Ryan21

Stand by for some photos from me. We will be escorting her into Baltimore in a couple days on the Pride of Baltimore 2!

Would love to have Cochranes first command in game.

She logged over 11.2 knots the other day

It's the preventer or "spring" stay for the fore. slightly smaller diameter than the forestay. There is a lot of safety and redundancy built in to this era of rigging, every stay usually has a preventer stay in place in case one fails or is shot away in action.

I might get to see L'Hermione! I'm going to sail on the Pride of Baltimore 2 this summer starting in June and we might go to Philly for the tallships festival. I'm soo excited!!

very cool. In other news, it looks like I'm going to sail on Pride Of Baltimore 2 this summer, stand by for performance report.

Its ludicrous. Really frustrating to me as a Canadian. Not only did they use tropical hardwoods on the structural components, they chose to have the belowdecks lavishly furnished in solid bloody exotic hardwood trim, if you see pictures below decks she looks like she was fitted out to be a Rockafeller's yacht, not a faithful replica of a fishing schooner. Sadly most of our tallships in Canada have this tendancy to reflect more of millionaire yachting culture in the way they are built, manned, and operated than simply preserving our naval heritage. The other thing that makes me nuts is WE built the Rose, The Bounty, the new American sail training ship Oliver Hazard Perry, but they all end up in America. It's like Canada is allergic to period square riggers. The real irony of the Oliver Hazard Perry is that it was originally built in Ontario and was supposed to be HMS Detroit, the flagship of the British squadron in the battle of Lake Erie, fighting against Perry. But the project was yet again poorly executed and had bad public opinion, they didn't get the government grants they were looking for and after close to 20 years all they had was a partially built steel hull. So logically we sell it to the US for a song, and now she is rigged and ready to go as the largest fully rigged ship to be built new in "America" in the last hundred years, and of course re named after the Commodore that defeated her. http://www.ohpri.org/ Read this article, it makes me feel even less patriotic than I usually feel about Canada, which isn't much to begin with. Similar time frame to L'Hermione, but was obviously in the wrong hands from the start. http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/story.html?id=5588ff0c-4885-4ea0-87a1-6029ee6db8c6

The only government funded ship in Canada the Bluenose two has become a complete debacle, poorly managed, orginal rebuilding costs estimated around 5 million and now they have spent 20 million and climbing, on a fishing schooner.... It pains me, and the people who live in Nova Scotia who's money the government has spent. The Canadian public that know about tallships usually are not willing to spend public money to fund them, we only have a small handfull in the country anyway. The Lady has Catharpins setup on the lower and topmast shrouds, when the shrouds are slack you bowse the catharpins in with lashings, frap the lashings and then you set up the shrouds. If you want to brace the course as sharp as possible cast off the lifts, let it hang in the sling only and brace away, if the lifts are made fast you get a slight tourniquet effect of the yard canting slightly and not wanting to brace all the way.

Unfortunately theres almost always a political side to these things.

Here is a quote from the article that makes me smile every time I read it. This is the designer of the ship "She arrived off president roads in a brisk and squally northwest wind, having outsailed the motorship supposed to tow her, and proceeded to beat up into Boston Harbour, logging 11 knots close hauled with little stern wave (vindicating my shortening of her run) and tacking without difficulty. There was some hitch in the gear that prevented bracing the course yards to the intended limit, and too few in her crew to see properly to her topgallant yards, so she looks a little haywire in the photo's. Her speed and handyness in light flotation and with no propellors to drag was impressive, however, and startled some yachts that attempted to escort her in. But the new rigging was visibly stretching and the state of her upper spars looked more and more precarious with each tack, especially as she continued to carry the big maintopgallant stays'l, which I had warned about several times. At last there was a sharp squall; she heeled quite a lot--perhaps 15 degrees or more-- and the maintopgallantmast broke about three feet above the cap of the topmast." Seems to have been quite a flier in her youth

I would have doused the main topgallant, and the main topgallant staysail, and set the main topsail in that situation. Those two little sails put huge pressure on the topgallantmast together, especially in any kind of real sailing breeze like in the photo. And the main topsail would likely provide more thrust than both of the little sails together. It could be that they simply hadn't run the sheets and gear for that sail yet, in that photo she only is just getting to Boston from Lunenburg for the first time.

Alright guys, you ready for some hot and heavy Not safe for work photo action???? Here ya go

I recall Captain Bailey talking about Rose awhile ago, saying that the last time he saw her many of her structural members are little better than sawdust, and it would be cheaper to build a new one. I always dreamed of sailing on Rose, it broke my heart when I first got to see her in San Diego in the winter of 2013. Let me get those pictures. This magazine is my treasure, it also has an article of the building of Lynx and Lady Washington.

We boxhauled Lady Washington all the time in battle sails with the Hawaiian Chieftain, the amount of stress is dependant on wind speed of course, the most intense boxhaul we ever did was in 20-25 knots in redwood city inside the San Francisco Bay during a battlesail. I have an article in an old magazine called pacific time machines that talks about when the Rose was built, the young man who had her commisioned negotiated with the shipbuilders in Lunenberg over the design and they sneakily hollowed out her bow section just below the waterline, significantly more than the admiralty design, to give her a much sharper entry and better speed capability. She was built without an engine and on her first voyage she had only like 3/4's of her ballast onboard. There is this great picture of her heeled right the hell over, cracking on with everything flying into Boston Harbour at over 11 knots, sending up a beautiful bow wave. Right after the picture was taken they carried away the main topgallant mast due to the main topgallant staysail being set in wind gusting up into the 20's. I have no doubt that when she was new as a sail training vessel in her Rose trim she was probably a significantly better performer. Unfortunately the movie industry often makes very sad work of our beloved ships. We are still fixing Lady from some of the "movie modifications" they did for Pirates. They cut a number of gunports into her sides and afterwards they were covered up in a very slipshod manner, those sections of the bulwarks need to be re planked and caulked bad.

Ahgg. I have to sail on this ship. Surcouf do you know if they have started working on some kind of programming for after the current voyage yet?

Lets not forget that the "surprise" is actually a replica of HMS Rose, and had cosmetic alterations by the movie company to make her look like the surprise.

Im not going to lie, I cracked up pretty good at this..

Poor Surprise, that ship is in such a sad state. It would cost less to build a new one that to rebuild her back to coast guard approval. Some of her structural members are little better than sawdust these days, but she was built in 69, shes had a good life.

Any ships that are licensed to carry passengers, not just crew, but passengers in any modern 1st world country are required to have engines. Tres Hombres is owned in the Netherlands but has been registered in Cape Town south africa because of the lax shipping laws there, in order to operate commercially without an engine. Surprise has an engine because she at one time was a registered sailing school vessel with the USCG and the engine is required for that. Although when brand new as the Rose, she was built without one, before she started sail training. That being said I wish you could still build commercial ships without motors in 1st world countries.

Beautiful.

Those are hand stitched natural fiber sails on Hermione, cut in the same way the oldies would have been. Niagara has fairly flat cut sails, that helps but its not a modern invention, they were figuring out that enormous baggy sails lost wind energy too easily in the 18th century, sails got much flatter into the 1800's. She braces her yards alot sharper than Lady, to the naked eye its significant

Pointing into the 50's isn't unheard of, were talking a fine french frigate here, not a slab sided ship of the line. Niagara pointed up into the low 50's, I was on her tiller close hauled a number of times watching the anemometer and looking up stunned trying to figure out why the fore topsail wasnt luffing yet. Some of these ships were simply built with slightly better rigging geometry to allow sharper bracing of the yards.

I agree, some large luggers would be excellent. Gunboats close inshore were always a danger, some of them would have very large caliber guns mounted in the bow and could wreak havoc on a small brig or schooner. A good general reference is a book called Harbours and High Sea's, it's an accompaniment to the Patrick O Brian novels and has pictures of just about every one of these rigs.

I absolutely love the current ship lineup, but as time goes on I would really like to see some unique vessels that dont fit the standard Royal Navy bill, some of which could easily compete with the brigs and schooners. We need to get some big Xebec's going on, a few Polacres, certainly a Xebec frigate like El Gamo. There are so many interesting rigs from the Med especially that were used on fairly large vessels of war and privateers, not to mention merchantmen.

I guess to me as a sailor I see it as an enormous waste, moreover a crime against sailing history to pour millions and millions of dollars into building these to just let them sit as museums. The Gotheborg and a few others are doing the right thing, voyaging and sail training. I pray the Hermione spends many years as a sail training vessel and I earnestly hope she doesn't turn into a dockside attraction.