The Ships of Jacques Cartier

Jacques Cartier explored the New World in ships known as carracks. You can spot a carrack by looking at its side. It forms a sort of "U". Below is a painting entitled, "Portuguese Carracks Off a Rocky Coast."

Carracks were the most common types of ships used by explorers in the 1500s. Columbus' ships were carracks. Below is a painting entitled "Ships Trading in the East" by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom.

 

The painting below is a wonderful illustration of the differences between the Great Carrack; Spanish Caravel and Galleass. It was painted by American artist Frederic Leonard King. They look similar to the untrained eye, but there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences if you study them closely. Can you see them?

 

Henry VIII's warship The Mary Rose, was a carrack and is being restored. She was the largest ship in the navy. (I will post some of the ship's artifacts in a future post.) Here is an artist's depiction of her from the the only known fully illustrated inventory of ships of the English navy in the Tudor Period known as the Anthony Roll.

 In the picture above you can really see the "U" shape, can't you? Keep in mind that this is an artist's interpretation of what he saw and not necessarily accurate.

The picture below is The Mary Rose being restored. She was raised in 1982 after being underwater for 437 years. She has her own museum now and when it opens it will be an exciting and  realistic glimpse into what these ships were really like. 

By the way, she sank because she had too many cannons and not enough ballast. See the stones in the bottom of the ship below. Those are ballast. Ballast keeps the ship steady and balanced in the water.

 Another artist's depiction of The Mary Rose:

 

And another by Geoff Hunt:

 

All Things Irish and St. Patrick!

Oh how I love the story of St. Patrick! And isn't this 1897 dress just dreamy? My imagination runs wild wondering who wore it!
Why did she wear it?
Was she Irish?
Was it for a celebration?
Where did she wear it?
Were her friends envious?
So many questions!

 

If you didn't get to celebrate St. Patrick's day in your homeschool this year, it's not too late to do a unit study or to file this link away for next year. I absolutely love the story of St Patrick! Go here for lots of goodies to share with your kids for a whole week!  St. Patrick Unit Study

Cleopatra’s Kingdom, Alexandria,Egypt!

Lost for 1,600 years, the royal quarters of Cleopatra were discovered off the shores of Alexandria. A team of marine archaeologists, led by Frenchman, Franck Goddio, began excavating the ancient city in 1998. Historians believe the site was submerged by earthquakes and tidal waves, yet, astonishingly, several artifacts remained largely intact.

Living on the water

My current work in progress is about a young Melungeon girl who ends up living on a steamboat. Part of my research for this story includes the steamboats of the 1830s-1840s period.

I had the privilege several years ago to have dinner and a show aboard the Branson Belle.

 

My protagonist, Flora Jean, starts out living on a shanty boat with her parents. Much like this one here: 

 

I don't know the source of this picture or the location but as you can see there is a body of water in the background and by the looks of the trees, it looks like it might be winter time. Apparently those who lived on the water were able to pull their boats up to land during the winter months. 

Why live on the water? During the Indian removal and the time of the Trail of Tears, people of color lived on the water to escape the US Cavalry that tried to herd Native Americans into internment camps. African Americans were almost always seen as runaway slaves or they were kidnapped and sold. The Melungeons were considered either Indian or African American but were actually sometimes a mixture of both or simply neither. It is thought they are descended from either from Native Americans mixed with Portuguese or even Turkish or Middle Eastern descent. Still, if caught, they could have been mistaken for Native Americans and herded into the internment camps before marching onto Oklahoma.

Shantyboat living fascinates me. I love the water and I particularly enjoy boating. I have always wanted to rent a family houseboat for a vacation but haven't talked my husband and kids into thinking it's a great idea:

 

What about you? Would you like living on a houseboat? Or do you think I'm nuts?

  

Pattens: Medieval Overshoes

source: unknown 

(If you know the source, please let me know!)

So how did you keep your feet dry in the middle ages?

Why, with Pattens of course!

Outdoors, both men and women wore loose pattens or galoches to keep their feet dry. Fishermen used them as did women mopping their floors. They were thick wooden platforms with either buckles to attach them over shoes or they were made with a full overshoe on top. These were usually worn over boots.

Remember, there were no paved roads in the middle ages, and people often threw their garbage and chamber pot contents into the streets. Combined with animal dung, it wasn't a pleasant place to be putting your tootsies.

Crow's Nests in Ships of Old

Source

Source

When navigating the seas, Vikings used crows as navigational equipment. Crows are land lovers, and when the weather made visibility difficult, they released crows to see which direction it would fly. Since they almost always flew toward land ,they followed the crow's path. Some Norsemen carried the birds in a cage tied to the top of the mast. Later, as ships changed and grew larger, they placed a sailor in a bucket high atop the main mast to look for land, pirates, and other dangers. The name "crow's nest" was given to this tub.

Today, the crow's nest is a thing of the past as navigational equipment has advanced, making sailing the high seas much easier than ever before.

 

About 120 years ago, a cache of manuscripts, mostly fragments, was discovered in the storeroom of an old Cairo synagogue. Its members had deposited them there over many centuries. This collection of documents managed to be both heterogeneous and comprehensive at the same time.

Adina Hoffman is the author of “House of Windows: Portraits From a Jerusalem Neighborhood.” Peter Cole is a poet and translator. As they relate in their engaging book “Sacred Trash,” the materials in the storeroom included letters, wills, bills of lading, prayers, marriage contracts and writs of divorce, Bibles, money orders, court depositions, business inventories, leases, magic charms and receipts. One early examiner of the cache described the scene as a “battlefield of books.” The most recent deposits were made in the 19th century; there were fragments that dated back to the 10th century. Another early visitor described the scene thus: “For centuries, whitewash has tumbled” upon the documents “from the walls and ceiling; the sand of the desert has lodged in their folds and wrinkles; water from some unknown source has drenched them; they have squeezed and hurt each other.”

The challenge presented to researchers, to reconstruct documents out of fragments, remains akin to the challenge embraced by jigsaw enthusiasts, save that in the case of the Cairo cache, there were very many pieces, from very many puzzles, all mixed up together, in one great mess. Though scrutiny of this material continues, several books drawing on the documents have already illuminated the lives of Mediterranean Jewry. At least one masterpiece of scholarship and imaginative reconstruction owes its existence to the cache: “A Mediterranean Society,” the Israeli scholar S. D. Goitein’s five-volume study of medieval Jewish communities — in all their “quotidian glory,” Hoffman and Cole add. Goitein is one of the heroes of this book, one among several who committed themselves to the collection’s study. The story told by “Sacred Trash” is both lively and elevating; it is best read as an extended act of celebration of Cairo’s historical Jewish community, their documents and their documents’ 20th-century students (though the authors also find space to relate the less creditable activities of the storeroom’s plunderers, pillagers and looters).

The cache was known, and is still commonly referred to, as a “geniza.” This word, which is barely translatable, holds within it an ultimate statement about the worth of words and their place in Jewish life. It intimates the meaning “hidden” or “concealed.” But behind that notion, when applied specifically to manuscripts or books, two further, ostensibly contradictory meanings lurk. The works to be hidden or concealed have either a sacred or a subversive character. Those that are sacred are to be protected and preserved when no longer usable; works in that countercategory, which are subversive, and therefore fit only to be censored or suppressed, are to be put out of view. In neither case is the work accessible, but for quite opposing reasons. The one is to be treasured; the other, condemned. A geniza, then, serves the twofold purpose of preserving good things from harm and bad things from harming. Over time, “geniza” became the name for a place that held any redundant or obsolete documents. It was the great achievement of the men and women who worked on the Cairo texts to recover them from obsolescence. Where others saw rubbish, they found riches.

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(via Books - Image - NYTimes.com)