Ships' Fastenings: From Sewn Boat to Steamship

242 Pages·2005·2.47 MB·English

by  Michael McCarthy

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F
Ships’ astenings
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F
Ships’ astenings
From Sewn Boat to Steamship
Michael McCarthy
Texas A&M University Press
college station
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Copyright © 2005 Michael McCarthy
Manufactured in the United States of America
All rights reserved
First edition
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
z39.48-1984.
Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
(cid:2)(cid:3)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCarthy, Mike, 1947–
Ships’ fastenings : fr0m sewn boat to steamship /
Michael McCarthy.—1st ed.
p. cm. — (Ed Rachal Foundation nautical archaeology series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn1-58544-451-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Fasteners—History. 2. Shipbuilding—History.
3. Hulls (Naval architecture)—History. 4. Underwater archaeology.
I. Title. II. Series
vm15.m39 2005
623.8(cid:2)62—dc22
2005002898
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ToDebbie,
Kim, Katie, Ellen
and Phillip:
the anchor and
fastenings on my ship
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Contents
preface ix
introduction 3
1 Fastened without Nails: The Sewn Boat 11
2 The Advent of Metals 30
3 Metal Fastenings on the Sewn-Plank Boat 38
4 Fastened with Metal and Wood 44
5 Clinker Shipbuilding 52
6 Carvel Building in Northern Europe 63
7 The Manufacture of Fastenings 86
8 Sheathing: The Key to Copper and Copper-Alloy Fastenings 101
9 The Advent of Muntz Metal through to the Composite Ship 115
10 Registers, Treatises, and Contemporary Accounts 122
11 The Archaeological Evidence 130
12 Iron and Steel Ships 143
13 Modern Terminology 159
Conclusion 165
Appendix: Explanatory Notes on Metallic Fastenings 169
Notes 188
References 197
Index 217
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P
reface
Fastenings have fascinated me for well over thirty years now, since my ix
first glimpse of them when I spent a few seasons helping the Maritime
Archaeology Association of Western Australia excavate an American
whale ship on behalf of the Western Australian Maritime Museum’s
Department of Maritime Archaeology. Then in 1978 I joined the de-
partment and assisted Jeremy Green in the excavation of a number of
seventeenth-century British and Dutch East India ships. Another col-
league, Graeme Henderson, was also excavating and analyzing a series
of colonial-period shipwrecks: a British naval frigate sent in pursuit of
theBountymutineers; an early-nineteenth-century American China
trader; a British whaler; a British French-built colonial trader—once a
notorious slave ship; a mid-nineteenth-century Quebec-built trading
barque; and a colonial whaler.1Many other people joined in these proj-
ects as support staff, including Myra Stanbury, the department’s Arte-
fact Manager, whose comprehensive analyses and catalogues became
the mainstay of the museum’s collection management system.
Another early influence was the work of my predecessor, the mu-
seum’s first “Wreck Inspector,” Scott Sledge, whose job it was to in-
spect, and if possible to identify, the many wrecks then being reported
to the museum. This was effected utilizing a combination of the physi-
cal remains (of which fastenings were an important element) and con-
temporary accounts.2I joined Sledge in inspecting the wrecks of these
colonial-period vessels, all from a time frame that neatly dovetailed
into the advent and rise of the first of the world’s underwriters, Lloyd’s
of London, after 1760. After he departed in 1981, my own “wreck in-
spection” teams came to inspect vessels ranging from wooden-hulled
iron, copper, and copper-alloy fastened ships, through to riveted iron-
hulled sailing ships and steamers traveling from many distant corners
of the globe—Brazil, England, France, Holland, India, Italy, Croatia,
Mauritius, North America, Portugal, Scotland, Wales, and so forth.
Given the myriad of fastenings encountered as a result of these ac-
tivities, it became evident that a typology for the use of collection man-
agers, conservators, and archaeologists like me, who had little practical
grounding in shipbuilding methods, was needed. This was tentatively
published in theBulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archae-
ologyin 1983, edited by Myra Stanbury and Jeremy Green, and then by
request of Valerie Fenwick (who was then its editor), in the pages of the