The Destiny - Details of

[adam]

Hi,

This thread is for our ship.

Some background information for people

General Historical Ships (WARNING - Big Web page)

www.timedesign.de/ship/ship.html


From this and other places it appears a Sohar is actually the name of a specific ship of the type Dhow (or Dhew). The Sohar, built in the city of Sohar was a recreation done in 1981 to replicate the voyages of Sinbad.


A nice drawing of a Dhow can be found at

members.tripod.com/~johnOwen2/dhows.html

This shows a long relatively flat ship with not a lot of stern (back) castle and no fore (front) castle.

But this picture of a Dhow - subtype Al Ghanjah
show a reasonible stern castle.

www.omanet.om/english/culture/images/Ghanga.jpg


So here is what I propose. I will use the drawings from the 2nd link above and produce a craft that is like the Sohar reproduction, but with a substantial stern castle.

Length 85 ft +10ish feet of bow mast(?) at a 45 degree angle
Width ~22-26ft (depends on how the curves look)

1 level below the deck (cabins, cargo, and such)
1 level stern castle (20ish feet long)
2ish masts (1 main, 1 secondary + bow mast)

Rigging in that cross over period between laten and more modern styles.

Will this work? Or do we want to try something else???
(I have not found any good plan level drawings to work from so this will be a 'fantasy' map to a certain extent)

Adam

[charbidge]

The ratio of length to beam (width at the widest point) is generaly VERY close to 4:1 on all ships that don't sail EXCLUSIVELY in the Med. The maximum length is very close to 115 feet (30 meters or 35 yards) due to the limitations of materials (probably tree-lengths) and hand-tools. the Greeks were JUST a bit different than the rest of the sailors. THEY made ships with a length-to-beam ratio of 8:1, fast little water-beetles held together with tarred rope instead of nails or even wooden pins. Those puppies were like racing shells: lightning fast and VERY easy to run up onto a beach. Their cargo (going out) was generally naked men with weapons, and on return was usually fewer men, and LOTS of easily portable stuff no longer needed by it's former owners (yo ho, YO ho!)

[David]

Adam, that sounds good to me. I'm going to take a peek at these links you have as time permits, but "rough" ship maps work. After all, each ship was different and who's to say that one of the many ships (all without plans, mind you) didn't look just like the one you'll draw (assuming no anachronisms). As I recall, shipwrights did all their stuff by "look and feel" so some not-fully-trained craftsman could have made all sorts of changes (which is also sometimes how science invents cool innovations!).

Keep in mind too that the Arabs had the second best naval technology on the planet until after the Renaissance (the Chinese were better, but had some serious cultural hang-ups!). So, I'm cool with the Destiny being a little better than Western ships of the day (although not as well fitted for perrenial rough seas, such as the North and Baltic, but able to handle seasonal variations of the Indian and Arabia). Until the Clipper ships, only a Chinese junk was faster than Arabia ships.