The Newport Ship

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Found in 2002. Today the preservation of the timbers has been completed and the next five years will be spent putting them back together, because the ship was found as “a flat pack with no instructions”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-64151535

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

There was a good article on radio four where the nice marine archaeologist in charge of the project said that he was still looking for a suitable site - and expected 30,000 tourists per annum.

I know Newport reasonably well - and Mrs Newt knows it really well - and we think this man has an interesting problem - her best suggestion was beside the river and close to the Transporter Bridge - sadly it's also beside an industrial wood-yard specializing in applying creosote to telegraph poles....

Which will make for a unique on site restaurant....

[Peerie Maa]

From this excellent website: https://www.newportship.org/discover...the-next-steps

[Garret]

15th century! That is very cool. We're lucky to get 18th on this side of the pond.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

One of the questions is “Was she planked first and framed after, or was she framed first and planked after”?

[Peerie Maa]

One of the questions is “Was she planked first and framed after, or was she framed first and planked after”?

Looking at the sieding and room and space of the timbers,

I expect shell first, or it would have been too difficult to secure the lands in way of the timbers.
Remember that the Dutch continued to build their merchant ship shell first, even carvel in the 17th C.

[heimlaga]

There would be absolutely no sence in building a clinker ship frames first. I cannot imagine any reasonably efficient way of doing it. However framing may have progressed on the inside one futtock as a time as the sides grew high enough to fit them.

[Peerie Maa]

I am surprised at how thin the shell planking is. I suppose she relied on the internal stringers, of which there were quite a few, for longitudinal strength.
Henry V's Grace Dieu of 1418 was at the limit of clinker ship building, being built with a triple clinker shell.

Grace Dieu was built to a design proposed by William Soper, a burgess of Southampton and Clerk of the King's Ships. She was clinker-built with three planks nailed together along each part of her hull and waterproofed with tar and moss sandwiched between the timbers. As constructed she was 218 ft (66.45 m) long with a 50 ft (15.24 m) beam, comparable in size with HMS Victory and twice as large as Mary Rose.^[2] Estimates of her weight range between 1,400 tons^[3] and 2,750 tons.^[1] Two smaller ships, Valentine and Falcon, were built to escort her. A dock was specially built for her construction near Town Quay in Southampton.^[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Dieu_(ship)

[C. Ross]

I now have a new destination in the UK.