WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR?

Now that is a full-rigged ship, Walter . . . count the sails, from bottom to top: mainsail, topsail, top gallant, royal and sky sail.

perhaps we could invite walter to join the kingston sea cadets. there is always a senior on board to help the cadets.
last year they managed to run the brigantine aground on the wolfe island shore, but they managed to free the ship the old-fashioned way by putting anchors some distance from the ship into the mud of lake ontario, attaching lines to the main-mast and hauling over the brigantine and freeing it. quite a nice feat. they did have a navy tug on standby but the help was not required. hbg

It's good that they taught them the old, tried and true method of millenia . . . that is known as "kedging," by the way. Almost all ships in the era of sail would have carried kedge anchors, at least two; their weight would simply have been calculated in the ballast. That one might never use them on a voyage is meaningless. When such a ship is run aground, there is no other way, reasonably, to pull her off, so having kedge anchors was a must.



Kedge anchors -- note the long handle attacked at the eye of the anchor (the eye is the ring at the top through which a line is passed to secure the anchor to the ship's capstan, a human-powered winch). In shoal water, the anchor would be loaded in a boat and carried to a likely spot. Were the water not too deep, someone would then go into the water, and lift handle attached to the anchor, and then this would be used to securely bury the anchor in the bottom.

This crew is kedging their small sloop, and they're doing it the hard way, too . . . they've carried the kedge out by hand.

I love this ****. This, together with cavs "sea shanty" thread is about the best stuff Ive seen on this whole darn site.


May I have the envelope please.

I guess having to take the kedge anchors out of the ballast would lighten up the ship, too.

I dont think them ole boys are kedging. I think they are , after sobering up,just realizing that they are in some deep **** here. Theyve gotta have a convertible keel which has been swung away, or else, Id say that they are there waiting for a reaallly big tide. Was this pic from Fundy? It doesnt look like theres a big tidal range for this. Unless theyre just careening

Ya mean reelin' and careenin' around 'cause they got prime drunk before they even put to sea?

This isn't a sailing ship, but I think you will find it interesting nonetheless.

Take a look at THIS

interesting pix intrepid. I used to watch coal barges on the Kanawha in W Va . Those guys would stack up 9 flats with a pusher and just runthe river like it was a walk in the park.

set, I was thinking that those guys did a "haul out" to dump the boat over and work on the rudder or they may have a skeg that needed readjusting. I dont know it just looks kinda suspicious when you consider the size of the keel that could be under that boat and its only that far over and it seems to be pointed to shore. Hes obviously out of the channel markers a good deal. We see this on the Chesapeake alot. There was a recent rig "beaching" up on the Susquehanna flats a few weeks ago. The boat is still there all wedged into a sand bar. They came out with a marine lift but couldnt get close enough.

I've been saving this thread for later. I'll read it all soon.

Greetings to "laughing fellow rovers"

Kedge a falling star and put it in your pocket....

(This is a picture of me taken at the harbour in Anstruther, Fife, where the Scottish Museum of Fishing is.)

The "Landratte" enjoys all this very much.

Speaking with/about Austria ...



The Austrian Imperial Frigate SMS Novara 1843-99




Sinking of Italian Red'Italia after being rammed
by Austrian flagship Ferdinand Max,
at the Battle of Lissa in the Adriatic Sea, 20th. July 1866.

what shall we do
the austrian admiral "tegethoff" who commanded the austrian navy in its successfull battle against the italian navy (note those beautifull "lambchops") :




monument erected in honour of admiral tegethoff in the city of POLA - which was an austrian city until the end of WW I - ; the monument was later transferred to the city of GRAZ in austria.

Yes, the Austrians had a navy- but still we are Landratten.
SMS Novara circumnavigated the world between 1857 and 1859- the Novara Expedition.
( I like this better than a sea battle).

Hamburger,
there is another monument of Tegethoff in Vienna (Praterstern).
Bohuslav Kokoschka wrote a novel about Pula(WWI)- Das Lognuch des K.

Now back to the real sailors.

The Heeresgeschichtliches (military history) Museum in Vienna has a surprising amount of space devoted to the Austrian navy. About one-fourth of the main building is taken up with naval history. If any of you get a chance to visit Vienna, the museum is fantastic -- a definite must-see.

That's really a great museum ... with an extraordinary collection on the Austrian-Hungarian Navy.

'Navy' in "Encyclopedia of Austria"

This is a minor technical question for Set, Walter or anyone else that may know. As can be seen in the cross section of the Novara, and the cross section of every other 18th and early 19th century navel vessel I have seen, the powder and shot are stored below the water line and round had to be assembled in the hold and the run up to the gun decks, generally by young boys (powder monkeys) Why was the no hoist that would communicate directly from the hold to the gundecks? This would seem to be a safer and quicker means of getting ammunition up to the guns.

Without being able to say to a certainty, i would suggest to you that this would have been antithetical to clearing the decks. When a ship knew it was about to engage, all boats were launched, and towed, empty, behind the vessel. Any piece of movable equipment not necessary to gunnery went into the hold, or over the side. No repairs would be effected during gunnery, and all the spare lumber and spars went into the hold. Most naval vessels had a companion way in the sail locker, and all spare canvas went below or over the side. One tar had the duty of taking a mallet and "chocking in hard" the belaying pins which secured the sheets (guy-ropes) at the base of the masts. And, finally, the deck would be sanded, sand buckets set out and the splinter netting hung.

So, once again, just a speculation, but i'd say it would have been against the notion of having nothing superfluous to gunnery above the level of the main gun deck. EDIT: i.e., nothing which could potentially move or produce splinters (the most lethal aspect of naval gunnery) other than gun carriages and sand buckets.

I have no better idea, too.