Favorite Ships & Shipwrecks

I realize I’ve been pretty heavy for the last week. So despite the current Rice/Boxer smack down headlines going on yesterday and today in the Senate (you have to have integrity to impugn in the first place Condi…) I thought I would take a breather and put up some fun stuff.

Ships. The following are, for various reasons, some (just some) of my favorite ships and shipwrecks throughout history.

Hey, if the nation can salivate over every gory detail of the Scott Petersen trial, I can have favorite shipwrecks! ;) Ships are vital to history not only in exploring a single event, but in the snap shot of daily life they provide. Each shipwreck is literally a time capsule of how people lived on the sea, their technological development, who they were trading with, who they were fighting with, what gods they prayed to, etc. Shipwrecks like Yassi Ada, the Hamilton and the Elizabeth and Mary are literally a snapshots in time.

Though I have to admit for myself, a lot of it is about the ships…..and here are a couple I think are pretty cool.

The Athlit Ram – approx. 200 B.C. (Or “B.C.E.” for those of keeping up with current P.C. academic trends)

The Athlit Ram and some support timbers found inside is all that is left of a Greek war ship that wrecked off the coast of Israel. It’s 7 feet long, weighs over 1,000 lbs and is made of a single cast of bronze. That not much, but it’s pretty fuckin’ wicked looking isn’t it?

For the uninitiated, the ram of a Greek warship goes on the bow, just under the water (see these examples). The favored tactic of the time was to ram into your opponent and sink them.

The Gokstad – 895 A.D.

The Gokstad is not a wreck, but was used as a funereal vessel holding the body and funeral goods of what was probably a chieftain or king.

While it doesn’t look it to the untrained eye, the Gokstad is the height of technological achievement and craftsmanship of her time. Well nigh perfect in construction; she was sleek, light, strong enough to handle around 20 tons of crew & cargo, yet with enough flex to take a pounding in heavy seas. I’ve seen resources refer to her both as an example of a smaller langskip (long ship, used for war) or karfi or karve (a smaller war ship/trading vessel), she is probably something in between.

And she is simply beautiful. Sleek, simple, elegant. If Mother Nature herself had decided to grow a sailing ship, she would have created the Gokstad.

Gokstad Image

(I know from this shot it looks like a big canoe, but this puppy is over 76 feet long, 6 feet high from keel to gunwale, and 17 feet across.)

Yes, I love this ship.

The Mary Rose - 1545

The Mary Rose is the perfect example of British industriousness, pride and too much of a good thing. The Flag Ship of Henry VIII, she had many innovations that directly led to the ships of the line made famous in the Napoleonic eras. However, her last refit added another deck to enable her to carry even more guns, added 700 tons of top-heavy weight. As she maneuvered into battle, she heeled over suddenly. Water flowed into the opened gun ports and the ship capsized and sank...right in front of the French Fleet. (You can bet Francios I was giggling up his sleeve about that one for weeks).

The tragedy is that the boarding nets were up. Boarding nets are strung taut over the all the decks of the ship to prevent boarding parties from gaining access to the interior of the ship. Sadly they also block the crew from getting out in a time of emergency. Less than 40 of her over 450 crewmen escaped.

The Mary Rose is important to History for the vast number of artifacts, from cannon, hand weapons & navigational equipment to personal belongings & human remains, still in her when she was excavated.

The Agamemnon – 1808

The wreck of the Lord Nelson’s favorite ship, the HMS Agamemnon, was discovered in Maldonado Bay off Uruguay in 1993. Apparently there isn’t much left of the ship itself, but it’s still nice to know such an important piece of Naval History has been found.

The H.L. Hunley - 1864

While not the first submarine or even the first submarine used in battle, the Hunley not only has a microcosm of personal mysteries, it has a mystique of the valiant, heroic, bull-headed and certifiably insane ;) Confederate about it. The thing had killed two crews before it’s final successful mission against the Union blockade of Charleston, sinking the U.S.S. Housataonic and then disappearing.

What is even more remarkable is that once the sub was brought up, it was quickly discovered that even history had underestimated her. The replica in display in Mobile is actually quite wrong. The outter construction is much finer, flush riveted and more streamlined, and the ballast system is quite sophisticated considering the time.

The Hunley is still under wraps for excavation, analysis and conservation, but the big mystery is apparently solved. The Hunley apparently was not able to back away from the Housatonic fast enough and the shockwave of the explosion cracked open her hull in a couple places, possibly stunning her crew so that she was already sinking before they could react. They were all found at their stations and had apparently made no attempt to escape. They were finally laid to rest last April in Charleston.

In the meantime, check out these sonar images from the Inner Space Excavation team: Look kinda creepy don’t they? Pretty cool stuff...