to and including, 1977, when Ted Turner (of TBS and CNN fame) successfully defended the cup in the yacht Courageous. In 1980, three time loser Alan Bond, in Australia II finally took the cup away from the New York Yacht Club.

Britain has never won the America's cup. The closest we came was when Ben Ainslie won as part of the American squad in 2013. Now he's attempting to mount a successful British challenge based in Portsmouth with this strange contraption. Mixed feelings, I wish him well, but Portsmouth!



Btw, it's the Isle of Wight.

This is the barkentine Archibald Russell, also known as a windjammer. They were the largest and the fastest sailing ships ever built. Built with a steel hull, and steel masts and spars, they worked the European grain trade from Australia. With the Australian harvest well before the harvests in Russia, Canada and the United States, there was good money to be made hauling grain to Europe. A fast passage was considered anything under 100 days, Adelaide to Cornwall or Devon. It became known as the great grain race, since the first ships to arrive in Europe could command the best prices.

I just realized that i ought to have written "the Isle of Wight."

The Statenjacht was a single-masted luxury form of transport on the waterways of Holland other parts of Europe. The single masted vessel on the right is a statenjacht. Roads being what they were in the 17th century, the fastest and most comfortable way to travel was a vessel such as this, which is where we get our modern English word yacht.

Colloquially it's referred to as the Isle of Widget.

A poor relation of the statenjacht was the paviljoenjacht. In this model, note the board on the larboard, or port side which can be lowered to reduce leeway while sailing large, and raised when sailing in shoal water--always an important consideration in Dutch waters. Although a retractable centerboard was credited to a Royal Navy officer in the early 19th century, and he credited the idea to an army officer who was an amateur yachtsman, i think they both were being less than honest. The Dutch were using such a device as early as the 17th century.

Above is an illustration from the Chronicles of Jean Froissart, a cleric in the household of Philippa of Hainault (where Froissart had been born and educated). She was the consort of King Edward III of England, and this is an illustration of the battle of Sluys, in 1340, at the beginning of the Hundred Years War. Note the fore castles and stern castles of the ships, which were in those days basically platforms for infantry to board the ships of the enemy. The stern castle has disappeared, but the forecastles (pronounced, eventually, fo'c'sl) has long been a part of naval design. It keeps seas from sweeping the decks of ships as the bow plunges into the waves and swell.

Quite apart from the unpleasantness in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, there was a good deal of bad manners displayed on Lakes Erie and Ontario during the War of 1812. I can't make out whose vessel this is supposed to be. It's flying the American flag, the British flag, the Canadian flag and the pennant of some yacht club. Now that's what ya call hedging yer bets!

Somebody tagged this wine? What are we talkin' about here, the wine dark sea?

This is the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's ship that sank in the Solent. It has been brought back to the surface and now is on display at a purpose built museum in Portsmouth. As the timbers have been under water for so long they have to keep it wet, meaning that the dank stink is almost unbearable like dirty wet laundry forgotten about for a couple of weeks.

Other than that it's a great day out.

The schooner Bluenose, a Canadian icon.

She was built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia to compete for the International
Fisherman’s Trophy. The Bluenose won her first race in 1921 and went
undefeated for seventeen years.

The Bluenose became the pride of Nova Scotia and in 1937, the Canadian
dime was changed to include her image.