Questions tagged [age-of-sail]
The Age-of-Sail relates to be the period of European naval history between 1650 AD and 1850 AD.
73
questions
12
votes
2answers
2k views
What date did Henry Morgan capture his most famous flagship, the “Satisfaction”?
When Henry Morgan captured the French privateer ship, "Le Cerf Volant" he rechristened it the "Satisfaction" and used it as his flagship until it was lost near Panama in 1671 during a mission to ...
6
votes
1answer
177 views
How many ships did the fleet of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) possess at its peak (around 1670)?
The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (1602–1800) was a huge Dutch company primarily earning lots of revenue in the spice trade among other activities.
For this work they needed a lot of ships from ...
6
votes
1answer
536 views
Why did sailing ships so often employ Chinese cooks?
During the age of sail, it was common for Western ships to employ Chinese cooks. I don't have any numbers except that there are pages and pages of relevant results from search queries including "...
6
votes
1answer
336 views
Did Anza find evidence of a Japanese wreck?
Through the age of sail Japanese sea drifters involuntarily crossed the Pacific. The sengokubune ship which tended to lose its rudder in storms and drift nearly endlessly. Several made it to North ...
10
votes
2answers
406 views
Communication lag during the Age of Sail: what if enemy claimed that peace agreement was signed?
In the past due to the communication lag the hostilities could proceed long after peace agreements were signed. This was especially severe for the overseas territories and ships. I'm somewhat more ...
1
vote
1answer
212 views
How were old wooden warships with structural damage to the hull repaired at dock?
How were ships, with cannon damage done to the hull, repaired at dock?
36
votes
10answers
8k views
Why did it take so long to abandon sail after steamships were demonstrated?
1807, Robert Fulton's Clermont the first ship to demonstrate the feasibility of steam propulsion for commercial use, but it also carried sail.
1819, The first steamship to cross the Atlantic was the ...
5
votes
2answers
551 views
Why did people stop building square-rigged ships?
Sailing ships are still being built, but square riggers are a thing of the past. Why?
Did fore-and-aft rigging prove superior? If so, why not earlier?
Does it have to do with the disappearance of ...
6
votes
2answers
244 views
How did the design of the hull differ between an Indiaman and a frigate?
Indiamen and frigates look similar. The Indiaman seems a little bigger, but both are similar in the following ways:
full rigged
design for overseas operation (able to cross oceans)
armed
As indiamen ...
4
votes
1answer
148 views
Range of sailors' ages on a typical Pacific trading ship in 1810
This question is about crew ages on trading voyages in the North Pacific around 1810. The number of crew members on these voyages was often in the low dozens. Funding could come at least in part from ...
1
vote
1answer
244 views
Has there been any big collisions with ice bergs after Titantic or during the Age of Sail? [closed]
Has there been any big collisions with ice bergs after Titantic or during the Age of Sail? What happened? Especially during WW2, wasn't there a lot of naval moments in the Arctic?
4
votes
0answers
63 views
Which ship took Tolman to Kamchatka?
William Tolman was reportedly a mechanic from New England who got to Petropavlovsk on a whaling ship in 1813. Somehow he stayed behind and lived his whole long life in Kamchatka.
None of the sources ...
5
votes
1answer
247 views
Why didn't the Trafalgar Way messengers sail up the English Channel?
The dispatches from the British fleet at the battle of Trafalgar were brought by ship to Falmouth. From there, messengers rode by horse over land to the Admiralty in London, following a route known as ...
2
votes
0answers
98 views
Which prayer did sailors in Russian America expect to hear?
Father Ioann Veniaminov (Saint Innocent) was a Russian Orthodox priest who ministered in Russian America. Leaving Sitka, he recorded the following in his journal:
Tuesday, June 30, 1836. Having ...
1
vote
3answers
383 views
Murder–suicide by sinking the ship
Humankind has a sad, horrible history of intentional mass murder and murder–suicide by airplane and road vehicle.
Are there known cases of a sailor or an officer on a ship trying to kill himself and ...
11
votes
1answer
2k views
How much gunpowder could the average Napoleonic ship of the line carry?
I've run across a few references to a ship's magazine detonating during combat, and by all accounts the explosions were massive. I'm trying to put them into context a bit by figuring out how much ...
7
votes
1answer
166 views
Kabris, the “half-wild Frenchman”, in Kamchatka
A Frenchman who had gone native in the Marquesas Islands, Jean Cabri or Kabris, returned to Europe in the early 1800s and became a well-known attraction and swimming teacher.
His return voyage ...
12
votes
5answers
3k views
Did any age of sail ship have a “back-bone cannon”?
Did any age of sail ship have a "back-bone cannon"? What I mean by "backbone-cannon" is a cannon too large/heavy to be carried other than by having the ship being essentially built around it. This ...
1
vote
0answers
46 views
How old were the youngest employees of the Russian-American Company?
The Russian-American Company, founded 1799, employed some real lowlifes. Golovnin about 1810 found them "composed for the most part of dissolute persons, many of whom have been flogged with the knout ...
3
votes
1answer
195 views
Which STD did adults & children have in Kamchatka?
In 1817 Vasili Golovnin sailed a ship named Kamchatka from Kronstadt to Kamchatka and met there its governor, Rikord. In "Around the World", he wrote that:
Almost all the local common people of ...
6
votes
0answers
154 views
Who owned the ship Ensayo, and what were they doing near Baja California in 1842?
According to Plummer's The Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors, in 1842, sea drifters from the Eijū-maru were picked up and by the Ensayo, a "Spanish pirate ship" with a Philippine crew. It was "carrying ...
3
votes
1answer
398 views
What was the tonnage carried in the Triangle Trade?
I'm interested in metrics regarding trans-atlantic trade in the era of the sail.
The specific timespan doesn't matter.
The specific cargo also doesn't matter.
I've searched but not found any ...
2
votes
1answer
147 views
Wreck of the Juno
K.T. Khlebnikov wrote a biography of his boss, Baranov: Chief Manager of the Russian Colonies in America. In this book he described the wreck of the Juno as taking place November 3, 1811 (O.S.), "not ...
45
votes
11answers
14k views
Why did Europeans (and not people in other regions) dominate oceans?
Having a brief look at civilization history, I find that Europeans have a significant dominance over other regions when it comes to sailing. This becomes more obvious after the 15th century when ...
3
votes
1answer
242 views
When was the potato introduced to Mexico?
There are wild potatoes in Mexico, but eating potatoes are generally cultivars imported from the Andes. They became popular elsewhere after Europeans with sailing ships took them around the world. ...
4
votes
3answers
207 views
Six bulls for ship's provisions
The Ortega family at Rancho Refugio did a brisk business in clandestine trade with visiting ships.
According to Katherine Plummer, in March of 1815, the Forester stopped there and loaded firewood, ...
8
votes
1answer
506 views
Couldn't Japan have solved the problem of drifting at sea?
The Edo period shogunate received annual tributes from local clans, on the order of the rice to feed a thousand people. The sengokubune ships used on this route were suited for calm inland waters, ...
0
votes
2answers
184 views
What sorts of things would a 16th century explorer document?
For a project, I must re-create a journal of a [made up] 16th century explorer. They were a sailor who sailed to the Pacific Ocean via the Cape Horn route in the 16th century, similar to Willem ...
1
vote
1answer
280 views
Compare skeleton crew to normal crew on a galleon
Consider a typical galleon used for cargo around the 18th century.
How would the number and roles of the crew differ between a normal, full crew, and a "skeleton" crew, on a voyage of a few weeks?
2
votes
1answer
106 views
Californian ocean-going ships
Rosaura Sánchez's Telling Identities contains this statement:
Except for two very brief periods, the California territory had no ships of its own to travel up and down the coast or to San Blas and ...
4
votes
0answers
143 views
The Russian-American Company in Valparaíso
The Russian-American Company bought a lot of grain in Spanish and Mexican California. In 1829 or 1830, not enough was available, and the ship Baikal under captain Etholén continued south to Chile. ...
5
votes
1answer
350 views
How many Manila Galleons were sacked and by whom?
From the 1500s into the 1800s New Spain operated the "Manila Galleon" trade route across the Pacific. Something over four hundred huge, wealthy ships sailed, and of course they did not all arrive. ...
6
votes
1answer
246 views
Did Peter the Great support a Russian circumnavigation?
Peter the Great modernized Imperial Russia, reforming both its army and navy. He was keen to catch up with other European powers and built the Baltic port Kronstadt, a shipyard at Arkhangelsk, and the ...
6
votes
2answers
236 views
Which English ship was in Kamchatka in 1793?
In 1795, Alaskan colonial supremo A.A. Baranov sent a letter to his bosses in Irkutsk. The text in Tikhmenev's History, Volume II, Documents, says:
An English ship wintered in Kamchatka in 1793.... ...
1
vote
0answers
89 views
When did independent Mexico start trading with Asia?
Throughout the 17th and 18th century Spanish galleons shipped Chinese goods from Manila to Acapulco. After Mexican independence, Spain retained the Philippines and the galleons no longer crossed the ...
2
votes
2answers
135 views
Cabin space on the Nadezhda
Nikolai Rezanov was Russian's envoy to Japan in 1804, sailing there in Russia's first circumnavigation aboard the Nadezhda. This originally English ship was outfitted for the voyage at government ...
9
votes
1answer
373 views
Did Japanese castaways land in Spanish California?
George Lensen's "The Russian Push Toward Japan" says on p. 261:
In 1815 the transport Pavel under the command of Navigator's Apprentice Srednii left Okhotsk with six Japanese castaways, three of ...
3
votes
1answer
107 views
Did Herman Melville help write his uncle's book?
Captain John D'Wolf II (1779-1872), member of a prominent slave-trading family of Bristol, Rhode Island, was the uncle of author Herman Melville (1819-1891). D'Wolf informed Melville's view of life at ...
4
votes
1answer
101 views
What was Captain Vozdvit's real name?
The Russian-American Company and the Russian Imperial Navy, deeply connected shipbuilding and seafaring organizations, both employed lots of foreign captains.
In Richard A. Pierce's translation, K.T. ...
11
votes
3answers
902 views
How did Bligh navigate during his open boat voyage after losing The Bounty?
How did Bligh navigate during his open boat voyage after losing The Bounty?
Did any of the men have previous experience in these areas? What did he have at his disposal to aid in navigation?
2
votes
1answer
231 views
How did Spain justify building a major port at San Blas, Nayarit?
The Spanish empire and its agent José de Gálvez founded the port of San Blas, Nayarit in order to communicate with the Californias. However, the site is not particularly favorable and it did not ...
2
votes
1answer
263 views
When was the first sauna on a ship?
Heat baths or sweat lodges such as the Russian banya and the temescal of the Mesoamericans are common around the world, especially where it gets cold. These insulated, purpose-built structures are ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views
Did the British East India Company operate in the West Indies? [duplicate]
This question in the Science Fiction and fantasy stack exchange asks about the British East India Company operating in the West Indies. According to Wikipedia, there were a number of East India ...
4
votes
2answers
318 views
Convict stowaways crossing the Pacific in 1796
According to H.H. Bancroft's "History of California", in 1796, English convicts stowed away on the Otter in Botany Bay, and were forced ashore in California at gunpoint. Governor Borica was ordered by ...
36
votes
4answers
8k views
How much evidence is there regarding the naval punishment of keelhauling?
Keelhauling is a famous naval punishment under which the offender would by dragged beneath the hull of the ship. This would have been encrusted with shellfish such as barnacles which would - at the ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
How did sailing technology improve during the Age of Sail? [closed]
Wikipedia article on the Middle Passage says:
while an average transatlantic journey of the early 16th century lasted several months, by the 19th century the crossing often required fewer than six ...
3
votes
1answer
292 views
How cheap were sailing ships in Gold Rush California?
Many ships were abandoned in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush as their crews and passengers headed straight for the gold areas. Some became semi-permanent buildings and some became ...
4
votes
1answer
247 views
Which trade ship did not return to California from China?
The Baltic German captain Otto von Kotzebue wrote (from "California Through Russian Eyes", Gibson, ed.):
An attempt was even made to launch, at the Californios' own risk, trade with China, but it ...
1
vote
0answers
71 views
What did Fyodor Shtein report after his voyage?
In 1820 The Russian admiralty sent two pairs of ships to explore the polar regions. The southern ships, Mirny and Vostok, circumnavigated Antarctica, and the northern ships, Otkrytie and ...
14
votes
3answers
1k views
How long did it take mail to get between Madrid and Mexico?
Spain administered its main colony Mexico from across the Atlantic. Ships crossed regularly between Cadiz or Seville and Vera Cruz (both capital cities are inland). At the time of Mexican independence,...
