For some background on sailing ships, particularly the effort it would take to weave the sail we can look to Norse Warfare: A Portrayal of Combat, Raids, and Plunder in the Viking Age by Martina Sprague. Book also provides an estimate on construction time for a ship. Ships Sails would typically have an aspect ratio […]
Vikings did not have superior weapons, battle techniques, or leadership when compared to those they fought. Norse Warfare: A Portrayal of Combat, Raids, and Plunder in the Viking Age by Martina Sprague indicates it was primarily their tactics that give them an advantage. Fast, low-draw ships which could be rowed to shore then beached anywhere […]
Previous posts here, here, and here have quantified it might have taken somewhere between 44 and 47 people-years to construct and outfit a medium sized Viking longship. How big a community would it take to construct a longship? So the next question that comes to my brain is how many farmsteads would have to work […]
Previous posts here and here accumulated time estimates involved to construct and outfit a medium-sized Viking longship. The starting point for this series of discussions is Neil Price’s book, Children of Ash and Elm / A history of the Vikings. How do we roll those separate amounts in hours, days, and years to one number? […]
Previous post accumulated many detail data points of what time would be involved in constructing a medium-size Viking longship. This post continues the discussion and accumulates the time estimates. Wild guesses to fill in the blanks The Price text does not make any guesses on the time to cook the tar to seal the ship, […]
The Maritime Museum of San Diego has a large collection of ship models. While visiting the delightful museum recently I took a number of pictures of models of sailing ships that were in operation somewhere in the vicinity of the Pirate Age. Also got a large number of shots of the life-size San Salvador and […]
A few short tidbits from the two previous books discussed in this series. Ships Anders Winroth, writing in The Age of the Vikings provides a number of fun details about ships. Author says oak was the best wood for building ships. In the north where there were no oaks, pine was the best choice. Load […]