History: Gone But Not Forgotten

The Brethren who read Triple P regularly know that I am a staunch believer in the equal or greater intelligence of our ancestors. Oh sure, they burned books, fought wars over stupefyingly unintelligible religions and kept those pesky women in their place, but… Wait. When, exactly, did that stop?

So I was thrilled to see this article over at TopTenz.com that lists ten “lost” technologies that just about prove we’re the ones who are slow. Click over and check out the whole thing if you’ve got a minute. Here though, in brief, are a few highlights.

Nepenthe, a Greek drug of “forgetfulness”, has often been compared to laudanum and opium. Our ancestors lost the ability to make nepenthe (but not the ability to use the word in poetry) some time in the Dark Ages. As the article points out, all the ingredients of nepenthe are probably still available, we just don’t know what they were.

Not the case with silphium, a tremendously (if Roman literature is to be believed) successful birth control medication. All ladies had to do was drink the juice of this heart-shaped, fennel-like bulb every month or so et voila! Your worries about offspring are no more. This is particularly amusing to me in light of the many “retro” sites now on the Internet that would have you believe recreational sex was invented in the ‘60s with the introduction of The Pill and came into its own in the ‘70s. The silphium plant grew only in very specific conditions in North Africa and, because of its enormous demand during the Pax Romana, was overharvested and made extinct. So people destroying their environment and a good thing along with it isn’t new either.

On a more seafaring note, number eight on the list is the fascinating Antikythera Mechanism. If you haven’t already, you should have a look at this thing:

Found aboard a ship wrecked off the Greek island of the same name in the early 1900s, the device is jam packed with cranks, gears and dials. Probably dating from the first century BCE, the thing is generally labeled by scientists as a clock and lunar phase calculator. This seems like raw oversimplification to me. My reasoning is simple: the only example of the mechanism ever found was aboard a ship. That puppy was used for navigation, I’ll bet, and probably has a similar working to what would be a modern sextant/compass combination.

Number one on the list, and with good cause, is our old friend Greek Fire. This delightful compound that the Byzantines perfected was the ancient equivalent of better-than-napalm. Not only would it stick to and burn just about anything, it continued to burn underwater. This made it a favorite weapon in naval warfare and Greek Fire was turned on ships on more than one documented occasion. What the stuff was actually made of is a subject for both debate and research. You can bet most military forces in existence today would love to get their hands on a weapon that continued to burn underwater, among other things.

Yeah, we’ve come a long way and, as the article wryly notes, flush toilets and paved roads prove our superiority. Even though the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had those too.

Women At Sea: The Holland's Leaguer

If you mention “The Holland’s Leaguer” in passing these days someone is bound to imagine you are talking about football (soccer to those of us in the U.S.) but, in fact, that would be erroneous. The Holland’s Leaguer was the most splendid and influential whorehouse in Stuart London. And its owner, who styled herself Donna Britannica Hollandia, got her start with seamen.

Born Elizabeth Baker some time in the 1570s and probably in the countryside that skirted London, the future madam to the stars was married young to a sailor named Holland. Bess, as she was known, evidently went off to sea with her husband because she ended up in Holland just short of a year after her marriage. Deposited in a strange land with no money and her husband gone back to sea, Bess brings to mind the adage about seafarer’s wives: When a sailor married he bought his wife a tub and a looking glass; if she was too lazy to take in washing, she could look in the glass and see herself starve.

Intent to neither take in washing nor go hungry, Bess turned to the world’s oldest profession. Most probably she was planning to save her money to get back to London. As luck would have it she fell in with a merchant captain who took her aboard ship, imaging he had a willing companion for his upcoming voyages. When the captain, who appears to have been Italian, dropped anchor in the Thames Bess hightailed it home and never looked back. She returned to her chosen occupation, but with an eye for the bright lights and the big money.

By 1603, Bess had transformed herself into Britannica and she was running a house nearly dockside on the Thames on a street still known as Cocke’s Lane. The house tripled in size over the course of the next few years due to Bess’ shrewd management and she moved her business to a splendid manor house in the Paris Gardens district. She styled herself a mysterious foreign “quean”, as the finest strumpets were then called, and she kept a house full of “queans” to rival her and plump virgins “brought up by wholesale from the Countrey”. Things were going so well that Bess could post a plaque in her reception room reading “James Stuart slept here”, ensuring her business would grow.

Next to her plaque, Bess kept paintings of her girls. A gentleman coming in for a night’s entertainment could enjoy a glass while he perused the portraits and made his selection. The girls were clean and looked after by a “chucker-out” who was an ex-con of enormous proportions particularly devoted to Donna Britannica. The favorite contraceptive in the house was a pessery made from a nutmeg soaked in vinegar and, according to Bess’ no nonsense memoirs, “shoved up the whibwob”.

The ladies didn’t come cheap either. Although the “Countrey” girls were probably less expensive the high class “queans” who only saw a customer or two each evening might set a man back 50 pounds just for the pleasure of dining with her. What came after was open for negotiation. And the now notorious brothel entertained only the best including not only the King but men like the Duke of Buckingham who was without doubt the power behind James’ throne.

Bess’ house continued to do a brisk trade but fortunes ebbed with politics. Charles I tried to shut her down, only to have his men repulsed with the contents of chamber pots by the ladies and servants there in. It was from this incident that the name Holland’s Leaguer came, although why I cannot say. The great Donna Britannica did some time in jail during Cromwell’s Commonwealth and, as she was by now “an aging quean” came out a bit the worse for the wear.

The Restoration saw a return to the delights of the flesh and The Holland’s Leaguer enjoyed a brief renaissance. Notorious rakes like the Duke of Albemarle spent fortunes in one night on wine, women and song but the great Donna Britannica presided less frequently on any given evening. By the 1660s she has slipped out of the record, with new “queans” like Bess Broughton and the infamous Nell Gwynn, who was “whore enough to be a Duchess” to quote her own words, stepping into the limelight.

When Elizabeth Holland died is not known for certain, but her Holland’s Leaguer was defunct by 1680. It would always be remembered though even if its madam, who refused to stoop to washing or starvation, isn’t.

Picture by Crispin de Passe, from the frontispiece of Le miroir des plus belles courtisanes de ce temps

Seafaring Sunday: A New Uniform

September 5, 1776: The Continental Navy officially adopts the first uniforms of what will become the U.S. Navy. Shown above from left to right: Lieutenant, 1776 Captain, Midshipman, 1777 Captain, Sailor (picture via SRCalifornia.com).

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Flush

Flush is a word that brings to the modern mind, perhaps unfairly, plumbing. But its colloquial connotations may very well have sprung from the sea. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Two distinct origins for the word are given in Webster’s. First is the Middle English fluschen meaning to fly up suddenly. Second is the French word flux meaning flow or ebb. This gives us not only the flush hand in cards and the flushing of our commodes, but the English flux. Neither of these origins necessarily account for the word’s use aboard ship, but they can’t be discounted either.

In the oldest seagoing terms flush meant level or even. A deck or railing could be flush or a board could sit flush to its neighbor. A flush-deck was a continuous decking laid from fore to aft without breaks as in a pirogue that had no forecastle or quarterdeck.

Flush in the sense of showing excitement was used at sea. As shy was often used to mean cowardly, flush could mean overwhelmed by a victory or success or even flush in preparation, eagerness, for battle.

There is some speculation that it was from this meaning of flush that the adjective flustered sprang. At sea, flustered indicated performing one’s duty in a confused or distracted way. Further, it could be used to identify a seaman who was drunk but trying to go about his duty all the same.

Flux when used specifically in relation to the sea, refers to the ebb of the tide.

Flush colloquially, though, was a favorite word of pirates and privateers in particular. A man was flush with a fist full of prize money. And that kind of flush was music to every seaman’s ears.

Happy Saturday, Brethren. I’ll see you tomorrow for Seafaring Sunday.

Booty: La Belle

In January of 1686 a French ship of the early small frigate type went down in Matagorda Bay in what is now Texas, approximately 200 miles south southwest of Galvez Bay (modern day Galveston). The ship carried 43 souls and was part of the exploration flotilla led by Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The lovely vessel, with her clean lines and shallow bottom, lay in the bay for nearly 300 years.

The Sieur de La Salle dreamed of claiming the vast western territory of what is now the U.S. for France. Though he did manage to establish what would become the Louisiana Territory, his efforts in Texas led to disaster. Illness, hunger and Spanish and native onslaughts destroyed his settlement, Fort St. Louis. La Belle was the last of his ships, wrecked on a sandbar in heavy seas. Though La Salle and most of his crew escaped, his vision faded to black. La Salle was ambushed and murdered by two of his own men in March of 1687. The Spanish built Fort La Bahia on the ruins of Fort St. Louis in 1722.

But La Belle survived in surprisingly good condition. She was meticulously excavated and moved to a huge vat of oil on Texas A & M’s Riverside Campus. Now the college’s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation is trying out a new process for preserving and eventually displaying the frigate: freeze drying.

According to this article from Texas A & M, La Belle will be placed in a freeze dryer “large enough to hold a few head of cattle”. The goal is to have the ship reassembled and put on exhibit at the Bob Bullock Museum in Austin, Texas within three years.

The project is massive, groundbreaking and certainly worth keeping an eye on. You can bet Triple P will keep you updated. More pictures of the original excavation are available here. And here is the fascinating video that explains the process of preserving La Belle. A worthwhile endeavor indeed.

Home Ports: Going Down To Pompey

The ancient and inimitable port of Portsmouth, England was at one time the largest ship building and repairing harbor in the Western world. Teaming with people and outfitted with numerous wet and dry docks for ships of all shapes and sizes Portsmouth – or Pompey as she was known colloquially – was the prize of the Royal Navy. In other times, though, she was raided by Vikings, used by smugglers and merchants and a target for more than one enemy of Britannia.

Located on the English Channel southwest of London, Portsmouth by its very nature is a perfect natural harbor. Passing Spithead, one must go through a narrowing channel to arrive and the large, deep Portsmouth Harbor proper. Easily fortified both by land and sea, only the advent of airplanes made breeching Portsmouth’s defenses anything but laborious at the very least.

There have been people living in the area since Celtic times but the actual city of Portsmouth was granted its Royal Charter in 1194. By the second decade of the 13th century, the harbor and town had become an important mercantile port with goods going out including wool, grain and cheese and goods coming in almost too numerous to delineate. Portsmouth was a jumping off point for the rats that carried the Black Death and plague and other diseases, well, plagued the community for centuries.

During the same period, from 1335 to 1380, Portsmouth suffered heavily from the continuous wars between England and France. The city, built largely of wood, was burned down four times over the course of 40 plus years. Finally, as the 100 years war drew out to its anticlimactic end, Portsmouth was fortified. By 1420 the Round Tower with its cannons had been erected. Following this, an enormous chain was stretched across the mouth of the harbor. Through the use of a capstan the chain could be raised to keep out unwelcome ships.

With the defeat of the House of York in the War of the Roses, Henry VII turned his warrior attention to outside threats. In 1494 he ordered expansion of Portsmouth’s fortifications and had a dockyard built. Within a year, Portsmouth had official become a naval port. Henry VIII took up where his father left off, enlarging the dockyard, turning local monasteries into armories and naval barracks and opening four breweries to supply his privateer navy with good English beer.

Elizabeth I launched ships built at Portsmouth to defeat the Spanish Armada and the port was a favorite hangout for sea dogs like John Hawkins and Francis Drake. The Elizabethan peace and the internal turning of politics under King James saw a decline in the port. Ships were not as important as witches and Bibles to the Scottish king and Portsmouth languished. King Charles I began to reenergize ship building but the city, which was largely Parliamentarian in sympathy but held under a Royalist Governor, suffered again during the Commonwealth.

1650 saw the launch of the locally build ship HMS Portsmouth and the city came into its own. The vast wharfs, dockyards, storehouses and mast ponds that still exist today began to crop up. The population boomed with men and women who worked in and around seafaring hurrying to the city to take advantage of the jobs available (and the sailors’ money that sailed into the harbor almost daily). The Naval Academy was opened in 1733, establishing Portsmouth as second only to London in the eyes of the Admiralty. By this time to say one was “going down to Pompey” was synonymous with joining the Royal Navy.

Portsmouth in the early 19th century was amazing even to old salts who had seen their share of harbors. The grandfather of nautical fiction, Frederick Marryat, wrote in 1834 in his book Peter Simple:

When we arrived there, I was quite astonished at the piles of timber, the ranges of storehouses and the immense anchors which lay on the wharf. There was such a bustle, every body appeared to be so busy, that I wanted to look every way at once.

In 1814 the dockyard employed more than 4,200 individuals. There was also the Naval Academy, the Weevil Victualling Yard, the Gunwharf for ordinance and the Haslar Naval Hospital, not to mention countless inns, taverns and small businesses that catered to all this press of humanity. No wonder young Simple was overwhelmed.

Throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries, Portsmouth continued to grow. She was important for ship repair in both World Wars and a target of Nazi bombing during the Blitz. The area was rebuilt but the dockyard as an employer began to wane in the 1960s with other industries taking its place.

Portsmouth Dockyard is still in use today and it is also a much loved historical site that preserves not only the history of the people and places that supported the seafaring industry but the ships themselves. Here you will find the Tudor man-of-war Mary Rose, a museum dedicated to the memory of D-Day, HMS Warrior, Britain’s first iron warship and, of course, HMS Victory, which left Portsmouth bearing Nelson to glory and death at Trafalgar.

And why, you may ask, is Portsmouth called Pompey? Unfortunately, no one knows for certain. This short article gives a few theories for you to consider. (Many thanks to Pompey Dockyard’s #askacurator feature for the link. Follow them on Twitter here.) Personally, I like the Roman connection of theory number three. It just feels right, somehow.

Header picture “Nelson Hoists His Flag Aboard Victory” by Bernard Finnegan Gribble.

Tools Of The Trade: Anchors Aweigh

Ah, anchors. They seem like straight forward tools. In fact, they originally were. The early Sea People (our old pirate friends) and even the technically advanced Ancient Egyptians originally used heavy rocks as anchors. Anything big you can wrap a rope (and later, a chain) around can technically be used to hold a boat relatively still.

Be that as it may, all one has to do is read an O’Brian novel and the terms for that simple anchor lose their simplicity all together. How, in fact, does one tell a kedge from the best bower? Or, for that matter the best from the small bower? Actually, what seems maddening on the face of it is deceptively simple. An anchor really is an anchor, after all.

Anchors are first referred to in writing in Ancient Greece. The poets referred to the anchors as dentes; teeth. No one is really sure where the reference came from but it may have to do with the fact that Greek anchors had only one fluke. The fluke is the curved piece at the bottom of the anchor that appears to have a flipper at the end. Greek anchors more closely resembled modern fluke or Danforth anchors that look like a plow and set nicely into the seabed. All Greek mono and bireme ships, and later Roman triremes, had several anchors for use in various seabeds and weathers. Each ship carried one very large anchor that was reserved for storms and nasty lee shores and was known as the sacra. From this, the Catholic Church brought forth sacram anchram solvere – the anchor of last refuge.

Anchors similar to the type we are most familiar with, as shown at the header, developed in the Iron Age and changed very little until 1801. In that year a clerk in the Royal Navy, Richard Pering, began playing around with the general design and came up with what became known as a Rodger’s anchor. Introduced for use in 1813, the eventual Rodger’s anchor had curved rather than straight flukes and arms at the top that pivoted on a bolt. These innovations made retrieval immensely easier than it had been previously saving navies a sizeable amount of money in lost iron. Rodger’s anchors, named after Royal Navy Lieutenant Rodger who added the pivot to Pering’s design, were in almost universal use by 1870.

As with Greek and Roman ships, the ships of the Great Age of sail carried a number of anchors. The larger the ship the more anchors in fact, particularly because a certain number of anchors lost was considered a cost of doing business. The most common anchors carried, from pirate schooner to 900 man ship of the line were as follows:

Bower-Anchors: There were two bower-anchors, the best and the small. The names have nothing to do with use or size but are simply indigenous to the lingua of sailing. The best bower rested (or, in seaman’s terms, was “catted”) on the outward starboard bow while the small was catted on the larboard (now port) bow.

Kedge: A small anchor used primarily to steady a ship and keep her clear of her bower-anchors in port or to warp a ship from one part of a harbor, bay or inlet to another without the need to set sail. Kedges could be partially dismantled or folded, making them easy to stow aboard.

Sheet and Spare: Reserved for large ships, these anchors were catted outward behind the foremast. These were assistance anchors that allowed more security and less strain on the bows when using the best and small bowers, particularly in high seas.

Smaller ships such as pirogues or periaugers and boats might use kedges or grapnels, depending on the size of the ship and the anchor.

This is, of necessity, a very general overview. How anchors work, their various modern types, and the many amazing things that can be done with a ship at anchor (warping is just the beginning) are subjects for another time. Until then remember Brethren: anchors aweigh is the signal to weigh, or pull up, the anchor. Drop anchor is the opposite. I told you it was simple.