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Ships' Fastenings: From Sewn Boat to Steamship PDF

242 Pages·2005·2.47 MB·English
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00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page i F Ships’ astenings 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page ii 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page iii F Ships’ astenings From Sewn Boat to Steamship Michael McCarthy Texas A&M University Press college station 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page iv Copyright © 2005 Michael McCarthy Manufactured in the United States of America All rights reserved First edition The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48-1984. Binding materials have been chosen for durability. (cid:2)(cid:3) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCarthy, Mike, 1947– Ships’ fastenings : fr0m sewn boat to steamship / Michael McCarthy.—1st ed. p. cm. — (Ed Rachal Foundation nautical archaeology series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn1-58544-451-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Fasteners—History. 2. Shipbuilding—History. 3. Hulls (Naval architecture)—History. 4. Underwater archaeology. I. Title. II. Series vm15.m39 2005 623.8(cid:2)62—dc22 2005002898 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page v ToDebbie, Kim, Katie, Ellen and Phillip: the anchor and fastenings on my ship 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page vi 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page vii Contents preface ix introduction 3 1 Fastened without Nails: The Sewn Boat 11 2 The Advent of Metals 30 3 Metal Fastenings on the Sewn-Plank Boat 38 4 Fastened with Metal and Wood 44 5 Clinker Shipbuilding 52 6 Carvel Building in Northern Europe 63 7 The Manufacture of Fastenings 86 8 Sheathing: The Key to Copper and Copper-Alloy Fastenings 101 9 The Advent of Muntz Metal through to the Composite Ship 115 10 Registers, Treatises, and Contemporary Accounts 122 11 The Archaeological Evidence 130 12 Iron and Steel Ships 143 13 Modern Terminology 159 Conclusion 165 Appendix: Explanatory Notes on Metallic Fastenings 169 Notes 188 References 197 Index 217 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page viii 00-A3433-FM 6/8/05 12:01 PM Page ix P reface Fastenings have fascinated me for well over thirty years now, since my ix first glimpse of them when I spent a few seasons helping the Maritime Archaeology Association of Western Australia excavate an American whale ship on behalf of the Western Australian Maritime Museum’s Department of Maritime Archaeology. Then in 1978 I joined the de- partment and assisted Jeremy Green in the excavation of a number of seventeenth-century British and Dutch East India ships. Another col- league, Graeme Henderson, was also excavating and analyzing a series of colonial-period shipwrecks: a British naval frigate sent in pursuit of theBountymutineers; an early-nineteenth-century American China trader; a British whaler; a British French-built colonial trader—once a notorious slave ship; a mid-nineteenth-century Quebec-built trading barque; and a colonial whaler.1Many other people joined in these proj- ects as support staff, including Myra Stanbury, the department’s Arte- fact Manager, whose comprehensive analyses and catalogues became the mainstay of the museum’s collection management system. Another early influence was the work of my predecessor, the mu- seum’s first “Wreck Inspector,” Scott Sledge, whose job it was to in- spect, and if possible to identify, the many wrecks then being reported to the museum. This was effected utilizing a combination of the physi- cal remains (of which fastenings were an important element) and con- temporary accounts.2I joined Sledge in inspecting the wrecks of these colonial-period vessels, all from a time frame that neatly dovetailed into the advent and rise of the first of the world’s underwriters, Lloyd’s of London, after 1760. After he departed in 1981, my own “wreck in- spection” teams came to inspect vessels ranging from wooden-hulled iron, copper, and copper-alloy fastened ships, through to riveted iron- hulled sailing ships and steamers traveling from many distant corners of the globe—Brazil, England, France, Holland, India, Italy, Croatia, Mauritius, North America, Portugal, Scotland, Wales, and so forth. Given the myriad of fastenings encountered as a result of these ac- tivities, it became evident that a typology for the use of collection man- agers, conservators, and archaeologists like me, who had little practical grounding in shipbuilding methods, was needed. This was tentatively published in theBulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archae- ologyin 1983, edited by Myra Stanbury and Jeremy Green, and then by request of Valerie Fenwick (who was then its editor), in the pages of the

Description:
Without effective and durable hull fastenings, boats and ships—from the earliest days of seafaring through the twentieth century—could not have plied the seas. In Ships’ Fastenings, this central element of boat construction receives its first detailed study. Author Michael McCarthy offers a fasc
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