The Thing About Sailing Ships, pt. I

One of the cool things about my job is that it takes me to places I'd never have expected a couple of years ago. Next week I'll be haunting some godforsaken backwaters in Jutland and am looking forward to it, not only because I appreciate change, but also because I've planned my route so that I can visit the frigate Jylland. Strictly speaking, that ship is at least fifty years too young for me, but it is a wooden sailing ship, a warship, and I believe it's similar enough to wooden frigates of the early 19th century to be interesting.

Last year, Patrick O'Brians Aubrey/Maturin novels and C S Forester's Hornblower books sparked a deep and unexpected interest in sailing warships, particularly of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in me. While reading the first part of O'Brian's series, I started looking all the naval terms up on Wikipedia, and it turned out that clicking around there was even more engrossing than the novel. The ingenuity of a sailing ship, the myriad details, the masses of ropes and little wooden objects, each handmade to fit exactly into its place and do what it's supposed to do, each one with its own name. Before that revelation, I'd never thought of a sail as very different from a bedsheet on a stick. Now I'm deeply in awe of the incredibly complicated, and yet perfectly optimized, system that is the rigging of a sailing ship. An immensely complex machine operated by muscle power and the forces of nature, how could that be anything but fascinating?

However, technology isn't the only reason for my interest in - whatever term I should use for the combination of naval fiction and naval history of the era around 1793-1815. "Age of Sail fandom" is mostly an umbrella term for O'Brian's and Forester's works with appendages (the Master & Commander and Hornblower movies, respectively) and doesn't necessarily cover historical fact, while "naval history 1793-1815" is quite a narrow definition that also makes it sound like I'm building dioramas where I reenact important naval actions and build models of HMS Victory in my spare time. Whatever; I'm also fascinated by life aboard ships, the unimaginable situation of being aboard a wooden vessel that's being shattered by cannon shot, the human aspect. I won't even start developing that theme here, but might write more about it some other time.

This interest in, let's just call it sailing ships for now, is actually quite comical. You see, I hate boats and all kinds of floating vessels. I'm afraid of water and even more of heights; one of the Hornblower TV movies ends with the main characters standing on what I think is the topgallant yard, and the mere thought of that makes my palms sweat. People like to hear and read about the things that frighten them the most, and I suppose that my interest is partly inspired by that impulse.

A couple of months ago, I was crossing the Sound from Elsinore to Helsingborg, a 20-minute trip on broad, heavy, perfectly safe car ferries where you have to look out a window to confirm that you're not on land anymore. During my childhood and teens, I went on those ferries a couple of times a year, but it had been almost fifteen years since the last time, and I was interested to see how I would feel about the journey now. It turned out that nothing had changed: as I stepped aboard, the old familiar conviction that the thing was going to sink welled over me for a moment. As soon as we were out of the harbour, I went out on deck to face my old fears and leaning against the railing, I thought of one of my earliest memories: being lifted up by one of my well-meaning parents so I could look over the side and panicking at the sight of the long drop and the green, frothy water at the end of it. It's not quite as scary when you're standing on your own feet, but deep down I still felt a stirring of that old fear. So, still a confirmed landlubber.

My excitement about visiting the Jylland is mostly about getting a feel for the physical space of a wooden frigate, what it's like standing on the gun deck, how long it takes to walk from the quarterdeck to the forecastle or from the orlop to the waist, being surrounded by ropes, touching and feeling the ship to get a better understanding of the novels I read. But there's also a curiosity as to my own reactions, how scary it will be to look up into the rigging and imagine being forced to go up into the top or to look over the side and imagine the ship heeling in a strong wind.