this is probably a stupid question , if so I apologise in advance . but could some-one tell me , do the bowpsrit yards on the soleil royal , have a specific name . are they the upper and lower , I’ve tried google but got diddley ,
steve5
I believe the lower one is the spritsail yard and the upper one is the spritsail topsail yard.
You got it right, GM.
And, in the course of trying to verify my Friday night tired memory, I came across this which I intend to skim through tomorrow.
Egad, John! Reach for the Port!
A Masters Thesis!
Just glancing at the first 150 pages or so (out of 385!) it looks like a lot of interesting information on that era’s ship’s rigging. Good find!
Mike
thankyou gentlemen for the help ., the reason I asked was ,I saw a picture of a bowsprit yard with parrel’s around it , would this be correct .
looking forward to leafing through that manuscript gmorrison thank’s .
Don’t hold me accountable for it. I hope to never come across a copy of mine.
I assisted my wife in editing hers. It comes down to politics with the review commitee, in her case a formidable panel of Dominican Aquinas scholars.
In answer to Steve5’s question - the answer is in Anderson’s book, pp. 211-212. In brief, he says the spritsail yard might be mounted to the bowsprit with either a parrel or a truss.
Texas A&M’s maritime program focusses heavily on archaeology. I didn’t get far into that thesis (my poor old eyes have read enough MA theses to last me the rest of my life), but it looks like a detailed description of the surviving remains of a particular shipwreck, the ship in question being much smaller than Le Soleil Royal. From the modeler’s standpoint, the most interesting things in it probably are the photos of rigging fittings - blocks, deadeyes, etc. In terms of the leads of the lines, I don’t think it says much that isn’t in the Anderson book (which, it’s worth noting, is the first book in the lady’s bibliography).
thank’s prof jtilley , I think a parrel looked really nice , my computer is being a pain at the moment unable to read said text , when it come back from the local computer guy , i will read up on that book , but alway’s appreciate the time you take to answer all my question’s .
steve5
I had forgotten just how dense MA theses can be–wow. It will be very interesting to see if somebody cuts the Gordian knot and finally compiles an “Anderson” for non-British sail. There being enough difference in Dutch and French practice to warrant such a thing. I will admit to being slightly horrified to note that actual artifacts can be as sloppily bored as the spendy european ship accessories–sigh.
You of the tarred queue.
I think it’s a beautiful thing to see that fittings on a ship are not like the sprues of a model.
The initial version of Anderson’s book, with the title “The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast,” does cover all the major European navies (to the extent that that can be done). He later published a revised version, titled “Sevevnteenth-Century Rigging.” That one only covers English ships. Fortunately the first, international version is widely available now in the low-priced edition from Dover Books.
Checked with some people I know in NA (meet some interesting people in the A&M Judo Club). That’s la Belle. one of la Salle’s ships in his expedition to Texas. Clive Cussler went looking for her a long stretch back, and gave up. Then somebody working a backhoe or excavator at the Cruise Ship Terminal expansionn in Galveston found her. Cussler’s NUMA generously donated all the cofferdam material they had bought. Nautical Archeology took over aver that. If I have it right, TAMU Galveston (TAMUG) has all the “wet” preservation facilities; but the main campus in College Station is where they do resin injections (also where the donated CAT scanner is, too).
The NA folks can be fun to have around, as you can get into oddball discussions about how you serve the thmble used on a crow’s foot top. Which ocassionally meant cobbling up examples (Shiner Bock seems to fuel inspiration).
Well I would say reading through that- all good information. Anderson as in “A” gets first citation.
I’m out of my depth entirely. My best review would be that the quality of the reproduced detail drawings are really good, and the explanations make sense.
I do like MA papers. i started with an old friend, not often here anymore, his user name was kapudan_emir_effendi
I read his paper on the Ottoman pre-dreadnaught navy and was immediately struck with the idea of using University papers as good original sources, contrary to the endlessly recycled cr^p from Wiki that usually comes up in searches.
I had a quick read of my copy of Anderson and he seems to say that a parrel would be something of a luxury for a spritsail yard as there would be little in the way of movement up and down the bowsprit due to all the obstacles there were. He says there’s evidence of parrels in ships from 1629 and 1620, whereas Bond gives a sling and no parrels in his list of 1642 and later lists do the same if any mention at all.
Both the Colbert plans from AAMM (le Phoenix), “Royal Louis” in Souvenirs de la Marine by Paris and the model “Louis XV” (aka “Royal Louis” in R. C. Anderson’s book - essentially the last thre are the same source) in the Musee de la Marine show slings for the spritsal yard, for what it’s worth.
Interesting that the “la Belle” thesis also lists Boudriot’s article on the “Louis XV” model. I found it a while ago when I was looking into the “saddle” on the bowsprit, but it didn’t mention it.