the-golden-vanity - Tumblr blog

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Lake Erie gulls

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Against a life of flogging, poor food, hardship and danger, the Navy offered the irresistible pull of the sea, a chance for adventure, the hope of prize money—and a half pint of whiskey a day. When the Constitution put to sea, she carried 100 barrels of whiskey, the most costly item in her stores.

— Frank Robert Donovan, The Tall Frigates

USS Constitution vs. HMS Guerriere on a scrimshawed whale's tooth by unidentified American artist, about 1816 (MFA Boston)

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A unique set of 14 daguerreotypes of the officers of the Franklin expedition, 1845

This remarkable set of three-quarter length daguerreotype portraits was made, en plein air, by the Beard Studio aboard Her Majesty’s Ship, the Erebus, on 15-17 May 1845, just three days before Sir John Franklin sailed on his legendary scientific voyage to the Northwest Passage, never to return.

@clove-pinks

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#it upsets me to think that hickey didn’t plan on doing any of that shit he literally just wanted to give it a go at a fresh start#and he really thought he found somebody he could trust in billy and he really loved him#and then everything went to fuck (tags via @burrowingregg)

"On Gibson’s part I think he might have thought: if we live, perhaps they could’ve picked things back up again. I think that was his motivation for joining the mutiny, kind of full force. But for Hickey, I do sometimes wonder if he ever imagined, like a little shack on the beach in the Sandwich Islands that he and Gibson shared. I think he probably did."

if you even care

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I know Alfred Lansing wrote Endurance back in the 1950s, but it's funny to me that he seems so surprised about the "three girls" who applied for positions on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. If my time in the Terror fandom has taught me anything, it's that the desire to go on a polar expedition in a big wooden ship transcends gender roles.

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Seascape with a sailing ship near a coast, by Christian Mølsted (1862 -1930)

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Gay cannibal tumblr representative here... we definitely know about Queequeg.

36 chapters into moby dick. some thoughts:

- take a shot every time he expresses his love for nantucket or whaling trivia

- i know everyone said it was queer and usually i've come to expect that as hyperbole but this time they weren't joking

- CHILDE HAROLD REFERENCE?!?!?!?!?! BYRON QUOTED?!?!?!?! not surprised bc it is the romantic genre which byron & chp helped inspire & he was the best selling writer in early 19c usa & is noted for his oceanic refs & he & esp childe harolds pilgrimage esp are both noted on wikipedia's "nautical fiction" page but like. i had no idea they were immortalized in moby dick

- "Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

- does gay cannibal tumblr know about queequeg & ishmael?

- utterly obsessed with captain ahab for numerous reasons but does anyone else notice how similar he is to captain flint from black sails? like he's literally him but a bit older & combined with silver's leglessness.

- the part where ahab calls stubb a dog lmao

- ishmael getting worried for queequeg when he couldn't find him omg...

- "Where's that girl ? — there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with — 'no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;' — might as well kill both birds at once." MRS. HUSSEY!!!!

- i'm sure that all the focus on queequegs spirituality & his consultation with his god yojo wherein he was informed that ishmael had to pick their boat bc yojo demaded it TOTALLY won't prove to have any prophetic and symbolic consequences later on or anything

- love how the chapters are nice and short but on the flip side that means theyre tricking me into thinking i have less to go than i actually do... as long as i get more ahab i'm good i guess

-melville, at random: and now we take a break from our regularly schedule programming to give you . . . WHALE FACTS! [whips out multiple books on the history of whales and whaling, begins to recite]

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I always talk about how one of my loves of scrimshaw is being able to see the art of Just Some Guy in the 19th c. and this is the latest one I’m charmed by.

I love his face, look at how economical those lines are!

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The Jonah

If everything went wrong on board and you stumbled from one misfortune to the next, the sailor tended to look for a scapegoat. There had to be a reason for this, so it could only be that a woman was on board. Sometimes the carpenter’s wife (three women were always allowed on board and these were the wives of the carpenter, boatswain or gunner) was looked at askance, but she had been on board for years and was used to it and put an end to this, with a grim look on her part.

So someone else had to come along… one or the other crew member caught the eye of someone who wasn’t behaving properly and didn’t really belong to the team. And then they had their scapegoat - their Jonah.

(x)

A Jonah was a person - on ships usually a man - who was considered unlucky. Just like the biblical Jonah was. Jonah, out of fear, defied God, who had told him to bring his word to Nineveh, by sailing in the opposite direction that he had been told to sail. God then punished Jonah and all those on board with him by conjuring up a mighty storm. The crew threw Jonah overboard to appease God and calm the waves, whereupon Jonah was swallowed by a whale or large fish. When he escaped the beast, he made sure that he obeyed God’s will.

So the sailors on the ship concluded that they would only get rid of their problem if Jonah disappeared. And usually the person concerned was forced to sacrifice himself and went overboard, drowning himself to restore peace on board. For those who have seen Master and Commander, this is where the superstition is riffed on and the victim, Midshipman Hollom, finally takes his own life after the crew declare him to be the Jonah.

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Tall ship L'Hermione (2014, French Navy) during construction and after.

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A scrimshawed whalebone brush with naval scene, 19th century, 16.5 cm across

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This kitten, nicknamed Tarawa, served briefly as the mascot and Ship's cat on a US Coast Guard tank-landing ship during WW II

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Special sails

We are more familiar with ships that go up to the topgallant sail (t'gallant or t'garns'l), but there are still some special sails that are above it, these are the Royal, the Skysail and above that the Moonraker. Because of the height they reached, these ships were also called skyscrapers, but please do not confuse them with the skyscraper sail, which was hoisted above them in a triangular shape on much larger ships like clipper or steal barques during the 19th and early 20th century.

Royal

A royal is a small sail flown immediately above the topgallant on square rigged sailing ships. It was originally called the "topgallant royal" and was used in light and favourable winds. Royal sails were normally found only on larger ships with masts tall enough to accommodate the extra canvas. Royals were introduced around the turn of the 18th century but were not usually flown on the mizzenmast until the end of that century. It gave its name to a Dutch term for a light breeze-the Royal Sail Breeze or bovenbramzeilskoelte was a Force 2 wind on the Beaufort Scale.

Skysail

In the course of the 18th century (although the first written records do not exist until 1807), skysails began to be hoisted over the Royal, again in good weather and light winds.

Moonraker

The word itself dates back to the 18th century and was the name for a sail that was hoisted directly above the sky sail, and it was only hoisted when there was very little wind, because if the wind was too strong, it would simply tear off.

The Regina Maris, a danish barquentine from 1908 with a watersail ( red circle)

Watersail

A watersail is a sail hung below the boom. It is used mostly on gaff rig boats for extra downwind performance when racing. Often a watersail will be improvised from an unused foresail. Its psychological effects may be more effective than its aerodynamic ones. Surprisingly, its use can be traced back to as early as 1373. Possibly even earlier, since the 12th century.

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'A smuggler shown at different stages and points of his chosen profession', 19th century coloured etching (Wellcome Collection).

Odd choice to depict "The Smuggler's Death" at bottom centre followed by "The Smuggler's Return," when reading left to right. No matter what direction you go, death is but a temporary obstacle in his career.

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Blue Bristol witch ball handpainted with a ship and […] the lass that love’s a sailor and For my Sister on the back, late 18th - early 19th century

A witch ball is a hollow sphere of glass. Historically, witch balls were hung in cottage windows in 17th and 18th century England to ward off evil spirits, witches, evil spells, ill fortune and bad spirits.

Superstitious European seafarers valued the talismanic power of witch’s balls to protect their homes and the For my Sister on the back suggests that the ball was made by her seafaring brother.

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The Edmund Fitzgerald on my new Great Lakes Freighters mug <3

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trying not to overly memoralize the actual men of the franklin expedition but "a parents painful anxiety" is giving me heart palpitations