intheboatshed.net

Down in Italy, Peter Radclyffe is making progress on a gozzo, as these photos show. Thanks Peter, and good luck with project!

I don’t know anything about these fishing boats, but the Italian Wikipedia has this page in Italian and this link shows what the boats look like when completed.

Just from these images it’s Peter’s an able boatbuilder, but readers might be interested to see this Clovelly picarooner he built some time ago.

Peter Radclyffe’s picarooner

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Sir Walter Raleigh painted by Nicholas Hilliard, from the The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei via the Wikimedia

Ex-Naval man, 20th century historian and Roman Catholic Bishop, David Mathew describes Sir Walter Raleigh’s importance in 1596 like this: ‘With Hawkins, Drake and Grenville lost on service and Frobisher dead the previous year, Sir Walter Raleigh alone remained. Though much less of a naval figure, for he was in essence a Renaissance magnifico, Raleigh set the lines of later doctrine.’

British schoolchildren are taught that he was an important figure in Queen Elizabeth I’s court and navy, and that he was always getting into trouble with his queen, on one occasion for secretly marrying one of her ladies-in-waiting. But was he also a heartless murderer?

A street ballad in Samuel Pepys’s ballad collection certainly suggests he was. Read the story as told in a ballad that was widely sung and part of the oral tradition in England and America well into the 20th century. Sussex singer, fisherman and ferryman Johnny Doughty had a a particularly good version.

It’s sometimes also known as the Sweet Trinity and has its own Wikipedia entry. Mudcat has versions, and a surprising range of really good tunes for the song.

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Ship in the dried out Aral Sea, photographed by Staeker, and
taken from the Wikimedia

We’ve just received this intriguing and unusual request from art student Mary Wharmby. Can anyone out there help her? I’m pretty sure that boat users who visit remote spots are most likely to be able to help.

‘Hi Gavin,

I’ve just found your blog and am really hoping you or one of your readers can help me out. I’m a grad student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. I’m working on my MFA thesis, an interactive ecological mystery game inspired by the Aral Sea crisis in Central Asia. The project is about looming water shortages with the prototype about the plight of fishermen when they lose their fisheries. I am trying to digitally recreate a desert seabed with medium-to-large old rusty ships that players will navigate around and eventually board. I need to photograph from multiple angles and am having trouble finding appropriate ships. I found your site by searching google for ship graveyards and turned up the post about the Staten Island site (which could possibly work for me). I am looking for a place or places where I can find ships like these:

http://keralaarticles.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/aral-sea.jpg

http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/AralSeaDriedup.jpg

http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog340/Photos&Illus/Aral1.jpg

The ships don’t have to match exactly by any means, just be in the same ballpark (old, rusty, medium-sized). A huge amount of touchup can be done digitally, but I need something to start with.

Because of costs, ideally I am looking for a place on the West Coast but if necessary I am willing to travel where ever I need to go. Please let me know if you know of a ship or location which may work me.

Many for reading this and for any help you can offer!

Mary W
mwharmby@inch.com’

I’m sure she means the West Coast of the USA and I’m sure too that she will obtain permission from the photographers who supply the images and credit them properly.

So – if you know any ships that appear to be lost on land anywhere, can you help Mary?