Hulls:

History:

• Started in a carved-out form with a rudimentary keep down the spine of the boat and a curve out from there. Greek and Viking boats had this form.
• There was a change from oared boats to ones with masts and sails with oars, to purely sails. Up until the early 15^th century ships usually had only one mast. One of the earliest three mast ships known was from 1450⁽¹⁾.
• Change to stern-hung rudder in early 11^th-12^th century. Before, the rudder was free-held to the right side of the ship. It then became part of the hull, attached to the stern and hung from the back of the keel. This made new ships unidirectional, while Viking ships had been bidirectional⁽¹⁾. Stern rudder was not trusted until the 1330s, so a number of ships right before then had both types of rudders. Yet the stern rudder was better, since it was less likely to be broken during a battle and would stay in the water even if the ship was listing strongly⁽²⁾.
• Later on in the Mediterranean, as ships became larger, instead of long narrow boats with oars, ships had more of a 1:3 ration of width to length and were made in skeleton form with horizontal beams crossing curved vertical ones that were about half the thickness at the top as the taper to the keel. The planks at the front of the ship were thicker and stronger than those of the rest of the ship, to take on a higher force⁽¹⁾.
• Round ships in the 13^th century added raised platforms on the front and back of the ships called the fore-castle and aft-castle. These were first just added to the ships after they were built but later became part of the initial hull construction and the idea of multiple decks on a ship was started⁽¹⁾.
• From around the 1200s, a figurehead crowned the front beam of the forecastle⁽¹⁾.
• Galleon ships came into fashion by Elizabethan times as a large sailing ship with at least four masts and armed with cannons. This is the ship most seen in older paintings⁽¹⁾.
• The caravel took on both forms of ships until the invention of metal ships which were more flat bottomed⁽¹⁾.

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Different Styles of Construction:

• Northern ships were most often made in clinker style, where the planks of wood would be placed overlapping each other and then attached with clinker nails and ropes. Clinker style went out of fashion around the 1350s⁽¹⁾. Some clinker built ships may have had 2-3 layers of clinkers on the hull to make sure they were waterproof⁽²⁾.
• Southern ships were most often made in the caravel style, where the planks were put flush to each other and then caulked, the gaps filled with tar and straw to make a waterproof seal⁽¹⁾.

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Change From Clinker to Skeleton⁽²⁾:

This change may have occured because . . .

1. it was easier to make larger ships in skeleton fashion.
2. timber became less expensive in the 15^th century, so it wasn't a problem to use more for ships.
3. iron prices doubled at the same time, and skeleton ships used less.
4. wages also went up. The clinker needed more skilled workers (i.e. people with higher wages) than the skeleton ships, which needed only a few skilled workers for the skeleton and then a lot of unskilled to lay the final planks.

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Masts⁽²⁾:

• Usually put into a hole in the deck and then supported with wooden beams and blocks on deck and rigging ropes. Mastpartners - beams to hold sides of mast.
• Smaller masts could be one pole but larger ones were often a few different pieces of wood held together by iron bands.
• Prices of masts changed by size, but in 1295 and 1401, two masts, each for a 100 oar ship, cost 14 pounds, showing that there was little change over time, but compared to other prices, the mast from 1401 was less expensive.
• Costs of other masts on the ship seem to have been around 5-20% of the cost of the main mast.
• Woods used included oak (most readily available for English shis), pine, and spruce (mostly imported from Prussia).
• In the 1200s, the bowsprit mast was added to the front of the ship, and held the bowlines attached to the bottom of the sail.

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Oars⁽²⁾:

• Northern European oared ships were much simpler than the oared ships of antiquity and were mostly made for war and piracy.
• Oars were held first with thole-pins on the side of the ships (like modern rowboats). But then in the 9^th century holes were added to the hull called oar-ports, which helped hold oars in place better and were used until the 13^th century when sailing ships became more popular.
• Before the 16^th century the men who rowed ships were not convicts or slaves but instead normal sailors from the crew.
• The rowers were around two feet away from each other and therefore the benches could not have been at right angles to the hull because they could not have fit. Instead they would be at an angle, so that two peope could sit at each bench, the one at the point further from the hull with a longer oar so that all oars were equal in the water.
• Oars costs around 11 pence each in 1295 and went up to two to three shillings in the 15^th century, though they could sometimes be imported at lower cost (around one shilling).

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Go back to Types of Ships!

Go on to Sails!

Sources:

• ⁽¹⁾The Sailing Ship. (MIT)
• ⁽²⁾Friel, Ian. The Good Ship. John Hopkins University Press, Maryland: 1995. VM17.F75