#age of sail

[ltwilliammowett]

HMS Trincomalee (1817), Hartlepool UK

[aye-aye-captain]

Sexy boots shot from "The Terror"

[illustratus]

The Capture of Bagur, 1807 by George Chambers

On the night of the 6th August 1807 (at a time during the Napoleonic Wars when Spain was still France's ally) Captain George Mundy of HMS Hydra chased three armed Spanish merchantmen into the Catalonian port of Bagur (also called Begur, near Girona) and captured all three, while also taking the port's fortress.

[beggars-opera]

I spent so much of my life romanticizing the Great and Powerful Enormity of the Sea, reading about the salt and the sweat of the sailors straining to haul the sails or anchor while dreading the monsters in the cold, icy deep fathoms below...and now you tell me that a fathom is only 6 feet deep -

[sour-strawberry-kisses]

[cadmusfly]

(Twitter source)

[the-golden-vanity]

I can't be the first person to make this observation, but it's just struck me that Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick and Thomas Blanky from The Terror represent the opposite ends of a spectrum—"How well do you cope with losing your leg to a huge white beast that destroys hubristic seafaring men?"

[victusinveritas]

Gdansk, Poland.

[incognita-soul]

Darrell's first day as a ship's cat and bosun's mate on the tall ship Lady Washington!

Here he is inspecting the quality of coils, making sure passengers were heeding the "no smoking" rule, and standing bow watch through the anchor hawse.

He looked very dapper in his PFD and sunglasses! (I highly recommend looking into Surfer Cat for harnesses and PFDs made to fit cat bodies specifically. their gear is well designed, and they are a small company with excellent customer service!)

[thekenobee]

*eats a tangerine* fuck you scurvy

[bantarleton]

Iconic.

[ltwilliammowett]

Morning and Evening shipping, by William Thornley (Active 1857-1898

[aye-aye-captain]

Jared Harris as Captain Anderson ⏐To the Ends of the Earth (2005)⏐ 10/?

[illustratus]

Frontispiece of "História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil"

Illustrated by Alfredo Roque Gameiro

[fuckyeahnaturalphilosophy]

Found this on KnowYourMeme

[lucybellwood]

A while ago Falynn K. asked this question on Twitter:

"So on a tall sailing ship you have the mast, and you have the yards across it--is the yard/spar actually attached to the mast, by like i dunno, a pin or something, or is it strictly roped/lashed to it?"

This is a totally reasonable question! A lot of folks who haven't sailed square riggers might think that the yard stays put, but in fact it needs to move up and down the mast so the sails can be fully set. (Y'know how everyone's always talking about halyards? They literally haul the yard up. You're welcome.)

So to answer the question: yards are held loosely to the mast by a looped line strung with large wooden beads called a parrel. The beads roll up the mast as the yard is raised and lowered. Here's a drawover that hopefully clarifies a little:

Once you start explaining things about tall ship anatomy it's hard to stop, so there's a bit more context for how the sails work:

(These are pages from my comic A Week at Sea with OHP, which you can read online here or grab as a print minicomic here.)

Hope this is helpful!