Sailing into the Past; Learning from Replica Ships

The format is approximately 7 inches by 10 inches. 192 pages. Illustrations (many in color). Index. No dust jacket present. Among the contributors are Burkhard Bange, Douglas Brooks, Nick Burningham, Andrew Davis, Wolf-Dieter Hoheisel, Rikke Johansen, Antonia Macarthur, Sean McGrail, Drew McMullen, Colin Palmer, Boris Rankov, Richard Woodman, and Peter Wrike. Among the topics covered are Sailing Ships, Experimental Archaeology, Replica, Reconstruction, Trireme, Viking Ships, Skuldelev, Hanseatic Cog, Caravel, Jamestown, Bezaisen, Schooner Sultana, HM Bark Endeavour, and The Pride of Baltimore. Jenny Bennett is an experienced sailing journalist specializing in the traditional boat world and recently edited Sailing Rigs. She had worked for Wooden Boat magazine in the U.S. and for Classic Boat magazine in the U.K. She lives in England and teaches traditional sail techniques at an American school each summer. Over the past generation, the building of accurate replicas of ships from the distant past has radically changed perceptions of our ancestors' sailing and voyaging. In this beautifully illustrated book, some of the world's leading authorities look at individual replicas and discuss what they have taught us. This fascinating work offers the most accessible view yet as to how the ships of our seafaring forbears affected the manner in which they traded, fought, and explored. Part A of the book is dedicated to ancient and medieval ships. The Sea Stallion of Glendalough for example, built in Roskilde Denmark and described by Rikke Johansen, is a good example of a ship serving several purposes. At Roskilde, over forty years of experience with Viking ship replicas has culminated In the construction of the Sea Stallion which must have cost a fortune, just like with the previous ships they built here. It was sailed to Dublin from Roskilde and back in 2008-09 which raised a lot of attention, serving several purposes at once (research, tourism, nationalism, nostalgia to name just a few). Some see this ship and its travels as the finale, the crown on the work at Roskilde, either leading to a slower phase in research and reconstruction (and a generation shift) or to an ending. It is unclear what the future will bring, but it will surely involve building and sailing. Part B of the book discusses ships of the Age of Discovery 1600-1750. One of the articles is about Bezaisen, Japan's coastal sailing traders. These ships date to an era when Japan was looking inward: foreign travel was banned and contact with foreigners strictly controlled. Ships were needed however for traveling within Japan's inland waters. The Bezaisen ships were well seaworthy as long as they did not sail in deep water. Compared to Japan's earlier ‘international trading ships' with many ideas taken from other seafaring nations, Bezaisen are much more traditionally influenced. Since 1990, four replica ships like this have been constructed following the thought that if not now, when? As the last generation of shipwrights able to construct such wooden ships was dying out. The four ships are showcased in museums as parts of the story of the Edo Era, from money made available from infrastructural tourism projects. No good drawings exist and archaeological sources are not even mentioned. To a limited level, the replica ships are used to learn more about how such ships might have been like and how they sailed. The master shipwright behind all four ships regarded his own experience as just another link in a chain of craftsmen. The publisher and the editor have succeeded to turn the individual articles into a complete and attractive narrative, a kind of nice series of examples, promoting replica ship building and sailing. Most of these articles read like adventure stories. Present day sailors will be happy to read this attractively designed book with a multitude of pictures. For historians and archaeologists, this is a nice introduction into the subject. A close reader will see n.…