How do you..?

Question

I always wondered this.....ho were wooden ships built...please answer in detail....

Answer 1

in detail would take Bud Macintosh or Howard Chappelle 250 pages in their books.....the VERY short form is:

start with long timbers...for a ship the size of the Constitution, (aka Old Ironsides), or a clipper like Cutty Sark, the timbers would be 24" thick and 36" deep and twenty to forty feet long....you'd bolt them together till you had apiece of wood 24 x 36 by, say 150 feet.....that would be the keel. It runs from front to back of the ship at the bottom. Think of it as the spine on a person.

You would then need the ribs or the frames...just like on the ribs of person....you might have to bolt together four or five pieces of wood which might be 12" x 12", each piece cut on a slight curve to form the side of the ship...each frame would be bolted to the keel; there would be one opposite it on the other side..just like you have pairs of ribs....and you might have a frame every foot the length of the ship.......so maybe 150 or more frames!

You then put the skin on...long planks, maybe in Constitutions case, 4 to 6 inches thick and 12 or more inches wide, and as long as you can find......that's the planking, held to the frame with BIG iron or steel nails or bolts, driven home by BIG guys with sledge hammers......there might be 40 or more rows of planking on a side. Drive long strands of cotton into the line between each row of planking and you're done.

The boat in my picture is mine; her ribs are 2" x 2"; her planking is 1" thick and she's 60 years old and strong and tight and really fast.

This sounds like and it is a whole lot of work and a whole lot of pieces with a lot of places for water to get in.....but once all the wood swells together you get an amazingly strong structure..Constitution carried 25 tons of cannon amongst a lot of other weight; the clippers carried 500 tons of cargo....
and Constitution is over two hundred years old, the Brits Victory nearly two hundred and fifty and are both good for another two hundred years...