Page 58 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

Chapter Two
(72 II 11) A keel should be well planed below, so as not to hinder or hamper the launching of the ship.
. ..
(264 I 8) The heel, protruding behind the k eel, sup- ports the rudder, and prevents anything from getting
(whereby ships lay deeper in the w ater aft than forward), it was by no me ans unthinkable that the vulnerable rud- der would scrape the sea bottom at shallows and pick up substances that would obstruct it.
Witsen does not mention a false keel, a plank fastened below the k eel that, in c ase of dama ge, could easily be removed and replaced without having to repair the c ostly keel itself. Van Yk, however, does mention it, which could indicate that the false keel was an i nvention of the last quarter of the c entury; or pos sibly Witsen did not know about it or did not consider it worth mentioning.
2. The Stem.
(73 I 7) The stem is the guideline from which all pro- portions in the ship are derived: it in turn is derived from the length of the ship: they are named such be- cause they give the ship its strength. [The word steven, “stem,” is perhaps related to stijven, which means ver- stevigen, “to strengthen.”] The stem is usually made of two parts, the sternpost in one piece.
(66 I 14) About the Stem.
5. The stem, thick 10 inches on the inside [an ex- ample for the 100- foot ship that Witsen has mentioned previously], this thickness is found from the length of the ship: example, 10 feet length, 1 inch thick.
stuck between the sternpost and the rudder would then foul the rudder.
, which
Figure 2.3. Plate LI (drawing QQ)
First: One Makes the Keel
The keel, together with the posts, is the foundation of the ship. According to Van Yk, the scarfs in the keel had to be five inches long for ever y inch the keel was wide, and for each foot the sc arf was long, at least two clenched bolts were required. The keel of the pi nas was two feet broad; the scarf then should h ave been ten feet (2.83 meters) long and bolted w ith twenty bolts. Witsen, on the other hand, states only eight feet (2.26 meters) and eight bolts.
The length of the keel, in fact, represents the second phase in which the character of the ship was determined. This was closely related to the inc lination of the posts forward and aft, or the r ake of the posts. It should be noted that the r ake of the stem would dimini sh gradu- ally throughout the seventeenth century, becoming more vertical and requiring a propor tionally longer keel. Van Yk notes that this adaptation, which apparently stemmed from necessity, also gre atly increased the per formances of the ship.6
Forward, the keel would end with a typical scarf, called the boxing of the stem, making the joint between the stem and keel as strong as possible. At the rear, the keel was sawn off obliquely (the so-called heel) so that objects like seaweed or cables would not get entrapped between rud- der and sternpost. As a result of the trimming of the stern
Figure 2.4.
eight bolts, and through its surface stopwaters were drilled; these were filled with moss and plugged with wooden dowels. (Drawing by A. J. Hoving)
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(71 II 31) 1. The keel broad 2 feet, long at the bot- tom 104 feet, thick 16 inches.
(71 II 47) 2. The Scarfs of the k eel, long 8 feet, the lips of the scarf, thick 31⁄2 inches, the scarf fastened with eight bolts, nails, treenails.
Joint in the keel. The joint was bolted through with