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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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According to the historical evidence, the equator was not crossed until the fifteenth century. AD!
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Jorn wrote: |
To Baptize is to dip, and linjedip is the ceremony where you cross the line (equator)
The ceremony has many names, so my guess is that it has been Christianized. I suspect that it was originally a ceremony to Ægir (Sea-giver?)
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Steve Zissou: "If you're not against me, don't cross this line! If yes, do".........
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Jorn
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To get the thread back on the evolution of the Viking ship, I want to explain why I think they had a bow spear from the earliest days.
I have tried to find the current English vocabulary, but have given up, because of English fetish for making everything complicated.
I will thus just try to explain how you navigate the "ship-way" called the north way.
The system is based on daymarks, the bowspear, and the steerman's point of view.
First when you start sailing, you line up your bowspear and the daymark in one line.
You continue sailing in this direction until you reach a point where two different daymarks on starboard or backboard come "over one" (overett), that is the pilot and the two daymarks fall into one line. (overettslinje= over one line)
At this time you turn the boat, and line up your bowspear towards the next daymark. You continue in the new direction until two more daymarks come "over one", when it is time to change course again.
The navigation technique is very simple and it is also the way it is still done, although GPS is taking over.
Norwegian TV made a program where they filmed the Coastal streamer minute for minute from Bergen to the Russian border.
A Swede condensed this trip into 37 minutes, where it is very easy to see the technique in practice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uXzkNYsQfM
You also get to see how sheltered the trip is, in that there are only a few places where the ship is exposed to the high sea. Also notice that most daymarks are mountain peaks, rather than man made marks, although man made marks dominate when they are entering harbors.
Last an image that can work as an illustration, but I recommend the video, as it also shows the coastline.
Notice how some daymarks are placed in a row, indicating the line where the ship shall turn.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Notice how some daymarks are placed in a row, indicating the line where the ship shall turn. |
This is fascinating! About time there was someone on the site who knows about ships and sailing.
By the by, there was a programme about the rebuilding of a Brixham trawler which showed the new mast being sited on top of an old (1920) penny. It reminded me of the 'Penny for the Guide'. Brixham, in Devon, was a major fishing port and fishermen would have needed all the luck available.
I asked a correspondent if this is a widespread practice or simply a local custom and he replied with a Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_Stepping and said he's heard of it before. | Lots of Google links at least back to Roman times, coins not Google! Irish currachs (curraghs) often carry a small bottle of holy water in the bow. |
The Wiki article is very brief but refers to the ancient concept of paying the ferryman
| The ceremonial practice is believed to originate from ancient Rome. One theory is that, due to the dangers of early sea travel, the coins were placed under the mast so the crew would be able to cross to the afterlife if the ship were sunk. The Romans believed it was necessary for a person to take coins with them to pay Charon, in order to cross the river Styx to the afterlife and as a result of this, coins were placed in the mouths of the dead before they were buried. | |
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Hatty wrote: | | Notice how some daymarks are placed in a row, indicating the line where the ship shall turn. |
This is fascinating! About time there was someone on the site who knows about ships and sailing.
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I agree, I am just discovering how you can sail around the Cornish coastline using church spires and other peaks as daymarks.
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Jorn
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| Hatty wrote: |
By the by, there was a programme about the rebuilding of a Brixham trawler which showed the new mast being sited on top of an old (1920) penny. |
It is called a mastcoin in Norwegian, and it supposed to be of silver. It is to be placed with the King up, and facing forward. Some places they used an iron nail in stead of the silver coin. The tradition is old, but the viking ships that have been found have not had one. Once again the tradition might have originated on the British Isles or among the Frisians.
Silver and iron was the universal remedy to ward off evil in Scandinavia, so it is not strange that you find it in ships as well. Some of the silver superstitions, like putting a silver spoon in fresh milk or in jam to keep it from going bad, actually works, as colloidal silver slows the growth of bacteria and molds.
I have heard about the Roman theory myself, so I looked into Roman shipping, and I must say that I no longer believe the classical ships like the trireme was able to sail at all.
That none of these Roman or Greek ships have been found, kind of makes me certain that they never existed.
It looks like a fantasy ship, dreamed up by scholars and art forgers that have never seen one. Three rowers sitting on top of each other, each with one toothpick of an oar is just stupid.
I don't say they never had ships, it is just what we are sold today is stupid. Put three men on each oars in order to lower center mass, and it might have worked.
You can see the trireme here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7da52cJLwW8
Looks like they understood, although they are claiming it to be a success, as the trireme was 20 years ago, and the new replicas have at least the rowers on one level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_0bwC7Hi8
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Don't forget the even sillier quinquereme
My doubts about the existence of these stem from the same source: weird impracticality. The sheer physics of the arrangement! But these doubts extend to the 'classic' Viking longship which seems to me quite impractical for sea voyages.
My view is that the latter were cobbled together during the winter on offshore islands and used strictly for upriver expeditions. The former? If they existed at all, they were probably ceremonial though I suppose it is just possible they could be used at somewhere like the Battle of Salamis when they only had to move a few miles in sheltered water.
Or maybe only one layer rowed and the others were soldiers. After all when future archaeologists dig up a Boeing 747 they will probably assume that only the galley slaves in the seats next to the portholes were actually doing the rowing. Everybody else was just waiting to charge across 'the wings' to board an enemy boat.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Jorn wrote: | | That none of these Roman or Greek ships have been found, kind of makes me certain that they never existed. |
Whoah!
Amazing.
So how is it that we've come to believe they existed? What are the sources for the design?
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Jorn
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I don't mean to be rude, but you don't just cobble a wooden boat together. I work as a carpenter, mostly renovating old furniture and houses, and I have owned a wooden boat from the 1930ies, so I know that part. Even today with modern tools and where you can just buy the boards, there is a lot of planing, drilling and fiddling to get the pieces to fit together.
A clinker built wooden boat will last about a century, if not longer, if you apply new raw linseed oil and tar about once a year. From what I learned renovating my old boat, and reading on various wooden boat fora, the biggest problem are parts made of oak and iron, as the oak rusts the iron, while the rust rots the oak.
| Mick Harper wrote: | | But these doubts extend to the 'classic' Viking longship which seems to me quite impractical for sea voyages. |
And you are correct in your observation, as the researchers don't think the long ship was meant to do much sailing on the open sea. They were designed to be sailed and rowed along the sheltered waters of the North way, the Baltic Sea and up and down rivers. The could also sail along the Atlantic coast and the British Isles, if they didn't stray too far from land, in case of bad weather.
The biggest long ship found (Skudlev 2) was build in Ireland according to scientists, and its modern replica is called the Sea Stallion from Glendalough.
For Atlantic voyages they used the knarr.
| The name knarr is the Old Norse term for ships that were built for Atlantic voyages. The knarr was a cargo ship, the hull was wider, deeper and shorter than a longship, and could take more cargo and be operated by smaller crews. They were built with a length of about 54 feet (16m), a beam of 15 feet (4.5m), and a hull capable of carrying up to 24 tons |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr
Two modern replicas of knarrs are "Saga Siglar" and "Vidfamne".
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Jorn
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| Ishmael wrote: |
So how is it that we've come to believe they existed?
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They might have existed if a trireme is the result of a monk describing a late drakkar with three men per oar. The Sea Stallion mentioned above, would then have been called a bireme, as there are two rowers per oar.
How they managed to get the rowers to sit on top of each other, I don't know.
Perhaps they had seen 15-16 century tall ships, and just imagined something similar with oars?
Perhaps we should look at the warships of Venice to get a clue?
| Ishmael wrote: |
What are the sources for the design? |
Textual descriptions of ancient battles, pottery and reliefs. Nothing that wouldn't be worth a lot of money for those who fount it.
Dimensions and development
In 1275 Charles of Anjou king of Sicily, issued an order for the construction of several galleys that provide the earliest evidence for the dimensions of the bireme galleys. Because of increased weight and breadth, which brought increased friction through the water, a trireme galley was not dramatically faster than a bireme. But the change to trireme produced more significant developments than a gain in tactical speed over short distances. Early bireme galleys escorted merchant ships but were rarely used to carry goods. A few Genoese freight contracts of the mid-13th century record charters for bireme galleys. |
1500 years with no technological development, is obviously no problem for Classical Scholars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bireme
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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A friendly poster from the megalithic site who is researching Veneti ships has started reading his son's copy of Caesar's Gallic Wars as well as Barry Cunliffe's The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek and sent me a link which shows a reconstruction of the Broighten Veneti ship found near Dublin (no sources mentioned) that looks quite similar to the knarr, i.e. a long distance tradeship.
There are no oars at all on this hefty-looking vessel so presumably it would need to be lugged/ tugged when approaching a port. According to Caesar the Veneti used 'many tidal islands such as Ictis for their bases'. Just going to read Asterix.
| The Veneti were the main naval power of Gaul. They dominated the trade with Britain, and had a fleet of solidly build ships well suited to local conditions. Caesar describes them as having shallower keels than Roman ships, which made them better suited for operations in tidal waters; as being constructed entirely of oak, with high prows and sterns which made them more able to resist the Atlantic storms, and also made them almost invulnerable to standard Mediterranean ramming tactics. | |
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Talking of Asterix, my shipping friend has sent a link to an article about the so-called Asterix ship, a 'Gallo-Roman trading vessel found in Guernsey' aka the St Peter Port wreck in which the author sees similarities to a Viking knarr. [I swear I hadn't seen this before]
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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So we have a Veneti (Iron Age Gaul) cargo ship...
Then 1500 years later we have a Venetian (Renaissance Italy) cog...
And of course the Veneti and the Venetians (just like the ships) were totally unrelated.
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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And let's forget the Bronze Age Phoenicians (any resemblance in the name, purely coincidental) were sailing around in this vessel, yonks before either of them.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Funnily enough I've just been posting almost the same thing (minus your lovely pic) on the Megalithic site. How long Venetians/ Phoenicians had been trading with north-east Gaul i.e. Picardy/Flanders, the area Caesar describes as the territory of the Veneti, is anyone's guess.
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