Another Ship Finished!

 My return to an old hobby of building model wooden ships has been a wonderful thing during this long COVID season.  I recently finished another ship model and have already laid the keel for its successor.

The ship that I finished is a fifteenth century Iberian Caravel.  This is the most dominant ship of Spanish and Portuguese sailors for nearly three hundred years.

This was the type ship used by explorers like Bartolemo Diaz and Vasco da Gama.  Also, the Pinta and Nina of Columbus were Caravels like this one.

The ship would have been fifty feet long and carried a crew of about twenty-four.  

The Caravel could be rigged in two different ways.  I built this one rigged with Lateen sails.  These triangular sails could go against the wind and also made the ship very maneuverable in sailing along coastlines and in and out of ports for trading.  It could, however, also be rigged with square sails.  This was not as maneuverable but produced more speed for long travel.  The Columbus ships were square sailed.

One of the things you don’t see with the finished model is that it is double-planked on the hull.  There is an under layer of planking that gives the hull shape and strength and then the outer planking that is the finished hull.  You also cannot see some of the things below deck that disappear as the ship is finished.

Building these ships as we live on the island reminds us of the history of where we live.