Fishing ships

[pietjenoob]

 

 

Well, I want to start this topic because everybody is talking about fishing, fishing nets and modules and I want to take it a step further to do a topic about fishing ships. These ships will mainly involve sea- and ocean-worthy ships and not inland sea (like the Zuiderzee) or coastal vessels. The ships I am going to cover are Dutch and all are in timeline.

 

I will start with the most notorious topic and that are whaling ships.

 

The Groenlandsvaarder-class

 

The Dutch used one ship for this and this was called the Groenlandsvaarder or the Greenlandsailor, roughly translated. It was a converted Fluyt with some very interesting features like the ships lacking a galleon but instead had at least one row of extra planking on the bow, if they would hit ice the hull would not be easily penetrated, and had beams on the side for the whaling boats called galgen or gallows.They were later replaced with the larger 18th century Fluyt also known as bootschepen. These ships had a cargo capacity of 900 tons and the ships were used from the 1500’s till the beginning of the 19th century.

On the out break of the 4th Dutch-Anglo war (1780-1784) the Dutch whaling fleet consisted of 260 ships with 14.000 sailors

The 17th century ships themselves were somewhere between 78 and 140 Amsterdam Feet (22.08-39.63m), a width of 19 to 34 feet(5.37-9.62m) and a hold of 10.5 to 14.5 feet(2.97-4.10m). The 18th century Groenlandsvaarder had an estimated crew of 53/54.

There are no ship-plans known of this shiptype, only descriptions

 

An 18th century Groenlandsvaarder (note the gallows on the side and the round stern)

 

A 17th century Groenlandsvaarder (note the high stern, the boat on the side and absence of the galleon)

 

And now the fishingships

Buis(buys)-class

 

The buis is in Dutch history are one of the most important fishing ships, from 1416 till 1870 during its 454 year lifespan it had undergone one significant change in 18th/19th century in which they changed the design from a 3-mast design to a 2 mast design. The ships were known to sail till the 59° Northern Latitude and further and not lower than the 56° Northern Latitude during fishing season.The buis were armed in 18th century with gotelingen, steen-stucken(debris-shooter), kamers, muskets and roers (muskets and a different type of musket)  and korte and lange spiezen(short and long spears) to defend themselfs from privateers and raiders, but  unfortunately of the cannons/swivelguns is not specified what kind of guns they are and what caliber because some ships have gun port on the side and some don’t. I suspect in this case it can vary by the weight of the cargohold what type and caliber were onboard. For the small ships I guess it will be most probably at maximum 2 pound guns with a weight of around 800 pound, but earlier .5/1 pound, and for the big ships the steen-stucken would probably be in gunports. The ships were also on a less common scale used as merchant vessels.

The smallest ship size is 14,72m*3,83m*2,26m and the biggest ship is a herringbuys. 22,08m*4,68m*2,47m.The first recorded is in 1416 and the last one build in 1841, in shipyard ‘s Lands Welvaren in Vlaardingen and were taken out of service in 1870.

At certain points in time the Dutch government made a record of how many ships there were and the earliest one in the book is noted in 1601 which says that the buys fleet consisted of 1500 ships, in 1609 there were 3000 ships with 50.000 sailors, in 1644 only 1054 buizen were in service and the last count was in 1832 and only 120 buizen were still in service at that time.

The normal crew of the ship was 14/15 crewmembers. The ships were between 14.7 and 22.1 meters long with a width between 3,80  and 4,10 meters and a hold depth between 1,80 and 2,50 meters. The maximum cargoload of the ship is 100 tons.

An 18th Century buis fishing

 

the construction drawing of a herringbuis roughly around 1700

Edited January 10, 2018 by pietjenoob
just saw some inconsitentie in the text

[Lonar]

You Dutch really grab for every straw to get a dutch ship ingame

But nice ships but i dont really see their use ingame at the moment since fishing is not really importent.

[Zeekoning]

45 minutes ago, Lonar said:

You Dutch really grab for every straw to get a dutch ship ingame

But nice ships but i dont really see their use ingame at the moment since fishing is not really importent.

What else are we to do?  Win a player selection poll...  already done in 2015.

[pietjenoob]

1 hour ago, Lonar said:

You Dutch really grab for every straw to get a dutch ship ingame

But nice ships but i dont really see their use ingame at the moment since fishing is not really importent.

Besides fishing, they could be used a trader. Most of the ships are known to be multipurpose, atleast the ones i am going to cover.

The only ship that is a direct descendent of a trader is de Groenlandsvaarder, they were a variantion on the Fluyt