Page 98 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters
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force the quays. The ship was in front of Fort Nassauw, where it had broken into three parts and: ‘door malitie (soo wij menen) van de matroosen, die den arbeijt van t'sloopen vreesden, tot t'water bij nacht verbrant’ \[by mischief (as we assume) of the sailors, who fear the job of demolish- ing, are \[the remains\] burned down to the waterline\] (Coolhaas , p.). After as many useable parts as possible were salvaged from the ship, the remaining timbers were often burned in order to retrieve the iron nails (Coolhaas , p. ). All homeward-bounders arriving in Batavia were inspected, after which it was decided whether the ship was fit to return. If not, this could mean that another use for these larger vessels had to be found in Asia. As discussed previously, these older Rate ships could play an important role as well-armed vessels in the region of the Arabian Sea (see section ..). In some cases, ships were not fit for those purposes either: in the ship Tholen (ID:) was inspected twice and judged unable to return to the Netherlands but also too weak to operate with heavy armaments near Surat and was therefore sent on an easy route to the Spice Islands (Coolhaas , p. ). If the ships were employed on the intra-Asian routes the heavy super- structure of the ships could be removed (NA .., VOC , fol. -v). Eventually, these larger ships ended up as floating warehouses, carpenters ship or as floating fortresses in the Spice Islands (Coolhaas , p. ). Ships were also inspected in the Netherlands, but it is remarkable that, after the VOC estab- lished a regular building programme for the specialist homeward-bounders after , very few of these ships ended their careers in the Netherlands. Sometimes ships that were consid- ered barely able to make the trip from Asia back to Europe returned to Asia yet again and continued to serve there for many years (De Hullu , p. ). Servicing the hull and other parts of the ships The biggest hazard the VOC faced to sailing in tropical waters was the shipworm or Teredo Navalis. The Teredo Navalis was capable of assaulting the construction of a ship within a few months to such a degree that the main construction elements would lose their integrity and the ship would leak to such an extent that pumping could not keep the vessel afloat any further (Colenbrander , p. ). From the earliest days of the shipping in Asia, various protection systems were employed (see Case Study -). From the resolutions of the Chamber Amsterdam, where detailed techni- cal issues were discussed, and from the bookkeepers’ journals that listed the materials for the work on the hull, it is possible to gain an insight into the experiments that took place to find a new method to protect the vessel against the shipworm. The Dutch tried to protect their ships against the shipworm by applying an extra layer of planking over the existing submerged hull planking. In the first years this so called verdubbeling (sheathing) was sometimes placed in com- bination with a thin layer of lead underneath the extra layer of softwood planking. Later tar and hair were used for this purpose. In , it was decided that ships should be covered with a layer of lead and a pinewood layer on top (NA .., VOC , --). In the bookkeepers’ journal of , the materi- als were listed for this work. For the ships Amsterdam (ID:) and Sonne (ID:), rolls of thin lead and another lb of unspecified thin lead were required (NA .., VOC ). In , and again in , it was decided that ships under construction would be build with an extra layer of oak and a top layer of pinewood planking without a layer of lead (NA .., VOC ). From on, hair was utilised between the layers of planking: ‘Het grote gecochte schip doen verdubbelen met een eecken huyt daer haer onder geleyt is ende gespyckert boven op de tweede huyt ende daer weder haer op met een vuyren huyt wel becleet sonder loot’ \[The big ship that we bought is sheathed with oak planking under which hair was put and on the second planking nailed again with hair a pinewood Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters
