Detail from "A Book of Drafts and Remarks," 1763

Detail from "A Book of Drafts and Remarks," Archibald Hamilton, 1763, National Maritime Museum. Found in Background to Discovery by Derek Howse, University of California Press, 1990, page 163.

Special thanks to Tom Apple for pointing out this fascinating image.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers here that I have a fascination with navigation in the eighteenth century. This sketch by Archibald Hamilton, a master's mate, depicts a fellow of the same rank (or perhaps the man himself) at work with an octant. At his feet are the tools of his trade: a lead line, compass, chip log, and traverse board. As Mr. Apple wrote not long ago, the latter three are essential to dead reckoning.

What is even more interesting about Hamilton's sketch is the figure it portrays. Master's mates were assistants to the master, who was responsible for the navigation of naval vessels in the eighteenth century. You can learn more about masters by reading Lena Mosser's excellent post on their role and rank in naval society. Hamilton and his fellow mates would rank as petty officers on the ship, exempt from standing watch, but shouldering more responsibility. They would have had to possess some skill in the art and science of navigation.

Hamilton's illustration accompanies a journal charting the voyage of the Surprize from England to the Portuguese island of Madeira.

Our mate wears a cocked hat with narrow brim bound in light colored tape. His hair is short, but not of a bob wig style. A black neckcloth hangs down over his chest, and he wears a fanciful jacket with a dark collar and cuffs. His mariner's cuffs, lapel, and vents all feature the same white metal or cloth covered buttons. Our master's mate's waistcoat is unfortunately not well detailed, but his trousers are striped with pockets cut well down the thigh. His trouser legs end above the ankle, revealing white stockings and round toed shoes with oval buckles.

Ann Mills, date unknown

Ann Mills, Served on Board the Maidstone Frigate, R. Graves after unknown artist, original date unknown, National Maritime Museum.

Ann Mills is a mystery. The only artistic depiction to survive, the one featured here, was a copy made decades after the original. Truth be told, Ann Mills may not even be a real person.

Vague recollections of some action around 1740 aboard a frigate named Maidstone (there were other vessels around the 1740's named Maidstone, but no frigate) are related generations after the supposed event, and give so little detail that there is virtually no trail to follow.

Mills offers us far less to go on than the famous Hannah Snell. It may be that Mills was a fiction inspired by the true life of that female marine, who fought at roughly the same time as Mills' supposed service.

Thankfully, Frank Felsenstein has taken an interest in Mills, and published a short piece on gender and national conflict entitled "Unravelling Ann Mills: Some Notes on Gender Construction and Naval Heroism" in McMaster University's journal Eighteenth Century Fiction.

Mills wears a cocked hat with a very short brim over short curled hair. He collarless jacket is double breasted with a remarkable number of buttons on he lapels and open mariner's cuffs. He waistcoat is plain, dark, and also double breasted. A white cravat is neatly tied and tucked into the waistcoat, which hangs above the plain white slops/petticoat trousers. He white stockings run to pointed toe shoes with fanciful rectangular buckles of white metal.

Shipping at Anchor in the Thames Estuary, Date Unknown

Shipping at Anchor in the Thames Estuary Near Wapping, Samuel Scott, date unknown, Sotheby's.

"When one goes into Wapping or Rotherhithe, which places are chiefly inhabited by sailors," wrote the author Sir John Fielding, "but that somewhat of the same language is spoken, a man would be apt to suspect himself in another country. Their manner of living, speaking, acting, dressing and behaving are so peculiar to themselves. Yet with all, they are perhaps the bravest and boldest fellows in all the world."[1]

British sailors living in and visiting Wapping were well aware of the paradoxical nature of a mariner's life. Both the revelry of a shore bound life and the constancy of death were on full display. If a seaman were to look past the gin shops and gibbeted bodies partially afloat at full tide, he would see the forest of masts and yards that Samuel Scott has so ably illustrated here.

Aloft on the ship at the center of the piece are some of those "bravest and boldest fellows in all the world." They wear brown and blue jackets with white and blue trousers. On the foretopsail a sailor wears a round hat with a narrow brim, At the main topsail the sailors wear caps, with the fellow standing by the mainmast wearing a cocked hat.

On deck are a variety of sailors wearing the full range of sailor's garments. Petticoat trousers/slops, trousers, blue, brown and red jackets, round hats, cocked hats, and caps. Standing by the wheel and ladder is a fancy man bowing to a lady in a fine dress, and interesting parallel to the labor being done by the sailors on the forecastle.

The ship's crew fires a salute to starboard, clouding the nearby brig in smoke. Rowing into that smoke is a longboat with a blue painted stern. Her coxswain and oarsmen wear jackets without waistcoats and round hats. One of the oarsmen has a pair of red breeches.

In the foreground, a sailor contents himself with his pipe while his mate pulls away on his oar. The smoking tar has a black round hat with a taller crown and narrow brim. His jacket has slash cuffs which are rolled back on his left arm, the same that supports his pipe. The oarsman appears to be wearing his sleeves rolled up as well, and is without a waistcoat.

The sloop to larboard has but three sailors aboard, who appear to be largely at their leisure. The man leaning against the mast appears to be smoking, as his mate might be further aft. They wear brown and blue jackets with brown slops/petticoat trousers and black caps, with the exception of the smoking man further forward who wears a round hat.

Astern of the large Dutchman is a barge of watermen moving lumber, and a boat of men hauling in an anchor. They wear yellow, red, brown, and blue jackets with caps. One fellow further forward wears a pair of brown or red breeches and a brown waistcoat with a black cocked hat.

---
[1] Quoted in Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 - 1750, Cambridge University Press: 1987, page 11.

Pyrates in the Bay of Maryland: Race and Resistance in the Chesapeake

This post is a continuation of the "Race, Revolt, and Piracy" series. You can find parts one, two, and three here.

Slavery and convict servitude at times defined sailors in the eighteenth century Chesapeake. British sailors could negotiate wages[1] and hold merchant officers accountable if they stepped out of line.[2] While convict servants possessed some rights, enslaved sailors held virtually none. Both groups were subject to the whims of ship owners and sea captains.

Detail from "The Jovial Crew," Thomas Rowlandson,
1786, Royal Collection Trust.

Convict servants at least had a light at the end of the tunnel. Most were sentenced to seven years of servitude, after which they would be free. This guarantee of freedom also served as a bargaining chip to encourage proper behavior and deference from servants to masters. Some of these convicts went on to relative prominence. By way of example, William Logan was convicted of stealing muskets and rum from the ship Ruby in London and selling them in 1756. After his seven years of labor were up, he came to possess a barber shop, wharf, warehouse, and tavern on City Dock in Annapolis, the very same city the Hopewell cast off from.

An advertisement placed in the August 22, 1765 edition
of the Maryland Gazette, page 3.

Despite the opportunities, many convict servants were nonetheless bound to service and subject to the people who held them, and a good number were certainly physically and mentally abused. Logan himself ran away from his new master, peruke maker Andrew Buchanan, within a year of arriving in Maryland.[3]

Enslaved people suffered the same abuses convict servants endured, along with the added mental toll of perpetual, generational enslavement for them and their families. London Town, the seaport that George Cook hailed from, was home to 961 known enslaved people between its founding and 1788. Of these, only nine are known to have gone free.[4] Free communities in the eighteenth century Chesapeake were remarkably rare, and for some communities were unheard of.

How then did unfree mariners cope with their situation?

The convict servant John Wright and enslaved sailor Anthony Lewis responded with the full rejection of their status through violence. Their murder of Captain Curtis was a desperate bid at freedom, and perhaps even one they knew almost certainly could not succeed. Killing Curtis, kidnapping fellow sailors, and driving hard for the south was the most extreme version of resistance, one that held only two possible outcomes: death or freedom.

Subverting the system was another form of resistance. Lewis claiming himself to be a Portuguese man among white convict servants would have placed him in their class. Though convict servitude was not to be envied by many, the promise of eventual freedom and some basic protections under the law as a white man were very inviting to an enslaved man.

Resistance was a constant in North America and perhaps everywhere slavery was present, but not all forms of resistance were welcomed by the enslaved themselves. The enslaved mariner George Cook was forced by the runaways to travel south, and it is easy for us to imagine ourselves inviting such an abduction. The chance to escape to freedom not as a fugitive but as a blameless victim, removing the threat of punishment in the event of recapture, is appealing. This interpretation is, sadly, divorced from the context of the eighteenth century. In contrast to Lewis, who could pass as a white man, Cook is always described as a "Negro." With darker skin, there was no way for him to blend in with South Carolina's free society, much less the Caribbean. Chesapeake slaves were familiar with the particularly deadly conditions of West Indies plantations, and the frightening efficiency with which Carolinian slave holders put down rebellions and revolts. Lewis was trying to move up the social ladder, but Cook was being dragged down it.

Above all of these considerations loomed the very real threat of brutal punishment. In eighteenth century Maryland, people of color were far more likely to be sentenced to death than any other class. Once sentenced to death, convict servants were less likely to receive a pardon or reprieve than anyone else, including enslaved people.[5] The outlook for unfree people was very grim when brought to court.

Detail from "A Pirate hanged at Execution Dock," Robert Dodd,
late 18th century, National Maritime Museum.

Walking the line between inviting brutal and fatal punishment and resisting the oppressive order was a difficult task. The anger and frustration of unfree mariners sometimes boiled over into violence. By contrast, the violence consistently perpetrated against unfree people was relentless, and when they struck back the legal system was swift in reinforcing social and racial hierarchy.

The Hopewell Mutiny is just one case of maritime violence in the eighteenth century, but it provides us with an intersection of several degrees of slavery and convict servitude.

---
[1] See N.A.M. Rodger's The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, W.W. Norton & Co., 1996. 
[2] See my post on Captain James Lowry.
[3] Maryland Gazette, September 22, 1757, page 3.
[4] Ryan Cox, "The African-American Experience," lecture, Maryland State Archives at Historic London Town and Gardens.
[5] "Percent Hanged, Pardoned, and Reprieved: Classes Compared, 1726-1775," appendixed to Seven Hangmen of Colonial Maryland, C. Ashley Ellefson, via Maryland State Archives.

Pyrates in the Bay of Maryland: Punishment

This post is a continuation of the "Race, Revolt, and Piracy" series. You can find parts one and two here.

For two months there was no sign of the murderous mutineers of the sloop Hopewell, but the pirates' luck wouldn't last.

Somehow, the pirates wound up at Capers' Island, a small bit of land about fifteen miles north of Charleston, South Carolina. Months after her capture, an advertisement was placed in the South Carolina Gazette by the Court of Admiralty, stating that the Hopewell was left "at Anchor, on the High Seas," by her mutinous crew.

South Carolina Gazette, July 4, 1754

According to a report in the New York Mercury, the Hopewell was brought in to the Carolina Bar and abandoned by her crew, who were "soon after taken up and secured"[1] except for the mutineer John Smith, who was captured a short while later. Smith immediately claimed not to have anything to do with the murder.

Did the kidnapped sailors raise an alarm? Were the pirates trying to sell or trade their cargo as smuggled goods? Perhaps they were merely taking on water and provisions for a trip further south before things went awry. Or maybe they had no intention of sailing to the Caribbean and thought they could blend into the Carolinas. There are many unanswered questions.

What can be said is that the three mutineers were arrested and brought before the Court of Admiralty. As mentioned in the advertisement above, the court believed the mutiny, kidnapping, and murder were all committed "on the High Seas, and within the Jurisdiction of the Court of Admiralty."  It is worth noting that George Cook and James Manshore, the kidnapped sailors, were not considered to be a party to the crimes of the mutineers, raising the possibility that it may have been them that turned in or revealed the crime of the pirates.

Silver Admiralty Oar of Massacussets, via
United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire

The record of the trial does not survive, but it is abundantly clear that John Smith turned evidence against his co-conspirators. John Wright, who actually committed the murder and took charge of the Hopewell, and Anthony Lewis, who had by this time shed his persona as a slave and passed as "a Portugese," should easily have been found guilty.

The Court, however, was forced to acquit. Apparently the judges were unfamiliar with the geography of the Chesapeake, perhaps evidenced by their referring to "a place called Choptank in Chesapeak Bay." Powerful though it was, the Admiralty Court had no jurisdiction in the "narrow seas" of Maryland. It would fall to a provincial Admiralty Court in Maryland to decide the fate of the mutineers.

Given the dangerous nature of the criminals, they were confined in irons aboard a Royal Navy frigate, the Shoreham, and transported North. Captain Legg, commander of the Shoreham, does not appear to have been bound for Maryland, but rather to Nova Scotia, and rather than make a long voyage to Annapolis and back out to the Atlantic again, dropped the prisoners off in Virginia. Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, wrote to Horatio Sharpe, governor of Maryland, to let him know that "I have order'd them into the public Prison in this City [Williamsburg]," until Sharpe could send a boat and guard to pick them up at Yorktown.[2] 

George Cook and James Manshore were returned to servitude in London Town, and the prisoners delivered up to Annapolis. After a brief trial, during which John Smith again testified against Wright and Lewis, the two were convicted and sentenced to hang.

Detail from "A view of the procession of John Swan and Elizabeth Jefferies,"
Bispham Dickinson, c.1752, British Museum.

Just outside the Annapolis City Gate, the two were hanged. Their bodies were then carried to Hackett's Point, at the mouth of Severn River, and displayed on gibbets in irons. Lewis and Wright's earthly remains became a grim reminder to sailors of the fate that awaited pirates in the Chesapeake.[3]

Next Time: What can we learn from the Hopewell mutineers, and what does this case tell us about the nature of race in the maritime Chesapeake of the eighteenth century?

---
[1] New York Mercury, June 17, 1754, page 2.
[2] The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Virginia Historical Society, 1933, Volume 1, Page 212. An interesting sidenote: that greatly renovated and restored prison still stands.
[3] Maryland Gazette, August 8, 1754.

Pyrates in the Bay of Maryland: Kidnapping on the Patuxent

This post is part of the series "Race, Revolt, and Piracy." Follow this link to find part one of the story "Pyrates in the Bay of Maryland."

The Hopewell's crew of three, two convict servants and an enslaved man, were making their way south. After murdering their captain, the mutineers steered toward the Capes of Virginia and the Atlantic, their only real chance at freedom. If the sloop could make it to the open ocean they might find their way to a more distant colony where word of their crime would have no effect. Perhaps they thought they could make a Spanish, French, or Dutch port in the Caribbean that they could disappear in and begin life anew.

Led by the convict servant and navigator John Wright (alias William Wilson), the trio had a good shot of making it out of the Chesapeake. Two main obstacles stood in their way: time and manpower.

Already an armed boat had been dispatched from Annapolis to bring the pirates to justice. Word was spreading of their bloody mutiny. The longer they spent in the Bay, the more likely it was that they would be caught. It was imperative that they reach the Atlantic as soon as possible.

Detail from drawing of a sloop, John Thomas Serres, 1789, British Museum.

The bigger problem was with the sloop itself. Throughout her career, the Hopewell's compliment of sailors was continually reduced. Her maiden voyage to Barbados was managed with six crew, including captain William Strachan. Now, with the murder of captain Curtis, she was reduced to three. Hopewell might have been manageable on the comparatively sheltered waters of the Chesapeake, but a voyage to the Caribbean required more hands.

The solution to the latter problem was aboard the brig Nancy. Captain William Strachan happened to be sailing the Nancy on the Patuxent River when the Hopewell's crew revolted. The mutineers had succeeded in outpacing word of their crime, and Strachan's crew was entirely unaware of the danger that came with sight of the Hopewell.

Perhaps it was a fond memory of how his former command had weathered a hurricane five years before, or maybe he was merely showing the respect that fellow mariners warranted. Whatever the reason, Strachan was convinced to help the Hopewell on her way. Two sailors, a convict servant owned by Strachan named James Manshore and an enslaved man named George Cook owned by the merchant James Dick, were dispatched in a small boat to carry bread to the pirates.

Detail from "The Press Gang," George Morland, 1790, Wikiart.

After Cook and Manshore climbed aboard, their boat was cut loose, the sails set, and the Hopewell slipped away. Strachan almost certainly pursued them, but with a head start and a swift vessel, the pirates escaped.

Soon the Hopewell had the Chesapeake to her stern, sinking with the horizon. Her three mutineers and two hostages had escaped. Maryland had no chance of recapturing the slaves and convicts, but as luck would have it, it was another colony that would deliver them up for eighteenth century justice.

Next time: The pirates and their victims wind up in a wholly unexpected place.

Pyrates in the Bay of Maryland: The Hopewell Mutiny

This post is part of a new series here at British Tars called "Race, Revolt, and Piracy."

"John Wright, have Pity upon me; spare my Life; for I have a wife and four children."[1]

The Hopewell was an unlucky sloop. She was constructed in Annapolis, the colonial capital of Maryland, in 1749 and owned by a local man named Patrick Creagh.

Almost immediately, Creagh's vessel ran into trouble. The London Town, Maryland based captain William Strachan was commanding the sloop to Barbados, but sailed into the teeth of an incredible storm.

Maryland Gazette, October 18, 1749

The Hopewell survived the ordeal, and led a rather unremarkable career for the next half decade running between Annapolis, the Caribbean, and the other North American colonies.

Her string of mundane voyages came to an end in 1754.

Captain William Curtis, who was master of the Hopewell for a short trip across the Chespeake Bay to Maryland's Eastern Shore, appears to have been pretty new to the business. I have only found one other reference to the man: a brief mention in the Virginia Gazette in 1752 in which he commanded a vessel named the Enterprize carrying food down to the Caribbean.[2] It appears that Curtis was a fresh and inexperienced captain.

Curtis was sailing the Hopewell from the small port of Choptank back to Annapolis, hauling a load of barrel heads and barrel staves, when the mutiny occurred.

The first the public heard of what befell Curtis and the Hopewell might have been this brief note in the Maryland Gazette.

Maryland Gazette, March 8, 1754

What they didn't yet know was how it really happened.

A feature of Chesapeake maritime culture is the number of unfree sailors. Enslaved men and convict servants could comprise entire crews, cutting the cost of labor per voyage to virtually nothing.

Among the forced sailors was a convict servant by the name of John Wright. In later papers, an alias is offered for him: William Wilson. I haven't yet been able to find the crime for which Wright/Wilson was convicted, but we do know that he was a navigator.

The sloop had only two other sailors, another convict servant named John Smith and an enslaved man of very light skin referred to as Toney. Toney's full name was Andrew Lewis, and he was known to pass himself as "a Portugeze."

Detail from "The Jovial Crew" by Thomas Rowlandson,
1786, Royal Collection Trust

Only a few hours out from Choptank, Wright bludgeoned Curtis with a handspike, and then struck him repeatedly with an axe after he had fallen. Andrew Lewis brought up a ballast stone and fastened it to the still living Curtis. Despite Curtis' pleas to spare his life for the sake of his wife and children, he was dumped over the side and sank into the Chesapeake.

Donning Curtis' clothes, Wright took command of the sloop and steered her south. Curtis' red suit was recognized by other mariners in the Chesapeake, and word spread of his likely murder. Annapolis mustered volunteers to man and arm a boat and set off in pursuit, but the Hopewell had a significant head start.

Next time: The mutineers have a plan for escape, and that plan involves kidnapping.

----

[1] The Pennsylvania Gazette, June 13, 1754.
[2] The Virginia Gazette, September 15, 1752, page 3; October 20, 1752, page 2.

Navigator's Week: Sailing Directions

Today's guest post once more comes to us from Lena Mosser, a PhD candidate at Eberhard Karls Universität. Lena's doctorate dissertation is on masters in the Royal Navy, and she brings that expertise to bear with this short piece.

‘From Ushant to Scilly ‘tis thirty-five leagues’: Some musings on sailing directions

With all the fascinating new developments going on in eighteenth-century navigation, it is easy to forget that it was not all sextants and chronometers. Even the best instruments and new techniques, even in the hands of the most experienced and skilled navigators, reached the limits of their usefulness once a ship was in coastal waters, which means that a considerable part of eighteenth-century navigation is actually better described as good old-fashioned pilotage. Pilotage demanded completely different skills and equipment of the practitioner than blue-water navigation: in coastal waters, what served a navigator better than any new-fangled instruments were a sounding lead, a good memory and a sharp-sighted lookout, as well as, of course, sailing directions.

Detail from "Earl of Cornwallis Bound to Bengal,"
William Gibson, 1783
Courtesy of The Mariners' Museum and Park, Newport News, VA.

Sailing directions have something decidedly ‘low-tech’ about them. The earliest written ones I have seen were used by ships of the Hanseatic League in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but they are almost certainly very much older. They are descriptions, either written down or memorised, of distances, depths, landmarks and other topographical information for particular waters or sailing routes. In other words, sailing directions were pilots to take away and carry with you, even where live pilots might not be easy to come by.

Sometimes, they were rhymed so as to make memorisation easier. In fact, most people with an interest in maritime history or seafaring in general will probably know at least one example, perhaps without even realising: parts of the famous sea song Spanish Ladies sound suspiciously like sailing directions. The second verse contains something that is more or less a (somewhat abbreviated) manual of how to proceed when entering the English Channel from the south before coming in sight of land but suspecting that you are ‘in soundings’:

We hove our ship to, with the wind from sou'west, boys

We hove our ship to, deep soundings to take;

‘Twas 45 fathom with a white sandy bottom

So we squared our main yard and up Channel did make.

In the third verse, the most important landmarks – such as prominent headlands and lighthouses – that a ship sailing up the Channel will pass are listed:

The first land we sighted it was called the Dodman

Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight

We sailed by Beachy by Fairlight and Dungeness

And then we bore up for the South Foreland Light.

Detail of South Foreland Light from "A Packet Boat Under Sail in a Breeze off the South
Foreland," Thomas Luny, 1780, Yale Center for British Art.

I don’t know if these were ever actually used as sailing directions, or whether they mimic the real thing, but the detail given in them, with its references not only to landmarks but also to depths, composition of the sea floor, and hints at how to work the ship suggest that they were.

One beautiful example that dates from around the mid-eighteenth century is Wadhams Directions, sailing directions from Cape Bonavista to the Wadham Islands. It was famous among eighteenth-century navigators and I came across a copy in the journal of John Dykes, master in the Royal Navy, who served with Edward Pellew on the Newfoundland station in the 1780s.[1] The directions open with the magnificent lines:

From Cape Bonavista to the stinking Isles,

The course is North full forty miles

Then you must steer away NE

Till Cape Freels Gull Isle bears WNW

Then NNW thirty-three miles

Three leagues off shore lays Wadhams Isles.

The rest is a more in-depth description comprising another thirty-eight atrociously rhymed lines, but even though the poetic quality might make philologists cringe, it certainly serves its purpose very well; how well, you can tell from the fact that, while writing this, I cannot help constantly reciting in my head “When within the channel you are shot/Three fathom of water you have got/Port your helm and do take care/in the mid-channel for to steer”. I think there is something touching in how the directions address the navigator directly, like a trusty friend cautioning against narrow passages and sunken rocks:

Therefore my friend I you advise

Since those rocks so dangerous lies

That you do never amongst them fall

But still endeavour to weather them all.

Detail from "To the Survivors and Relations of the Unfortunate Persons who Perished in the
Halsewell," P. Mercier, S.W. Forbes, and Rawlinson, 1786, National Maritime Museum.

These sailing directions had the reputation of being the best for the Newfoundland coast, and you can in fact follow them easily on a chart (I have not so far had an opportunity of running a field trial). Thus, despite their old-fashioned appearance, it is no wonder that sailing directions in general remained in use alongside all innovations in navigation, and are still in use today.

---

[1] Log of John Dykes, master, HMS Winchelsea, National Maritime Museum (Greenwich), Caird Library, LOG/N/W/1.

Navigator's Week: Effective Nautical Interpretation

Today's entry in Navigator's Week comes to us from Robert Fryman, PhD, an adjunct professor at Georgia Perimeter College, reenactor with HMS Acasta, and veteran of the United States Coast Guard.

Effective nautical interpretation of the “Age of Sail” requires that the docent/reenactor go beyond proper clothing and appearance and the description of life at sea.  This is acutely important when describing and explaining the technological differences which exist between operating a vessel in the present as compared to the period from 1700 to 1815.  The procedures of navigation are illustrative of this, particularly as modern GPS systems have removed today’s travelers from the basic skills of map reading and plotting a course, yet such abilities would have been common place for sailors of the 18th and early 19th centuries.  Acquiring an applied knowledge of navigation skills therefore better prepares the interpreter/reenactor with not only a working understanding of the tools of navigation, but also an enhanced appreciation for sailors to perform complicated calculations without the benefit of electronic devices.

Detail from portrait of Master William Bligh,
John Webber, c. 1776, National Portrait Gallery (Australia)

Such an understanding of the tools and procedures of navigation was an integral component in the development of my interpretive persona as a member of the HMS Acasta.  I was able to approach this with a fundamental grounding in navigation gained while serving with the U.S: Coast Guard, but while the basic algorithms for plotting speed, distance, and position have remained the same, the tools for their calculation have not.  From reading period accounts of navigation procedures, the tools used for calculating the aforementioned variables, apart from the octant of sextant, included the sector, Günter Rule, dividers, parallel ruler, and tables of sines, cosines, and logarithms.  The sector and the Günter Rule were the equivalent of the 20th century slide rule, and both contained a number of different scales.  The user perform mathematical computations by placing the tips of a pair dividers on the appropriate scale.  Tables of sines, cosines, and logarithms were commonly found as appendices of mathematical treatises, such as the 1796 edition of John Love’s Geodesia and other publications including the American Coast Pilot, reducing the need for the navigator necessarily to be familiar with how to determine these values.

Detail from "His Royal Highness Prince William Henry," book illustration
for Hervey's Naval History, 1779, British Museum. 

While I re-learned the art of navigation from the 18th century perspective, I was suddenly struck by the differences that existed in the amount of formal training in mathematics that the sailor in 1790 received compared to that of your average middle school student of today, who by the 8th grade has already been taught Algebra and, in some instances Geometry.  This does not imply that today’s students are more intelligent than their 18th century counterparts, but rather serves to illustrate the impact of inexpensive electronic calculators in accelerating exposure to more advanced forms of mathematics than was previously possible.  I often present students in my Physical Science classes with a stimulated navigation problem where they must determine their position using paper reproductions of sectors.  The result of this exercise was that they gained an understanding of how people were able to solve problems using “primitive” technology while I was able to gain a new perspective on mathematical training of the 18th century sailor.

Through re-learning how to navigate using 18th century tools and equipment I was able to not only to better use the instruments and thus be better equipped to describe and explain their use and function to the public, but also gain a perspective onto the world of the 18th century sailor and his background which allowed him to perform such complicated calculations to venture to new lands.  This new information helps to explain to visitors the impact which modern technology has on the world of nautical navigation.

Navigator's Week: The Tools Needed for Dead Reckoning

Today's entry in Navigator's Week comes to us from follower Thomas Apple. Tom was involved in creating the chip log used in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. In this post, he writes about the use of dead reckoning navigation.

The Tools Needed for Dead Reckoning

Dead reckoning enabled sailors to navigate when conditions did not permit celestial observations. If you could not see the heavens, day or night, you could not fix your exact position. You must plot your course from the last place you fixed the ship’s position to make an educated guess as to your location. To do this you needed certain data. The better the data and the more skilled the interpretation of it, the more accurate would be the resulting dead reckoning.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries the data was collected at least hourly and temporarily recorded on a log board (figure 1). The log board, usually a slate, recorded the hour, ship’s speed (knots), ship’s course, wind direction, and leeward drift. Extra observations could be recorded if conditions changed within the hour intervals. Observations were usually made at the top of the hour after the bell had rung. They would be transcribed to the log book at least twice daily.

Figure 1 - Slate Log Board

To measure ship’s speed, a log reel and chip were used as well as a small sand glass to keep time. The chip was a quarter circle of wood attached to the end of the log reel line. It acted as a sea anchor that remained largely stationary as the ship sailed away from it. The chip was weighted on the curved edge with a strip of lead to cause it to float with the pointed end facing up. It was attached to the log line with a two or three-leg harness. One leg of the harness was attached to the chip with a peg.
The log reel was constructed of two wooden disks connected by a series of bars that created a sort of drum on which the log line is wound. The bars allowed air to reach the line better making it less prone to rot. This drum rotated on a central axle with a handle on each end (figure 2).

Figure 2 - Log Reel with Chip

The first 12 fathoms of the log line was the stray line to allow the chip to float free of any turbulence in the ship’s wake. After the stray line portion of the log line it was marked with a piece of cloth. After the marker cloth there were knots tied in the line, each to indicate one nautical mile per hour (figure 3).

Figure 3 - Log Reel with Log Line and Chip

The spacing of the knots depended on the size of the sand glass used to time the log line. Thirty- and 28-second glasses were the most common with a 14-second glass used for very fast and small craft. If using a 30-second glass, the knot spacing would be 50.75 feet and for a 28-second glass it would be 47.6 feet. These were usually rounded up to the next whole foot, so 51 or 48 feet were usually used as the knot spacing. The sand glass was constructed of two separate globes of blown glass connected to each other with a disk in between with an orifice to control the flow of sand from one globe to the other. They were often connected to each other using a Turk’s head knot (figure 4).

Figure 4 - 28 Second Sand Glass

To measure speed the chip was tossed over the aftmost rail, the taffrail, and into the water. The log line paid out as the ship sailed away from the stationary chip. When the cloth marker hit the rail, a sailor called out “Turn!” - at which point the sand glass was turned to start timing. The number of knots passing over the rail were counted until the sand glass ran out at which time the person holding the glass called out “Nip!” to grab the log line and stop it from paying out. The number of knots was recorded on the log board. From the time the chip is tossed overboard and the log line nipped, the wind had caused the ship to drift to leeward veering from the course plotted. A protractor was usually inscribed on the taffrail. The crew would lay the log line on this protractor to indicate the angle of leeward drift and then record this angle on the log board. The log line was then given a sharp tug to dislodge the peg in the chip harness allowing the chip to lay flat to the water, making hauling it in much easier.

Also recorded were the water depth, course, and wind direction. Water depth was measured using a sounding lead and line. A compass indicated the ship’s course and allowed determination of wind direction. All of these vital pieces are data were used to plot the actual track of the ship from its last known position to hopefully get the ship to where the captain wanted it to go and out of harm's way from grounding or other hazards.

Sources:

William Falconer, An Universal Dictionary of the Marine, or, a Copious Explanation of the Technical Terms and Phrases employed in the Construction, ...of a Ship..., London: Thomas Cadell, 1780 edn.

William Brady, The Kedge-Anchor or Young Sailors’ Assistant, Fourth Edition, New York: William Brady, 1849.

William Burney, Falconer’s New Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 1815

C. Keith Wilbur, Pirates and Patriots of the Revolution, Chester, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1984.

Log line, chip, and sand glass are reproductions built by author for use in the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 2003. The log reel is based on an original example in the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, VA and the sand glass and log slate are based on an early 19th century examples in a private collection.

Navigator's Week: The Backstaff and Octant

Continuing our focus on navigation, I'm going to talk briefly about the transition between two important pieces of navigational equipment: the backstaff and the octant.

Both instruments accomplish the same task of determining latitude. Latitude, for the uninitiated, is the distance you are North or South of the Equator. Latitude may be found by measuring the angle between the horizon and the sun at its highest point (zenith). There are many ways to do this, and it may be as simple as the use of a quadrant or cross-staff. Neither of those instruments are as accurate as the backstaff, which was sometimes called the Davis Quadrant for its sixteenth century inventor John Davis.

The photograph above was generously provided by E.T. Fox, curator of the Golden Hind Museum in London. The backstaff he holds on the quarterdeck is one that he constructed himself, and you can see more examples of his work here. In this photograph you can see how the staff is used. In order to measure the elevation of the sun from the horizon, you would have to turn your back to the sun, as demonstrated in this video by the Mariners' Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia.

The biggest drawback of a backstaff is that it is nearly impossible to use for sighting anything but the sun. The backstaff is practically useless for measuring the altitude of celestial bodies at night. This lack contributed to its eventual replacement in the 1730's by the octant. A more accurate instrument, the octant could also measure any celestial body visible in the sky, night or day.

In the mid to late eighteenth century, these instruments co-existed in a period of transition that saw the phasing out of the backstaff. This phasing out is evidenced by cartoons of the period, such as "Ridiculous Taste or The Ladies Absurdity," a 17771 print by Matthew Darly. The version below is in the collection of the British Museum.

Lampooning the tall wigs piled onto the heads of fashionable ladies, Darly is probably not acquainted with celestial navigation as more than just a concept. As part of the joke, he has one dandy gentleman taking a sighting by the wig of the seated woman.

Our macaroni holds a sort of octant (lacking many of the necessary pieces), but he holds it as one would operate a backstaff. Darly is either unaware of precisely how an octant works and so falls back on the general appearance of a navigator working a backstaff, or is intentionally making the scene more ridiculous through the use of an oafish fop who doesn't quite understand what he's doing.

Either way, it is a piece of art that exists in the time of transition between the dominant technologies in determining latitude.

The same is true of R. Attwold's cartoon "The Naval Nurse, or Modern Commander." The first image here is a 1740-1750 sketch from the British Museum's collection, used as a study for the final piece which was printed in 1750. The final engraving featured here comes from the Yale University Lewis Walpole Library.

On the wall of the Boy Captain's cabin is a series of pistols, a blunderbuss, a telescope, and a backstaff.

In the final print, however, the instrument is changed from a backstaff to an octant.

Attwold's point in this cartoon is the youth and inexperience of naval officers. Such young men would be much more open to using newer technologies and newer methods of navigation. Perhaps it is this which accounts for Attwold's choice to replace the original backstaff with the octant.

Just as Attwold erased the backstaff from his image in favor of the octant, the octant would eventually erase the backstaff from the list of essential navigational instruments. The octant itself shortly evolved into the sextant, which remains the primary means of celestial navigation to this day. While the GPS has largely supplanted the use of celestial navigation, sextants can still be found in marine supply stores around the globe.

Navigator's Week: A Few Thoughts on Masters in the Eighteenth-Century Royal Navy

Today's guest post comes to us from Lena Mosser, a PhD candidate at Eberhard Karls Universität. Lena's doctorate dissertation is on masters in the Royal Navy, and she brings that expertise to bear with this short piece.

Kyle Dalton has very kindly asked me to share a few thoughts on masters to tie in with his post on William Bligh and masters’ uniforms. I will focus on their career paths and social backgrounds because there are many misconceptions about just this issue.

The title ‘master’ (in the Royal Navy they were not called ‘sailing masters’) already gives an indication. Before a Royal Navy as such existed, the English crown would hire merchant ships for their military exploits, including the crew and the master. The master retained command of the ship as such, that is, in all nautical matters, while army officers – captains and generals – coordinated the expedition on the whole. When a Royal Navy had been established, with its own captains and generals (who were re-named admirals), masters of merchant ships continued to be hired as nautical specialists: now without their ships, but the title stuck.

"Etched from the Life on Board a Scotch Ship: Cook, Captain, and Mait," artist unknown
(John Kay?), c.1750, National Maritime Museum (UK)

Of course this is something of a simplification, but even in the eighteenth century, masters were essentially still civilians who lent their nautical expertise to the Royal Navy. This is why they received warrants rather than commissions, and why they went without a uniform for so long: they were per definition non-combatants (although there were many warlike individuals among them).

A Navy-internal career path was theoretically possible, but an exception. One popular stereotype about masters is that many of them were ‘failed lieutenants’, passed midshipmen who had given up waiting for a commission. This could not be further from the truth: The vast majority of masters had been trained outside the Navy, and all of them were examined and certified by Trinity House, a civilian authority. They had possibly (though not necessarily) attended a ‘mathematical school’, had served an apprenticeship at sea (usually for seven years) and were, by the time of entry in the Navy, already at the pinnacle of their profession, being masters or at least chief mates of merchant ships.

This, in fact, sometimes led to clashes between masters and captains, since masters who had commanded merchant ships before were unused to having superior officers. If such cases came to a court martial, the court often treated masters leniently because they were ‘unacquainted with the customs of the service’. Many masters returned to the merchant service at some point, a liberty which was possible through them being warranted rather than commissioned.

Portrait of James Cook as Master of the Pembroke
Sculpted by T. Major, 1759, National Library of New Zealand

They usually came from social backgrounds that were situated fairly firmly in the ‘middling stations’ of society; very similar, in fact, to the backgrounds of most commissioned officers. Many of them came from families with seafaring backgrounds, with fathers, uncles, older brothers or cousins who were also shipmasters, merchants, ship owners or owners of dockyards. Few masters rose through the ranks in the Navy, at least no more than rose to other positions as officers. Socially, they were very much on a footing with lieutenants – but even so, some of them seem to have envied their colleagues the glamour of a commission.