The link follows: the Star of India, launched originally as the Euterpe, (Muse of Song and Dance), under full sail. This is the oldest working ship afloat. These old ships, made generally of oak, have gotten quite fragile and are rarely risked except on a calm day. They are an absolute marvel of a machine made of wood, rope, and fabric, that literally flexes to the wind and the sea and yet circumnavigated the globe in all weather and linked the Old World to the East and the New World. As a child of 7 or 8 I was so fascinated by them (in landlocked Oklahoma, where I had never even seen a sailboat) I memorized all the rigging of a clipper ship and lamented that I would never see one in action. And getting to visit the Ship Museum in Oslo was a real treat.
Of course I’ve read the Hornblower novels; and the Aubrey-Maturin novels. Absolutely.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-703672?hpt=hp_bn2
The Star of India is actually an iron-hulled ship. It’s two companions (shown in the video) are wood, though. I’ve always wanted to go out on it but, alas, space is limited and they don’t go out that often.
Next time you’re in San Diego you should visit the Maritime Museum. They’ve got Russian and American submarines and a bunch of other cool stuff.
http://www.sdmaritime.org/star-of-india/
Thanks for the link! Up here in WA we sometimes have had a try at the Mary Rose, but it’s difficult to get aboard, same problem. I swear if I were ungodly rich, after I’d gotten us a space station and cured cancer and gotten scholarship programs across the world, I’d commission one of these ships to be built new, just to be sure we never lose the knack of managing them. With a background in archaeology of the Med, I’ve seen a lot of machinery that’s become a puzzle no one alive knows how to read, and these ships are so beautiful under sail that it just makes you feel more alive just watching them. Cathedrals don’t much move me, but one of these—does.
Apparently, we could still build wooden ships as recently as the 1980s. See the links to “HMS Surprise”, http://www.sdmaritime.org/hms-surprise/, and “Californian”, http://www.sdmaritime.org/californian/.
And, of course, USS Constitution is even older and still a commissioned U.S. Navy ship. However, she hasn’t sailed under her own (wind) power in over a decade.
There are tall ships newly build, a bit changed to modern due to insurance rules, but still beautiful:
“Stad Amsterdam” http://www.stadamsterdam.nl/content/home/index.xml
“Alexander von Humboldt II” (in Rickmer’s colours).
And the “Padua” – among other old ladies – is still sailing as “Krusenstern”.
There’s also USCGC Eagle – the firepower behind the global hegemony of the republic of Nantucket …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Eagle_(WIX-327)
I love it. Warms my heart.
DH and I were lucky enough to crew on the last voyage of H.M.S. Rose as a sail training vessel. She was then bought and refitted to serve as H.M.S. Surprise in Master and Commander. Both of us stood on the yard where Russell Crowe stood for one of those huge panoramic shots, and we had to climb the ratlines to get there. We discovered why sailors drank and cursed so notoriously; we sounded like New York cabbies when we disembarked after a week on board. I can even still identify a leech line from a reef, and can tie a bowline!
Oh, what a treat!
In 2000, OpSail came to Hampton Roads, VA where I was living at the time. My brother in law and I paddled our kayaks out to the first tunnel of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to watch the tall ships come into the Bay off the ocean. Impressive doesn’t begin to describe it, being so close to those ships under full sail (with the CG pushing everyone back so we didn’t get run over! – not going to argue right of way with a vessel that size). It was really spectacular as, after the tunnel, they turned and had to furl most of their sails for the trip to into the harbor where everyone else was placed to watch them. We got to see them all under full sail.
And 15 minutes after they had all passed, my brother in law and I were alone on the water. With the retreating tide and 15 knot headwinds on the way back, it took us over three hours of the hardest paddling I’ve ever done to get us back home, but it was worth it
I remember OpSail 2000, I was living in Virginia Beach at the time. I’ve also been to the Star of India several times over a 14 year span, but each time, she wasn’t open for visitors. Still, a very lovely ship.
My, oh, my.
They are such beauties:
https://hazimiai.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/7325965.jpg
On the other side, if I imagine working in the early 1900s on such a ship, in july near southern chile . . .
It’s much nicer to look nowadays at them
I go nuts over Viking longships — the way their hulls are built — and a woolen sail! Yeah, I like the tall ships, and the yachts like Santana, but the longships are what I drule over. And you got to go to the Oslo museum!
The Oslo ships are so beautiful…incredibly thin-walled, and tapering to such narrow spaces, and capable of flexing in the waves. The Greco-Roman ships were built differently, with tarred rope hammered into the seams, and big ropes literally passed around the ship, under the belly, and winched up tight, to keep the ship from ‘working’ so much they admitted water, but in very early times they had literally to be hauled out from time to time and de-watered by allowing them to drain out—nobody had yet invented a bilge pump. They got bigger and more skillfully built—the Romans cheerfully copied any better design they ever met—but they were still, even late, bound to navigate within sight of land. The Med spoiled them: there were very few courses you could lay, except diagonally if you missed Sicily by accident, from which you could not see land in some direction. I’ve stood on the south shore of Crete and seen the horizon haze that is Africa.
The galleys were an amazing sort: the Greek pentekonter, dating back to Homer, was nothing but a shell driven by the fifty oars of her name: this could be fortified by a strong spine (keel assembly) and a ram on the front to essentially drive the ship as a water-borne spear to hit the opposing ship. They got up above three banks of oars. But you began to lose speed as you added oars.
They were fast ships: the record for mail delivery by a combo of naval ship and pony express from Rome to, say, modern Israel, was three days. This is NOT, mind, standard mail: this represents the ivory chits a governor was given on assuming office. He got, say, three of these…and was expected to use them less than once a year, or never, unless there was reason, because the emergency postal system once activated, could commandeer anything and shove anything and anyone out of its way: it was the red alert button. And you really never wanted to have to push it: it was kind of an admission you couldn’t handle what was happening.
But the very fast courier ships were always ready at certain takeoff points. Rowed by marines, btw, not galley slaves. These guys were in condition, and highly trained for what they did.
Then the Vikings came along, and totally revised what a ship was capable of—their design was radically different, took far fewer people, and was just amazingly better: a Viking ship could survive the open Atlantic, which the Greco-Roman ships did not want to risk.
I devoured Hornblower when I was young – and the whole set is on my ‘keeper shelves’ (plural!) as are the Aubrey/Maturin novels…and I’ve been aboard Old Ironsides (the Constitution) and she is a lovely thing – but I know myself well enough by now to know that, while I enjoy the IDEA of mariner-life, there is no way I would ACTUALLY enjoy lengthy time aboard and the exhaustive work on a sailing ship. I’d rather BE somewhere than take weeks to arrive!
Plus – think about it – belowdecks on the Constitution – low enough that even I was ducking (and I am NOT tall) with over 200 unbathed MEN, including assorted food animals – chickens, goats, pigs – and lots and lots of BEANS…
hmm.
No thanks.
But they sure are pretty under sail. From a reasonable distance.
PS the Navy takes the Constitution out in the harbor about once a year to turn her around at her pier so she stays ‘evenly weathered’. She still has a captain and a crew of regular Navy, and she’s still a commissioned ship. But I think the last time she sailed on her own power was more than a decade ago. She CAN, though, and that’s something of a marvel, after all. She’s over 200 years old, you know.