I was a young rigger in Portsmouth Dockyard in the early 60s. Probably one of the best jobs I ever had. Working with rope, man-made, natural fibre or steel was a way of life. It was hard, heavy, and often dangerous. The first year was essentially classroom work in the charge of a leading rigger in No1Rrigging House South Railway Jetty. During the five year training period, I learned a great deal on the machinations of day to day life for the sailors and the workings of the ships themselves. Part of the training included working for the Victory party and constructing her anchor cables was one of them. It took upwards of seven men to splice the rope using mallets and fids sometimes 31/2ft. tall, one to hold up the fid, two others on the mallets, a feeder for the hole that takes the strand, a snapper who snaps at the strand to get it to tuck and lay, and another to twist the rope work side up. At least this gives you a flavour of rigging and heavy splicing.
If it's the building i think it is, the very long one indeed, then the last time i went in there was four years ago and they make the guard rails for the ships in there now. I know they do some rope work still but only in a very small area as you'd expect as times certainly move on. Great dockyard to explore 11 years in the Navy up in a few months. :-(
Justin Case - You must be a few years older than me, but I also grew-up in Pompey. Thank you for that powerful description. I never got the opportunity to "get behind the scenes of The Ship, so I envy you, although, clearly it was very hard work. Easy to forget the foul nature of the water coming inboard on those cables, with 1000s of men on ships and perforce relieving themselves into the harbour. One has to imagine that the smallest cut could easily end up infected. Given the need to cut away seizings etc, a knife was pretty much standard equipment. Given the angst that knife crime causes today, I wonder how today's generation would react to the salty bit of advice I heard from time to time, "Would you come on deck in harbour without your trousers, well don't come on deck at sea without your knife."
@@ross.venner Wonderful reply Ross. As adventurous lads, we would investigate every nook and cranny of the Victory and that was my undoing. Fumbling in the dark I found no decking under my feet and down I went being saved bar that caught the crotch of my overalls and I ended up swinging like a pendulum. I managed to scrabble to the decking to be met with whoops of laughter and a helping hand. The advantage of working in the dockyard was the experience of dangerous and dirty work sometimes in freezing weather gave young hands and backs the taste of real hard work and something that held me in good stead when I joined the army. Today with the advance in lifting aids has reduced much of the need for manhandling. As much a cliche' as it is, it helped make a man out of me, and following my father's footsteps, I retired still working for the military.
@@Jess-pe8bq To be fair, the Interceptor is more akin to a frigate than a ship-of-the-line. Also, you are forgetting one thing. He's Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?
@@joshcain1032 It isn't even a fregate. It is a sloop of war with 16 guns (so 8 broadside) and two swivels. (That being said, PotC armaments are usually nonsense. Particulary Flying Dutchman has way to heavy guns for a ship of her size.) Interceptor was played by Lady Washington... which has usually 12 men crew. And 2 3 pounder "guns".
I volunteer on the Cutty Sark explaining how they hauled up the anchor using a mechanical winch. Now I can explain what they used to do before the mechanical winch was invented. Thanks for that.
Here's a little fun fact about English ships and weighting the anchor. Young boys in England are called "Nippers". The name comes from the sailing days of old wherein the cabin boys on ships would 'nip' back and forth along the anchor line being hauled by the capstan tying and untying the anchor rope to the capstan rope as it was being hauled aboard, thereby creating the action of 'nipping' back and forth. The cabin boys were used instead of the seamen because the space was cramped and better suited to small lads.
Sea of thieves peaked my interest in old ships and i was so curious how old capstans worked, this video was incredible, thank you for the detailed explanation. Sea of thieves is so inaccurate, you just spin a wheel and leave, obviously for a game mechanic that's how its has to be, but still it is just so interesting to see how these actually work.
Thanks so much for your amazingly informative videos! I am writing a novel and though my protagonist isn't precisely a sailor, she does spend a lot of time at sea and also around sailors, smugglers, and the like. While I don't need her to know down to the last detail how everything works, I do want to be able to visualize what is going on around her, and what sort of things might happen at sea. This is one of my very favorite periods of history anyway! Throw anything nautical my way and I'm right there, lol.
I sailed on an 80 foot 2 mast schooner for 5 days once, was a blast. You'd hear "All hands on deck!" in the morning and then line up 10 people to haul each anchor chain up
I know your post is 2 years old but I wonder if you've heard the shanty/pub song "Drink Till I Die" by the Poxy Boggarts. It's totally a killer to sing with the boys.
superactiongeneral that was actually very simple hammer wood over holes and get the nearest port and get the ship in a dry dock where over a series of weeks the hull would be repaired and painted while the crew took leave or left the navy entirely and more people were pup-ganged then the ship was relaunched
Rarely. A supersonic cannon ball 6 inches in diameter will make a hole in oak that is too small to stick your fingers into. That's because the wood fibers rebound back into the hole.
Ships were almost never dry-docked. Which was fine because battle damage was all at or above the waterline. They could just shift some ballast if necessary and access everything.
I believe that once they drydock the ship it is disassembled and rebuilt with fresh timber replacing the damaged ones, hence the astronomically long repair times it took to repair heavily battle damaged ships and the huge expense such repair costs... Its not like in TV shows or Movies or Games where you patch cannon holes on the fly and fully repair yourself while at sea, no this is a labor intensive process that takes days, weeks, or months to repair based on the type of damage, location of the damage and how long it'll take to strip down and repair, plus the funding and manpower of the shipyard the damaged vessel has been placed in...
And the length of this process is why you'll see references to "slipping the cable". Basically, if you're in a hurry, you don't haul the anchor in, you turn it loose and come back for it later if you have time.
The capstan was the major "winch" on any large ship: Smaller ships had a windlass. The anchor was not it's only job; shifting major parts of the rigging, mounting and dis-mounting guns from their carriage. Sometimes, a ship needed a bit of a "head start" from a dock or pier, and they would Warp the Ship out to where she could catch a wind. IF the ship ran aground, they would Kedge Her Off (the bottom) using the capstan and multiple anchors. Being an Able-bodied Seaman was a lot more than just being able to Hand, Reef, and Steer.
Please pardon my commenting more than once, but you inspired me to do a quick Internet search. I found an article that puts a modern perspective on this whole business of weighing anchor. Here is a quick copy-and-paste of the opening paragraphs to give some idea of how this whole anchor business weighs even heavier on the sailors of a modern aircraft carrier. [QUOTE] Pulling Their Weight: Anchor and Chain Nimitz Sailors prove their mettle 14 May 2015 By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Holly Herline, USS Nimitz Public Affairs The Boatswain's Mates of USS Nimitz (CVN 68) are making history, as they become the first team of Sailors to remove the anchor and chain of an aircraft carrier rather than contracting the work out to civilians. Fifty-seven links, each weighing 350-pounds, make up just one 90-foot shot of chain that weighs a total of 20,500 pounds. Twelve shots of chain collectively hold a 60,000-pound anchor. Considering the average person weighs less than 200 pounds, it's safe to say the task of removing Nimitz' anchors and chain is no small feat. [END QUOTE] I know this is irrelevant to an historical ship-of-the-line, but it helped me appreciate and admire the salty sea dogs of the past who dealt with their ship’s anchor through muscle power alone.
Wow, well that explains why when the Spanish Armada that was anchored off the coast of the Spanish Netherlands cut their anchors when the English sent a fire ship their way, they make not have had enough time to pull up an anchor if it was that slow, well that plus general panic.
puts up a whole new perspective on the classic "Weigh anchor!" -> "aye aye Cap'n!" scene. more like "Weigh anchor!" -> ".....sighhhhhhhh..... _collective groan_ "
I think it would be would be one-tenth of a mile, Based on it being called an anchor cable, and a cable being a unit of measurement equivalent to a tenth mile or 8 chains, may be wrong as it's also called a hawser, although I think that term related to the layup.
That's about right, a cable measurement on land is less as its a tenth of a land mile. A see mile is 6076 feet. The measurement is still used in the Shell channel pilot book, and in Reed's nautical almanac. Seems to stay in use due to it being difficult to judge distances much more accurately at sea.
I'm so glad that I found this channel. Still looking for a good channel with a focus on Galleons.. I don't care they're Spanish or Portuguese. Heck, I even heard the English built some.... still am murky on the details. Anyway, I liked the steering wheel video as well as this one.
Nice vid. Next you should cover how they dropped anchor keeping in mind letting it run freely can cause major damage to the ship and potentially kill some sailors.
Brandon, Noone wants to watch a sailing crew raise anchor especially in a action scene so the studio takes liberties with how much time it takes, also imagine snagging you anchor or having to raise and lower multiple anchors at the same time... Also, you forgot to mention anchor warping Brandon! You should do a video on the anchor types and the techniques developed around their use!
Now we are ready to sail for the Horn Weigh hey, roll and go! Our boots and our clothes, boys, are all in the pawn To be rollicking randy dandy-O! Heave a pawl, O heave away! Weigh hey, roll and go! The anchor's on board and the cable's all stored To be rollicking randy dandy-O! Soon we'll be warping her out through the locks Weigh hey, roll and go! Where the pretty young girls all come down in their frocks To be rollicking randy dandy-O! Come breast the bars, bullies, heave her away Weigh hey, roll and go! Soon we'll be rolling her down through the Bay To be rollicking randy dandy-O!
In an emergency, like if the enemy's fleet suddenly arrived they would cut the anchor line. It was a good idea to have a spare anchor or two, it still is.
Going on board the USS Constellation was pretty interesting. I can’t remember for sure, but I think it had 2, probably just one, multi deck capstans with the heads on the weather deck. Was amazing to see, and I regret not having enough time to really take it all in. Out of all that day I spent in Baltimore, I would’ve been content to have spent every second of it on the Constellation. I hope to see her again someday
Now all those historical details about a ship being caught at anchor, or a captain misjudging and dropping anchor when it wasnt actually safe were such emphasised details
Well you left out the real fun bit: Witht the capstan etc. you only get the anchor fra enough up, so that the ring to which the cable is fixed pierces the surface. It would be quite nice to see the proces from there on illuminated.
I just came across this video and it is very interesting. I would never have thought it to be that complicated. But there is quite some work missing in your explanation. Because, as the holes for the anchor cable are too low at the hull and the anchor is too big, you won't get the anchor out of the water completely, and you still have to get it somehow up to the side of the ship's hull. Which seems to be quite some work, too, remembering the anchor weighs 2 tons.
Absolutely! I think to get into the real nitty-gritty with these sorts of topics would take an awful lot more time than a simple TH-cam video usually allows. I’m always amazed at how complex the naval side of things was in comparison to the army side.
Perhaps an unusual link but the whole process reminds me of working in a woodshop or factory line. You can hit the emergency stop whenever you please and everything will come to a rather abrupt halt but to get everything moving again it's hours of setting up before you can go anywhere. When I was watching Hornblower you often see the ships dropping and weighing anchor as easily as if it's putting the parking break on a car - but would a captain, familiar with the time and manpower required to weigh anchor on his ship have to make the decision of whether or not to anchor in case he might need to make a 'speedy' getaway?
Also bear in mind that some of the sails would have been set ready to sail as soon as the anchor breaks out of the sea-bed. So the seamen are having to pull the ship a) into/against the tide and b) against the weight of the set sails.
I did a 7 day cruise on the Brig Niagara last year (actually where my profile pic is from!), and I can safely say I had fun hauling up the anchor with the Capstan. Even when it was the port and starboard anchors one right after the other.
So the roller shown there is on the bow? I was wondering if they would anchor off the stern, since keeping the bow pointed into the wind long enough to set it is difficult.
The anchor is connected directly to the rope, right? Nowadays they use chain, and majority of holding force is from the chain laying on the bottom. Funny how an anchor of Victory is so huge, while an anchor from 400 m container ship weights 15 tons or so.
Begging your pardon, but I believe that the engraving of the capstan crew is inaccurate in one matter. The men would be hugging the spars to their chests, I believe, making for a more efficient push. Excellent video, I had no idea how complicated the process was.
Surely this means that attacking ships would be at a significant advantage if they could catch enemy ships at anchor. I always wondered why ships would sometimes cut their anchor cables. I had ignorantly assumed that weighing anchor took perhaps 10-20 minutes rather than hours. I used to play an Avalon Hill war game called “Wooden Ships & Iron Men,” and I believe it had rules for cutting anchor cables. Thank you for bringing back fond memories and enlightening this land lubber. By any chance, do you know how long an ocean-going vessel’s anchor cable needs to be? Does it actually hit bottom and find purchase to hold the vessel in place? The cable’s great length would explain why it was such an onerous task to raise and stow the anchor. [EDIT: It suddenly dawned on me that ships probably don’t drop anchor to the ocean depths. They only anchor near enough to shore that their cable can hit bottom. I’m sorry for showing my ignorance once again. By the way, there is a very enjoyable episode of the TV show “Due South” (a two-parter entitled “Mountie on the Bounty”) that featured Canadian Mounties using a replica of an old wooden ship to chase down and board a large modern freighter. A very entertaining episode, and it included a modern take on the old shanty “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?”] Good Sir, I am now - and shall always remain - in your debt. Smooth sailing to you! Hurrah and huzzah!
600 feet would be typical, enough to drop anchor near enough to the shore that you can get there readily by longboat, but far enough away that you don't risk running aground if something goes wrong. The term "cable" is even used as a (somewhat antiquated) unit of measure; on land it means one-tenth of a mile, but at sea it's the aforementioned 600 feet.
Prior to Nelson's dashing attack at The Nile the conventional wisdom was NOT to attack a ship at anchor because "every hand is a gunner." meaning that you didn't have to split your crew between working the sails and working the guns. Guns could be worked faster. An example of this reluctance comes during the Penobscot Expedition of the American Revolution. Upon arriving off Castine ME, Continental Commodore Saltonstall flat out refused to attack the much weaker RN force at anchor in Castine harbor. This even after the Continental Marines launched an amphibious raid, and captured the primary battery protecting the anchorage. (them Marines sure like doing that kinda stuff!) This led, in the end to the complete collapse of the mission, loss of all Continental ships, capture of many men, and the Cowardly Flight of Cpl. Paul Revere (who was supposed to be the commander of the Continental artillery on the expedition - and why the history books leave him out after his more famous horseback ride.)
Very interesting! I had assumed that the ships at anchor would be less maneuverable and therefore more vulnerable to raking fire from enemy ships passing astern of the anchored vessel.
They would pass an anchor out the stern of the vessel. In a situation like The Nile, the French used the fore and aft anchors to hold themselves in line. While the van and rear ships took a beating, everyone else was protected. Alternately, particularly if its a single vessel, or just a couple of vessels, they would use a long boat to carry the stern anchor out some distance perpendicular to the ship. With use of the capstan, heaving in or paying out, the vessel could turn to some degree, and also be held steady against the vagrancies of the tide and wind.
Really great explanation, I had no idea it was so complicated! I would imagine it was one of the first things they used the steam engines for to get rid off this work (after propulsion)? Also glad to see (finally:-) the "Hornblower" here, I enjoyed the series a lot, maybe you could spare a video on it, is it any good - historically, as a portrayal of the period? (btw. would the shown "anchor-method" really work?
IIRC a so-called donkey engine was used to turn the capstan, which was used for hauling up sails as well as anchors. Idk when they were introduced, but it's very likely the first steam-and-sail ships didn't have them. Pretty sure the late 19th/early 20th century windjammers had gasoline ones.
That was very interesting! I really need to get my hands on John Hartland's book on seamanship (It's not rare but expensive). And Randy Dandy O happens to be my favorite shanty. I heard it for the first time in AC 4 Black Flag. :)
On the Mayflower II at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, the steering is a lever. There are staff on board who explain the details of the ship stay in period character as they do so. One of my nephews asked where the "steering wheel" was and, before I could demonstrate my uncle knowledge of everything, we got a severe mocking for the idiotic idea of moving a rudder with a wheel. It was fun.
Doing research for a novel. Once the anchor is "brought up" so to speak I assume there's something that needs to be done to keep it there? Like a break system of some sort? I've been trying to no avail to find this information. But I assume there some persuasion taken to ensure that it doesn't just fall right back into the ocean lol. Any clarity you could provide would be a blessing.
thank you very much for a most useful video. I wonder if you can help me with a question. do you know what an 18th century sailor would have called the rail that run along the beam around the deck on a tall ship.
Thanks for the video! How in the world did they reset the anchor in its original horizontal position on the side of the ship once they finally pulled it out of the sea?
a large tackle from the 'cathead', huge beams jetting out from the ships side at the bow, was hooked to the ring of the anchor once it pierced the surface of the water. Then it was worked to raise the ring to the cathead. after that, a tackle was fastened to the tip of the anchor, and it was pulled up. Everything tied into place so as never to move, done. 'easy' !
OK, This process is known as "catting and fishing" the anchor. It requires a little bit of terminology I have tried to explain as well. There is a heavy timber aft of the Stem of the ship called a cathead, the cathead has built-in sheaves or pulleys (usually, three) and a chain called a cat-head-stop or cat-stop. The rope used to "cat" the anchor is called the cat-fall and is rove through both the cathead sheaves and a block called the cat-block. The cat-block has a hook on it called the cat-hook. Once the anchor is hauled up to the hawsepipe(the anchor rope opening in the ship), the ring end of the anchor is hooked by the cat-hook and hoisted up to the cathead, where the cat-stop is rove through the ring of the anchor and the cat-hook unhooked, the anchor ring is now secure and the anchor is now "catted". After "catting the anchor", you must secure the flukes, or hooks, of the anchor. Aft of the cathead is a spar called a fish-davit or anchor-davit, which traverses the deck or gunwale on a piece of hardwood called a shoe-piece and bends out over the rail and is secured using guys (like guy wires for a tower). At the outer end of the davit is hung, by its strap, a large single block; through which is reeved the pendent(a rope with a tackle, or two blocks working together, is attached) with a large iron hook spliced in the lower end to hook the anchor within the flukes; then, to the inner end of the pendent, is made fast a tackle, by thrusting a toggle through an eye in the blockstrap; after that has passed through an eye in the pendent, the other block of the tackle is hooked in an eye-bolt in the fore part of the quarter-deck; the effort of the tackle is communicated to the hook, by means of the pendent, by men’s bowsing on the tackle-fall. So they pull on the rope and the direction changes from an easy to pull angle for the men, to a point higher than the rail to lift the anchor one tackle up and down, one towards the rail. Thus the flukes of the anchor are raised and placed on the gunwale, where it is made fast by the shank-painter chain(painter is a term for a rope attached to the bow of a ship, it's tied to the shank of the anchor). A good reference is The Boy's Manual of Seamanship and Gunnery by C. Burney in Google Books for images and a Q and A regarding this topic.
@@lutzderlurch7877 Smaller boats, probably. However, larger vessels most likely did use a chain rode. It helps prevent the chain hawser getting snagged or chafed by rocks.
@@kleinjahr I have never seena period illustration, book, text or model ever show hint or reference a llength a chain, even on the largest ships, in the age of Nelson and earlier. A piece of chain would, I imagine, totally destroy the hawse holes, which are made of oak with a flimsy lead sheet lining against water. Not to mention a rope can be pulled smothly through that hole (relatively speaking, with such a thick cable) but a chain will snag at every singly link and be almost impossible to pull through the hawse hole with menpower.
I would not that, at 1:40 in the video, there 10 men at the bar, with one more trailing for some reason. There are 10 bars. That suggests 100 men COULD be at this capstan. I think the lower deck capstan might not have had room for as many men per bar, but the total of the two should easily have reached 180 or more men. I wonder if any ships of the line had three stacked capstans.
Just want to say the volume seemed quite low. I had to almost max the tablet to hear clearly. Not the device. There are a couple of other channels that have gotten that way. A TH-cam thing? Most channels are fine, and your older posts were fine. Thanks for all your hard work.
Sure you could, make the axle hollow with a spiral groove forcing a bolt with spring loaded lugs to rise until it reaches the top where thd lugs are depressed into a vertical slit that allows the bolt to drop to the bottom of the spiral. Only question is: why would you?
In most cases, the flukes are hooking into whatever it is, the stock lying flat on the sea floor. As the cable (always handed out to multiple times the depth) is gradualy brought in, the cable begins to pull on the anchor itself no longer horizontally, but a begins to pull up. Which uses the body of the anchor as a leve to turn it up and break it out. It is not unheard of to have an anchor stuck, in which case you could try to relocate and go at it again, hoping to pull it from a different direction. But without diving gear etc. it's hard to know what snags the anchor, if it doesnt work, and ultimately, you may just cut it off.
@@robox91 the cable itself is much thicker than the messenger. and after a short time in the water, made very stiff. It would not 'bend' around the capstan. The cable was such a thick and stiff rope, that it was not spliced or fancifully knotted to the anchor itself, but tied with a few rather simple, giant knots, which were then further reeinforced with wrappings of smaller rope.
I knew a capstan was used but had no idea about the messenger line. You'd think they would have engineered a better and faster method of linking the two ropes together using some metal hardware.
Metal was expensive, heavy, and, with the manufacturing technology availiable at the time: unreliable. The quality varied too much in a metal fitting compared to their ropes, lines and cables.
Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for. I am developing a medieval trading game in Caribbean sea (see my TH-cam if you are interested) and I didn't know how the anchor really works. Thank you sooo much for this video!
It was my introduction to the AC series. In that regard, I enjoyed it as a game on its own merits--as long as you don't go into it expecting some kind of sailing simulator, which it certainly is not :P
Hey how did they feed the crew? What did they normally eat? I watch a You Tube show about myths of the RN that said they were well feed but not how they cooked the meals or what they ate.
According to a historical fiction book set in the time, porridge with dried goods, dried fruits, vegetables and meat. Also they supposedly drank in large part watered down rum. I can't say how accurate that is but the book is correct about a lot of other historical details, so ...
Bob Bobson, I'm looking for a more detailed answer like what's on "Townson" You Tube Chanel. The BBC Historical show that I watched showed them eating stews but how do you cook on a wooden ship?
They used a galley, a large metal stove and kitchen. In earlier days, they had a tiny kitche, with the cooking fire are lined with bricks and the rest of the room lined with copper sheets..
I know I'm a bit late on this, but this shanty is a good example of the capstan song. You make a turn around the capstan, heave a pawl. Then the slack is taken in. th-cam.com/video/ei9byYF5cCY/w-d-xo.html
Weighing anchor is still a hugely time consuming process today. It needs to be automated in order to keep the BMs chipping paint and painting over rust.
So, according to my extensive reading of the Patrick O'Brian novels, when the ship is hauled above the anchor, the bosun calls "Up and down" to which the Captain responds "Thick and dry". Do you have any idea what the phrase "thick and dry" means?
'Thick and dry for weighing' - meaning that the cable must be allowed to resume its normal girth after the stretching and attenuation which it naturally suffers during the hauling process, and that as much water as is reasonably possible must be drained from it, before any more of it is brought inboard.
This man single-handedly explained some of the most complicated parts of a ship in less than an hour. God bless him.
Yep he got it right; that's how it was done
I was a young rigger in Portsmouth Dockyard in the early 60s. Probably one of the best jobs I ever had. Working with rope, man-made, natural fibre or steel was a way of life. It was hard, heavy, and often dangerous. The first year was essentially classroom work in the charge of a leading rigger in No1Rrigging House South Railway Jetty. During the five year training period, I learned a great deal on the machinations of day to day life for the sailors and the workings of the ships themselves. Part of the training included working for the Victory party and constructing her anchor cables was one of them. It took upwards of seven men to splice the rope using mallets and fids sometimes 31/2ft. tall, one to hold up the fid, two others on the mallets, a feeder for the hole that takes the strand, a snapper who snaps at the strand to get it to tuck and lay, and another to twist the rope work side up. At least this gives you a flavour of rigging and heavy splicing.
If it's the building i think it is, the very long one indeed, then the last time i went in there was four years ago and they make the guard rails for the ships in there now. I know they do some rope work still but only in a very small area as you'd expect as times certainly move on. Great dockyard to explore 11 years in the Navy up in a few months. :-(
Must have been a great experience..
It must have been really exhilarating to be up in the rigging of a ship
Justin Case - You must be a few years older than me, but I also grew-up in Pompey. Thank you for that powerful description. I never got the opportunity to "get behind the scenes of The Ship, so I envy you, although, clearly it was very hard work.
Easy to forget the foul nature of the water coming inboard on those cables, with 1000s of men on ships and perforce relieving themselves into the harbour. One has to imagine that the smallest cut could easily end up infected.
Given the need to cut away seizings etc, a knife was pretty much standard equipment. Given the angst that knife crime causes today, I wonder how today's generation would react to the salty bit of advice I heard from time to time, "Would you come on deck in harbour without your trousers, well don't come on deck at sea without your knife."
@@ross.venner Wonderful reply Ross. As adventurous lads, we would investigate every nook and cranny of the Victory and that was my undoing. Fumbling in the dark I found no decking under my feet and down I went being saved bar that caught the crotch of my overalls and I ended up swinging like a pendulum. I managed to scrabble to the decking to be met with whoops of laughter and a helping hand.
The advantage of working in the dockyard was the experience of dangerous and dirty work sometimes in freezing weather gave young hands and backs the taste of real hard work and something that held me in good stead when I joined the army. Today with the advance in lifting aids has reduced much of the need for manhandling. As much a cliche' as it is, it helped make a man out of me, and following my father's footsteps, I retired still working for the military.
The Age of Sail, my favorite period of history and my favorite subject. Thanks you very much for including it in your series.
prettiest ships and guns imo
In Hollywood a couple of dozen pirates can sail a ship of the line. No need to hire extras.
Screw “A couple dozen”, Jack Sparrow and William Turner managed to sail one all the way to Tortuga
@@Jess-pe8bq To be fair, the Interceptor is more akin to a frigate than a ship-of-the-line. Also, you are forgetting one thing.
He's Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?
@@joshcain1032 It isn't even a fregate. It is a sloop of war with 16 guns (so 8 broadside) and two swivels. (That being said, PotC armaments are usually nonsense. Particulary Flying Dutchman has way to heavy guns for a ship of her size.) Interceptor was played by Lady Washington... which has usually 12 men crew. And 2 3 pounder "guns".
Sailing the ship would be possible, fighting the ship another matter.
@@josynaemikohler6572 no quotations needed. A cannon is a true gun. Rifles and handguns are just that, rifles and hand guns
I volunteer on the Cutty Sark explaining how they hauled up the anchor using a mechanical winch. Now I can explain what they used to do before the mechanical winch was invented. Thanks for that.
I used to work on the Cutty Sark! She's a lovely ship and museum.
Great video! There are so few videos on ship mechanics on TH-cam. Keep up the great work!
I have worked on ships and boats all my life and didn't know a lot of that.
Well done
Will keep reading your posts
Here's a little fun fact about English ships and weighting the anchor. Young boys in England are called "Nippers". The name comes from the sailing days of old wherein the cabin boys on ships would 'nip' back and forth along the anchor line being hauled by the capstan tying and untying the anchor rope to the capstan rope as it was being hauled aboard, thereby creating the action of 'nipping' back and forth. The cabin boys were used instead of the seamen because the space was cramped and better suited to small lads.
Here's a little fun fact about the video: that was in the video.
Many thanks for putting together such a well researched talk - Ray Aldis, Historian of The Nelson Society
I have been searching for ages on understanding this process and so happy to have finally found your video. Thank you!
Sea of thieves peaked my interest in old ships and i was so curious how old capstans worked, this video was incredible, thank you for the detailed explanation. Sea of thieves is so inaccurate, you just spin a wheel and leave, obviously for a game mechanic that's how its has to be, but still it is just so interesting to see how these actually work.
SOT got me looking into these videos too.
Thanks so much for your amazingly informative videos! I am writing a novel and though my protagonist isn't precisely a sailor, she does spend a lot of time at sea and also around sailors, smugglers, and the like. While I don't need her to know down to the last detail how everything works, I do want to be able to visualize what is going on around her, and what sort of things might happen at sea. This is one of my very favorite periods of history anyway! Throw anything nautical my way and I'm right there, lol.
I sailed on an 80 foot 2 mast schooner for 5 days once, was a blast. You'd hear "All hands on deck!" in the morning and then line up 10 people to haul each anchor chain up
I am loving the nautical change of course. Keep up the good work.
I used to not like sea shanties when i was younger, after assassins creed 4 i was hooked.
superactiongeneral so many good shanties in ac4, one of the best soundtracks on a game ever.
Especially Spanish Ladies, I've read about it in Arthur Ransome books, but never heard it until then.
Haha! I knew someone had to mention Black Flag regarding the shanties. They were one of the best features in the game.
No sea shanties allowed on Navy ships.
I know your post is 2 years old but I wonder if you've heard the shanty/pub song "Drink Till I Die" by the Poxy Boggarts. It's totally a killer to sing with the boys.
Now do a video (if you can) on ship repair, you know after battles when hulls would be splintered and masts torn.
superactiongeneral that was actually very simple hammer wood over holes and get the nearest port and get the ship in a dry dock where over a series of weeks the hull would be repaired and painted while the crew took leave or left the navy entirely and more people were pup-ganged then the ship was relaunched
superactiongeneral now that’s a good question.
Some holes in the hull would’ve been too big to hammer 1 piece of wood into and call it a day.
Rarely. A supersonic cannon ball 6 inches in diameter will make a hole in oak that is too small to stick your fingers into. That's because the wood fibers rebound back into the hole.
Ships were almost never dry-docked. Which was fine because battle damage was all at or above the waterline. They could just shift some ballast if necessary and access everything.
I believe that once they drydock the ship it is disassembled and rebuilt with fresh timber replacing the damaged ones, hence the astronomically long repair times it took to repair heavily battle damaged ships and the huge expense such repair costs... Its not like in TV shows or Movies or Games where you patch cannon holes on the fly and fully repair yourself while at sea, no this is a labor intensive process that takes days, weeks, or months to repair based on the type of damage, location of the damage and how long it'll take to strip down and repair, plus the funding and manpower of the shipyard the damaged vessel has been placed in...
And the length of this process is why you'll see references to "slipping the cable". Basically, if you're in a hurry, you don't haul the anchor in, you turn it loose and come back for it later if you have time.
The capstan was the major "winch" on any large ship: Smaller ships had a windlass. The anchor was not it's only job; shifting major parts of the rigging, mounting and dis-mounting guns from their carriage. Sometimes, a ship needed a bit of a "head start" from a dock or pier, and they would Warp the Ship out to where she could catch a wind. IF the ship ran aground, they would Kedge Her Off (the bottom) using the capstan and multiple anchors.
Being an Able-bodied Seaman was a lot more than just being able to Hand, Reef, and Steer.
Please pardon my commenting more than once, but you inspired me to do a quick Internet search. I found an article that puts a modern perspective on this whole business of weighing anchor.
Here is a quick copy-and-paste of the opening paragraphs to give some idea of how this whole anchor business weighs even heavier on the sailors of a modern aircraft carrier.
[QUOTE]
Pulling Their Weight: Anchor and Chain
Nimitz Sailors prove their mettle
14 May 2015 By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Holly Herline, USS Nimitz Public Affairs
The Boatswain's Mates of USS Nimitz (CVN 68) are making history, as they become the first team of Sailors to remove the anchor and chain of an aircraft carrier rather than contracting the work out to civilians.
Fifty-seven links, each weighing 350-pounds, make up just one 90-foot shot of chain that weighs a total of 20,500 pounds. Twelve shots of chain collectively hold a 60,000-pound anchor. Considering the average person weighs less than 200 pounds, it's safe to say the task of removing Nimitz' anchors and chain is no small feat.
[END QUOTE]
I know this is irrelevant to an historical ship-of-the-line, but it helped me appreciate and admire the salty sea dogs of the past who dealt with their ship’s anchor through muscle power alone.
IIRC, the Nimitz has motorized capstans--a great convenience, one supposes, compared to having to wrangle 300 men at once for many hours at a time.
Agreed! Thank you for commenting.
Wow, well that explains why when the Spanish Armada that was anchored off the coast of the Spanish Netherlands cut their anchors when the English sent a fire ship their way, they make not have had enough time to pull up an anchor if it was that slow, well that plus general panic.
There's a video of Star of India weighing the anchor. Elaborate and smart process with lots of little tasks and different winches and such.
puts up a whole new perspective on the classic "Weigh anchor!" -> "aye aye Cap'n!" scene.
more like "Weigh anchor!" -> ".....sighhhhhhhh..... _collective groan_ "
Great video never knew it was such an involved process. Any idea how long a typical anchor line would be.
I think it would be would be one-tenth of a mile, Based on it being called an anchor cable, and a cable being a unit of measurement equivalent to a tenth mile or 8 chains, may be wrong as it's also called a hawser, although I think that term related to the layup.
James McEwan thanks
My reading suggests a Cable-length is 600 feet, as a standard.
That's about right, a cable measurement on land is less as its a tenth of a land mile. A see mile is 6076 feet. The measurement is still used in the Shell channel pilot book, and in Reed's nautical almanac. Seems to stay in use due to it being difficult to judge distances much more accurately at sea.
James McEwan thanks
I'm so glad that I found this channel. Still looking for a good channel with a focus on Galleons.. I don't care they're Spanish or Portuguese. Heck, I even heard the English built some.... still am murky on the details.
Anyway, I liked the steering wheel video as well as this one.
Another excellent piece of work. I learned a great deal and enjoyed singing an old sea-shanty soon afterward in the tub.
Nice vid.
Next you should cover how they dropped anchor keeping in mind letting it run freely can cause major damage to the ship and potentially kill some sailors.
Brandon, Noone wants to watch a sailing crew raise anchor especially in a action scene so the studio takes liberties with how much time it takes, also imagine snagging you anchor or having to raise and lower multiple anchors at the same time... Also, you forgot to mention anchor warping Brandon! You should do a video on the anchor types and the techniques developed around their use!
Now we are ready to sail for the Horn
Weigh hey, roll and go!
Our boots and our clothes, boys, are all in the pawn
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!
Heave a pawl, O heave away!
Weigh hey, roll and go!
The anchor's on board and the cable's all stored
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!
Soon we'll be warping her out through the locks
Weigh hey, roll and go!
Where the pretty young girls all come down in their frocks
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!
Come breast the bars, bullies, heave her away
Weigh hey, roll and go!
Soon we'll be rolling her down through the Bay
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!
In an emergency, like if the enemy's fleet suddenly arrived they would cut the anchor line. It was a good idea to have a spare anchor or two, it still is.
And they would cut it with a saw, or axes, not a single swing of a cutlass...
Hence the phrase "cut and run".
Thanks for the explanation. I've been intrigued by old nautical workings for years and the capstan in particular had me curious as to how it worked.
Going on board the USS Constellation was pretty interesting. I can’t remember for sure, but I think it had 2, probably just one, multi deck capstans with the heads on the weather deck. Was amazing to see, and I regret not having enough time to really take it all in. Out of all that day I spent in Baltimore, I would’ve been content to have spent every second of it on the Constellation. I hope to see her again someday
Next video should be "catting the anchor" since we've only got the anchor up to the surface in this one.
Now all those historical details about a ship being caught at anchor, or a captain misjudging and dropping anchor when it wasnt actually safe were such emphasised details
Well you left out the real fun bit: Witht the capstan etc. you only get the anchor fra enough up, so that the ring to which the cable is fixed pierces the surface.
It would be quite nice to see the proces from there on illuminated.
I just came across this video and it is very interesting. I would never have thought it to be that complicated. But there is quite some work missing in your explanation. Because, as the holes for the anchor cable are too low at the hull and the anchor is too big, you won't get the anchor out of the water completely, and you still have to get it somehow up to the side of the ship's hull. Which seems to be quite some work, too, remembering the anchor weighs 2 tons.
Absolutely! I think to get into the real nitty-gritty with these sorts of topics would take an awful lot more time than a simple TH-cam video usually allows. I’m always amazed at how complex the naval side of things was in comparison to the army side.
As good as you are at explaining this stuff! I still have no idea what’s going on
superb knowledge , thank you for keeping it alive
I freaking love your videos! How do you not have more subs?
Well, it all takes time! Thank you!
I love these, do you have a playlist of ship videos?
That was very interesting.
I had no idea about any of that process.
Thank you for the information.
Perhaps an unusual link but the whole process reminds me of working in a woodshop or factory line. You can hit the emergency stop whenever you please and everything will come to a rather abrupt halt but to get everything moving again it's hours of setting up before you can go anywhere.
When I was watching Hornblower you often see the ships dropping and weighing anchor as easily as if it's putting the parking break on a car - but would a captain, familiar with the time and manpower required to weigh anchor on his ship have to make the decision of whether or not to anchor in case he might need to make a 'speedy' getaway?
Also bear in mind that some of the sails would have been set ready to sail as soon as the anchor breaks out of the sea-bed. So the seamen are having to pull the ship a) into/against the tide and b) against the weight of the set sails.
Happy to see Hornblower used as an example! What do you think of it Brandon?
I did a 7 day cruise on the Brig Niagara last year (actually where my profile pic is from!), and I can safely say I had fun hauling up the anchor with the Capstan. Even when it was the port and starboard anchors one right after the other.
You can't really compare anchor of a brig to an anchor of the 1st rate though.
So the roller shown there is on the bow? I was wondering if they would anchor off the stern, since keeping the bow pointed into the wind long enough to set it is difficult.
The anchor is connected directly to the rope, right? Nowadays they use chain, and majority of holding force is from the chain laying on the bottom. Funny how an anchor of Victory is so huge, while an anchor from 400 m container ship weights 15 tons or so.
Begging your pardon, but I believe that the engraving of the capstan crew is inaccurate in one matter. The men would be hugging the spars to their chests, I believe, making for a more efficient push.
Excellent video, I had no idea how complicated the process was.
I'd say it depends on the size of the ship
Surely this means that attacking ships would be at a significant advantage if they could catch enemy ships at anchor. I always wondered why ships would sometimes cut their anchor cables. I had ignorantly assumed that weighing anchor took perhaps 10-20 minutes rather than hours.
I used to play an Avalon Hill war game called “Wooden Ships & Iron Men,” and I believe it had rules for cutting anchor cables. Thank you for bringing back fond memories and enlightening this land lubber.
By any chance, do you know how long an ocean-going vessel’s anchor cable needs to be? Does it actually hit bottom and find purchase to hold the vessel in place? The cable’s great length would explain why it was such an onerous task to raise and stow the anchor.
[EDIT: It suddenly dawned on me that ships probably don’t drop anchor to the ocean depths. They only anchor near enough to shore that their cable can hit bottom. I’m sorry for showing my ignorance once again.
By the way, there is a very enjoyable episode of the TV show “Due South” (a two-parter entitled “Mountie on the Bounty”) that featured Canadian Mounties using a replica of an old wooden ship to chase down and board a large modern freighter. A very entertaining episode, and it included a modern take on the old shanty “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?”]
Good Sir, I am now - and shall always remain - in your debt. Smooth sailing to you! Hurrah and huzzah!
600 feet would be typical, enough to drop anchor near enough to the shore that you can get there readily by longboat, but far enough away that you don't risk running aground if something goes wrong. The term "cable" is even used as a (somewhat antiquated) unit of measure; on land it means one-tenth of a mile, but at sea it's the aforementioned 600 feet.
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge!
Prior to Nelson's dashing attack at The Nile the conventional wisdom was NOT to attack a ship at anchor because "every hand is a gunner." meaning that you didn't have to split your crew between working the sails and working the guns. Guns could be worked faster. An example of this reluctance comes during the Penobscot Expedition of the American Revolution. Upon arriving off Castine ME, Continental Commodore Saltonstall flat out refused to attack the much weaker RN force at anchor in Castine harbor. This even after the Continental Marines launched an amphibious raid, and captured the primary battery protecting the anchorage. (them Marines sure like doing that kinda stuff!) This led, in the end to the complete collapse of the mission, loss of all Continental ships, capture of many men, and the Cowardly Flight of Cpl. Paul Revere (who was supposed to be the commander of the Continental artillery on the expedition - and why the history books leave him out after his more famous horseback ride.)
Very interesting! I had assumed that the ships at anchor would be less maneuverable and therefore more vulnerable to raking fire from enemy ships passing astern of the anchored vessel.
They would pass an anchor out the stern of the vessel. In a situation like The Nile, the French used the fore and aft anchors to hold themselves in line. While the van and rear ships took a beating, everyone else was protected. Alternately, particularly if its a single vessel, or just a couple of vessels, they would use a long boat to carry the stern anchor out some distance perpendicular to the ship. With use of the capstan, heaving in or paying out, the vessel could turn to some degree, and also be held steady against the vagrancies of the tide and wind.
How does one weigh anchor on one of these ships?
With some difficulty...
Really great explanation, I had no idea it was so complicated! I would imagine it was one of the first things they used the steam engines for to get rid off this work (after propulsion)?
Also glad to see (finally:-) the "Hornblower" here, I enjoyed the series a lot, maybe you could spare a video on it, is it any good - historically, as a portrayal of the period? (btw. would the shown "anchor-method" really work?
Yes, using the anchor to pull yourself off a shoal was called 'kedging.'
IIRC a so-called donkey engine was used to turn the capstan, which was used for hauling up sails as well as anchors. Idk when they were introduced, but it's very likely the first steam-and-sail ships didn't have them. Pretty sure the late 19th/early 20th century windjammers had gasoline ones.
@@donjones4719 there were definately steam donkeys too. But they still had traditional capstan for backup.
@@mancubwwa even today, an electric windlass on a sail boat has a manual option. Just in case.
This video helped fueling my obsession for ships from the age of sail
Excellent as always
That was very interesting! I really need to get my hands on John Hartland's book on seamanship (It's not rare but expensive). And Randy Dandy O happens to be my favorite shanty. I heard it for the first time in AC 4 Black Flag. :)
Question how long would it take to raise the anchor? been searching everywhere on the internet, I can't find answer.
On the Mayflower II at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, the steering is a lever. There are staff on board who explain the details of the ship stay in period character as they do so. One of my nephews asked where the "steering wheel" was and, before I could demonstrate my uncle knowledge of everything, we got a severe mocking for the idiotic idea of moving a rudder with a wheel. It was fun.
Its 7 a.m and I really hope this comes up at a random trivia night
You never know when the responsibility of lifting an anchor will fall to you!
Great channel. Love the stuff like this
Doing research for a novel. Once the anchor is "brought up" so to speak I assume there's something that needs to be done to keep it there? Like a break system of some sort? I've been trying to no avail to find this information. But I assume there some persuasion taken to ensure that it doesn't just fall right back into the ocean lol. Any clarity you could provide would be a blessing.
Would the ship just be adrift while everyone was hauling the anchor up? Or would there be enough men left over to man the ship?
thank you very much for a most useful video. I wonder if you can help me with a question. do you know what an 18th century sailor would have called the rail that run along the beam around the deck on a tall ship.
Thanks for the video! How in the world did they reset the anchor in its original horizontal position on the side of the ship once they finally pulled it out of the sea?
a large tackle from the 'cathead', huge beams jetting out from the ships side at the bow, was hooked to the ring of the anchor once it pierced the surface of the water. Then it was worked to raise the ring to the cathead. after that, a tackle was fastened to the tip of the anchor, and it was pulled up. Everything tied into place so as never to move, done. 'easy' !
That was pulling in the cable but how was the anchor taken up and fixed in place?
OK, This process is known as "catting and fishing" the anchor. It requires a little bit of terminology I have tried to explain as well.
There is a heavy timber aft of the Stem of the ship called a cathead, the cathead has built-in sheaves or pulleys (usually, three) and a chain called a cat-head-stop or cat-stop. The rope used to "cat" the anchor is called the cat-fall and is rove through both the cathead sheaves and a block called the cat-block. The cat-block has a hook on it called the cat-hook. Once the anchor is hauled up to the hawsepipe(the anchor rope opening in the ship), the ring end of the anchor is hooked by the cat-hook and hoisted up to the cathead, where the cat-stop is rove through the ring of the anchor and the cat-hook unhooked, the anchor ring is now secure and the anchor is now "catted".
After "catting the anchor", you must secure the flukes, or hooks, of the anchor. Aft of the cathead is a spar called a fish-davit or anchor-davit, which traverses the deck or gunwale on a piece of hardwood called a shoe-piece and bends out over the rail and is secured using guys (like guy wires for a tower). At the outer end of the davit is hung, by its strap, a large single block; through which is reeved the pendent(a rope with a tackle, or two blocks working together, is attached) with a large iron hook spliced in the lower end to hook the anchor within the flukes; then, to the inner end of the pendent, is made fast a tackle, by thrusting a toggle through an eye in the blockstrap; after that has passed through an eye in the pendent, the other block of the tackle is hooked in an eye-bolt in the fore part of the quarter-deck; the effort of the tackle is communicated to the hook, by means of the pendent, by men’s bowsing on the tackle-fall. So they pull on the rope and the direction changes from an easy to pull angle for the men, to a point higher than the rail to lift the anchor one tackle up and down, one towards the rail. Thus the flukes of the anchor are raised and placed on the gunwale, where it is made fast by the shank-painter chain(painter is a term for a rope attached to the bow of a ship, it's tied to the shank of the anchor).
A good reference is The Boy's Manual of Seamanship and Gunnery by C. Burney in Google Books for images and a Q and A regarding this topic.
Fun fact nipper was also the term used for door openers in mines
Now that was really interesting. Thank you
Did cannon crews name their cannons during the early 1800s? Like pilots and cannon crews named their machines in World War Two.
the song is indeed well sung, love it .
Can you do a video about the great cabins?
Nice vids...The site that u suggest is AWESOME ,many thanks!!!!
There is also, quite often, the rode to contend with. A section of chain joining the cable and the anchor.
In the time of Nelson and before, I think there was no chain attached to the anchors, yet.
@@lutzderlurch7877 Smaller boats, probably. However, larger vessels most likely did use a chain rode. It helps prevent the chain hawser getting snagged or chafed by rocks.
@@kleinjahr I have never seena period illustration, book, text or model ever show hint or reference a llength a chain, even on the largest ships, in the age of Nelson and earlier.
A piece of chain would, I imagine, totally destroy the hawse holes, which are made of oak with a flimsy lead sheet lining against water.
Not to mention a rope can be pulled smothly through that hole (relatively speaking, with such a thick cable) but a chain will snag at every singly link and be almost impossible to pull through the hawse hole with menpower.
I would not that, at 1:40 in the video, there 10 men at the bar, with one more trailing for some reason. There are 10 bars. That suggests 100 men COULD be at this capstan. I think the lower deck capstan might not have had room for as many men per bar, but the total of the two should easily have reached 180 or more men. I wonder if any ships of the line had three stacked capstans.
Just want to say the volume seemed quite low. I had to almost max the tablet to hear clearly. Not the device. There are a couple of other channels that have gotten that way. A TH-cam thing? Most channels are fine, and your older posts were fine. Thanks for all your hard work.
I love another one about this task called "Four Hours" because of how long it would take to weigh anchor.
Could you use the capstan to make a “hammer” like in PoTC? The bit where they spin the capstan to hammer the bottom of the boat and summon the kraken?
Sure you could, make the axle hollow with a spiral groove forcing a bolt with spring loaded lugs to rise until it reaches the top where thd lugs are depressed into a vertical slit that allows the bolt to drop to the bottom of the spiral.
Only question is: why would you?
How do they haul it up above water like that?
If an anchor is stuck or wedged on a rock(which is its purpose anyway), how do pull it up then? If you know what I mean...
In most cases, the flukes are hooking into whatever it is, the stock lying flat on the sea floor. As the cable (always handed out to multiple times the depth) is gradualy brought in, the cable begins to pull on the anchor itself no longer horizontally, but a begins to pull up. Which uses the body of the anchor as a leve to turn it up and break it out.
It is not unheard of to have an anchor stuck, in which case you could try to relocate and go at it again, hoping to pull it from a different direction. But without diving gear etc. it's hard to know what snags the anchor, if it doesnt work, and ultimately, you may just cut it off.
Why use a messenger cable if you also could put the anchor cable around the capstan?
There would be far, far too much cable for that!
@@BrandonF I understand, but you could also put it around a couple of times for grip and then throw it in the hatch.
@@robox91 the cable itself is much thicker than the messenger. and after a short time in the water, made very stiff. It would not 'bend' around the capstan. The cable was such a thick and stiff rope, that it was not spliced or fancifully knotted to the anchor itself, but tied with a few rather simple, giant knots, which were then further reeinforced with wrappings of smaller rope.
More of this please
16th and 17th century naval warfare would be an interesting topic!
Superb videos of yours
I knew a capstan was used but had no idea about the messenger line. You'd think they would have engineered a better and faster method of linking the two ropes together using some metal hardware.
Metal was expensive, heavy, and, with the manufacturing technology availiable at the time: unreliable.
The quality varied too much in a metal fitting compared to their ropes, lines and cables.
@@SonsOfLorgar I'd assume it'd uickly wear out the cable
Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for. I am developing a medieval trading game in Caribbean sea (see my TH-cam if you are interested) and I didn't know how the anchor really works. Thank you sooo much for this video!
Randy dandy o appears one of the shanties you can listen to while sailing in Assasing Creed Black Flag.
Never noticed what it said
Are you up for trying to explain kedging?
thx for the video! really explained it
Since you said in the past that you do a Soviet WW2 impression, then how do rapid-firing guns work?
"Randy Dandy O" is one of my favorites as well, though I must admit I'm partial to the _Assassin's_ _Creed_ _IV_ rendition.
Those shanties were the only saving grace from that title!
It was my introduction to the AC series. In that regard, I enjoyed it as a game on its own merits--as long as you don't go into it expecting some kind of sailing simulator, which it certainly is not :P
Very informative!
This is going to be good. I love nautical things. Time to weigh anchor.
Hey how did they feed the crew? What did they normally eat? I watch a You Tube show about myths of the RN that said they were well feed but not how they cooked the meals or what they ate.
According to a historical fiction book set in the time, porridge with dried goods, dried fruits, vegetables and meat. Also they supposedly drank in large part watered down rum. I can't say how accurate that is but the book is correct about a lot of other historical details, so ...
Bob Bobson, I'm looking for a more detailed answer like what's on "Townson" You Tube Chanel. The BBC Historical show that I watched showed them eating stews but how do you cook on a wooden ship?
They used a galley, a large metal stove and kitchen.
In earlier days, they had a tiny kitche, with the cooking fire are lined with bricks and the rest of the room lined with copper sheets..
I know I'm a bit late on this, but this shanty is a good example of the capstan song. You make a turn around the capstan, heave a pawl. Then the slack is taken in. th-cam.com/video/ei9byYF5cCY/w-d-xo.html
Weighing anchor is still a hugely time consuming process today. It needs to be automated in order to keep the BMs chipping paint and painting over rust.
Business mates never chip paint; they see that it gets done and right!
So, according to my extensive reading of the Patrick O'Brian novels, when the ship is hauled above the anchor, the bosun calls "Up and down" to which the Captain responds "Thick and dry". Do you have any idea what the phrase "thick and dry" means?
'Thick and dry for weighing' - meaning that the cable must be allowed to resume its normal girth after the stretching and attenuation which it naturally suffers during the hauling process, and that as much water as is reasonably possible must be drained from it, before any more of it is brought inboard.
Thanks.
That’s the song from Assassins creed black flag
really interesting, thanks!
Weren't there different kinds of anchors?
I'm new to navel history and your videos are a great introduction.
Yo, that's the HMS Victory!! Admiral Nelson's flag ship!! Been there!!!
The randy dandy oh song I heard it plenty of times in assassin creed black flag, one of my favorite shantys
In australia, the kids that train in the surf life saving clubs are called nippers.
To be honest - As much as I like modern day ships, I will miss the medieval ships.
This is not medieval