Sailing Tactics on the Mayflower

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Shanachie

Through one grandparent, I have ancestors from the Mayflower and the Speedwell...

Do you know which one[s]?

Stuff I didn't know:
Most estimates place the number of [Mayflower] descendants alive today at around 35 million.
All the known Mayflower descendants alive today can trace their lineage to one or more of 22 male passengers *.
Who Are the Mayflower Descendants?
Could you be one of the nation’s estimated 35 million Mayflower descendants? Today there are more resources than ever before to help you make the connection.
* Listed & more ➥ https://newengland.com/today/living/...r-descendants/

[requiem]

Originally Posted by GordMay

See also:

“The Capability of Sailing Warships* Part 1: Windward Performance” ~ by Sam Willis
➥ https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_m...13_4_29-39.pdf

“The Capability of Sailing Warships: Manoeuvrability” ~ by Sam Willis
➥ https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_m...14_3_57-68.pdf

Thanks Gord! I had been looking everywhere for that second article, and couldn't remember where I had first seen it.

[Jdege]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Do you know which one[s]?

I'm descended from John and Priscilla's granddaughter, Hopestill Alden Snow.

[mf70]

Mariners in the sixteenth century had a very different skillset than today. Almost anything written in the 21st century is speculation. The China clippers were 300 years after the Mayflower with their own technology. Even Alan Villiers was bringing 20th century skills to the Mayflower. There are very few contemporary descriptions of 16th century navigation. John Smith and a few others gave glimpses. One source that hasn't been mentioned is Jouet's Journal. Robert Jouet was (probably) Henry Hudson's first mate on his first voyage. As a journal, it's a little more expanded than a log. He details the daily shiphandling as they arrived off the East Coast and made their way north to what would be known as the Hudson.

One exercise that surprised me was latching (and unlatching) bonnets to cope with changes in the wind. I've done it on the replica Dove for our awnings, but never underway.

[GrowleyMonster]

Originally Posted by Jdege

My understanding is that jibing is faster, requires a smaller crew, and imposes less strain on the rigging.

But that tacking is possible. Except that it's not so much tacking as we do fore-aft rigged boats. It's more coming full aback, then falling off on the opposite tack as you're pushed backwards.

Sort of like making a sternway tack in light airs with a Wetsnail 32. Halfway through the maneuver you are making sternway with the headsails aback and the rudder over "the wrong way" before you finally have the wind far enough around to sheet all home on the new tack and start making headway again. When done smartly, you don't lose all that much ground but you are gonna lose some. Less than wear and gibe.

[mf70]

The clippers and merchantmen of the 19th century may very well have had to make sternway mid-tack. In the interests of speed and economy, their rudders were undersized for their burden with relatively high aspect hulls and very much undermanned, slowing down the evolution. On the ~1634 Dove, we seldom made sternway in a tack. Our rudder was relatively large, our hull turned easily, and we had enough crew to work all stations at the same time. Tacks were also easier for a volunteer crew to master.

OTOH, since we only sailed in protected water, bonnets were an abstraction; the sails were shortened by clewing up.

[mf70]

The clippers and merchantmen of the 19th century may very well have had to make sternway mid-tack. In the interests of speed and economy, their rudders were undersized for their burden with relatively high aspect hulls and very much undermanned, slowing down the evolution.

On the ~1634 Dove, we seldom made sternway in a tack. Our rudder was relatively large, our hull turned easily, and we had enough crew to work all stations at the same time. Tacks were also easier for a volunteer crew to master.

OTOH, since we only sailed in protected water, bonnets were an abstraction; the sails were shortened by clewing up.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Anchorage Frank

I understood that the square riggers could not tack, but jibed, making headway against the wind by making loops behind them as they went.

It’s called wearing about.

[carstendenmark]

Mayflower, a great ship !
But didn't they learned all that from the Vikings, who were cruising Newfoundland a thousand years ago ?
The Viking ship museum in Roskilde may be a good place to find out, how they did that.
(I'm of course biased, as a dane, born in Odense, spent my 4y mech. education in Roskilde at the nuclear test facility)

[LHolden]

That northern route doesn’t seem possible sailing by latitude on prevailing winds though the Vikings obviously managed somehow.

[barryglewis]

Viking square rig, a single square set on a mast with no topmast (and therefore no topmast shrouds to get in the way of bracing yards for close hauled), and a forestay led well foreward allowing the yard to be braced hard could have been quite efficient to windward, their sail cloth though might have reduced efficiency.
In about 1971 I sailed a 40ft gaff ketch (Isbjorn) the length of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati) close hauled under a single square sail and found it about as effective as her fore and aft gaff rig. We used a bowline, from the reefing cringle taken to the bowsprit.
The sail stowed on deck, and was set with 3 halyards.
Bowlines of course were well known and a standard part of the rig in Mayflower's days.

[carstendenmark]

Forget Columbus - we vikings did visit the natives in north America in our ships.
You know - "Greenland" is named by us.
Not exactly green, but it was named because they found the only place with some green in the masses of ice and rocks elsewhere.
They did not go to the 2 miles thick ice shelf...


Anyway, even the vikings visited the lands, it was already inhabitated.
We must respect the natives. They knew well how to survive there.
(Now they don't)


I grew up, knowing two classmates who has been living in Greenland, and their older family members actually could tell you a lot of hints how to trick the cold, and feel cosy despite that.


Just a sidekick in this threat, sorry...

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by carstendenmark

Forget Columbus - we vikings did visit the natives in north America in our ships.. .

Umm, Columbus didn't sail in the Mayflower. The Mayflower brought the first colonists to New England in 1620, 128 years after Columbus. Not even the first colonists to the territory of the future U.S. -- there was Jamestown, St. Augustine, and various others before that. We were not talking about Columbus.

[carstendenmark]

But the guy Columbus claimed to be the first to visit America...
I don't agree.

[ksuderman]

We have this chart on a wall that shows the course of the Mayflower laid over the Cape Cod coast circa 1930 (sorry for the glare in the picture). They were actually headed for New York, but said "**** it" trying to get around the Monomoy Shoals and turned around to head for (what is now) Provincetown to look for food and water.

We spend Thanksgiving in Provincetown and were really looking forward to the 400th anniversary; I don't think the 401st will be the same.



[Edit] The forum doesn't seem to want me to embed the image... https://www.dropbox.com/s/0bgyaizk3639swd/IMG_4119.jpeg