HMS Victory Yawl Boat

Will Sterling from Tavistock in Devon, kindly sent details of this ships boat which his company built for Nelsons flagship HMS Victory. Victory although kept in dry dock in Portsmouth naval base is still a serving ship in the British Navy.



Will explains "Having studying the ships documents the Curator of HMS Victory realised that a 26 yawl had been part of the 1805 ships complement of boats. In 2008 he determined to have a yawl built."



"Stirling and Son won the tender and built a yawl under MOD contract. The boat was built to a draught of 1797 from Greenwich Maritime Museum."



"She is built of full length planking copper and bronze fastened and is now on display in Portsmouth, alongside HMS Victory, the flagship of the Royal Navy."

If youre visiting England then its really worthwhile to take the time to see HMS Victory (and her neighbouring historic ships Warrior and Mary Rose), and not least Wills fantastic yawl.

Lanteen

To most of us in England, the boats of the Mediterranean are characterised by the Lanteen sail with its huge spar and a sail something in shape like a 30/60 triangle. Studies have shown it to be a very aerodynamic rig with good upwind performance, which sets a large amount of sail area on a relatively low mast.

Thanks to Jaume Escanellas in Mallorca who blogs at La Mar (Google Chrome will automatically translate for you as best it can from Catalan to English) for sending these pictures. Jaume originally posted comments on the recent post about a Greek Fishing Boat regarding the Mallorca Lanteen Association which has some great photographs of these boats. There are clear differences in boat type between a "bot" and a "lute" which are referred to on the site, bot refers to a transom stern boat as in the post on Capitan Valdes, so Im guessing a lute is a double ender, perhaps someone more knowledgeable could confirm.


Below are a collection of traditional boats in the Mediterranean port of Sete in the south of France with many similarities to Jaumes Balearic boats, the flush deck to the bulwarks would have made a very effective platform for both fishing and sailing, the small hatches providing access below and a very secure way of keeping water out without the complication and potential weakness of cabin construction.

And of course there are those lovely long lanteen spars.