 Vagabond_Astronomer wrote: |
There are no drawings of ships from that period. There are some paintings, a number of sketches and small iconographic evidence on maps. There exists one model contemporary with Columbus, the Mataro votive model, and aside from ships that probably evolved similarly to caravels, the evidence is scant. Even the best replica is still, at best, an educated guess (though I really hate that term) based upon the available remaining evidence. Some are obviously better than others, and we seem to be heading in that direction.
Still, we simply do not know with 100% accuracy.
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Well put.
Personally, I think such reconstructions - whether in the form of full-size replicas, models, or drawings - are extremely worthwhile projects. And I share the hope that, as each generation reconsiders the evidence, it gets a little closer to reality. But unless and until the remains of an actual ship from the period (or a detailed contemporary drawing, or whatever) is discovered, we just won't know.
One thing that does trouble me in this area is the tendency of people to take such reconstructions too seriously - to the point where a reconstruction gets regarded as "official." Example: back in the 1940s (I think) an artist named Griffin Baily Coale was commissioned to paint a mural depicting the three "Jamestown ships," the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, for the Virginia Statehouse in Richmond. A few years later, in conjunction with the 350th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement, the state decided to build full-size replicas of the ships. The (alleged) naval architect in charge of that project was instructed to make his ships look exactly like those in the mural. (The mural wasn't bad, but....) Fortunately, when the 1950s replicas rotted to pieces thirty years later the state hired a new designer to draw the plans for their replacements - and imposed no such restrictions on him. The "new Jamestown ships" do make some decidedly non-historical concessions to practicality (e.g., the Susan Constant's diesel engine), but they're certainly eminently respectable interpretations of what the real, 1607 ships looked like - by the standards of this generation of scholars.
When I was working at the Mariners' Museum (Newport News, Virginia), I stumbled on some interesting correspondence about the Confederate raider Alabama. The letters dated from (I think; beware my senile memory) the early 1960s, and concerned a model the museum had just commissioned. Howard I. Chapelle, at that time the curator of transportation at the Smithsonian, found out about the project. It so happened that the Smithsonian had also commissioned a model of the Alabama, based on a different set of reconstructed drawings. Chapelle was angry about that; he claimed that models of such a famous ship in two major museums ought to "agree," and tried (unsuccessfully) to talk the MM into modifying its Alabama to match the one in the Smithsonian.
I'm a huge admirer of Chapelle, but in this particular instance I think he was wrong. It seems to me that the more consistency there is in such speculative replicas, the greater the danger that the public will think they're more "definitive" than they actually are. In this particular case, a good bit of additional evidence about the Alabama turned up in later decades, and established that both the MM and Smithsonian models are (a) not bad by any means, but (b) incorrect in quite a few details.
Among my most frustrating responsibilities at the MM was the care of the famous/notorious Crabtree collection. It includes models of the Santa Maria and Pinta. (The great man never got around to the Nina.) Those models are pretty consistent with the various reconstructions and drawings that had been published when Crabtree built them - i.e., in the 1930s. They most definitely did not represent current scholarly thinking in the time I was working there (1980-1983). But woe betide the curator or docent who offhandedly mentioned that fact in public (especially in the presence of Mrs. Crabtree). Until I went to work at that place it hadn't occurred to me that it was possible for a ship modeler to have groupies. The Crabtree Groupies numbered in the dozens, and tended to be both vocal and well-heeled.
Another model in the Crabtree Gallery supposedly represented the Revolutionary War brig Lexington. It was based on a set of plans published in Mechanix Illustrated magazine in the 1920s, and later (unfortunately) immortalized by Charles Davis in his book, The Built-Up Ship Model. (I have a great deal of respect for Davis, but in dealing with the American Revolution he was out of his depth.) The plans were full of anachronisms, and in later years a couple of contemporary pictures of the Lexington surfaced - and established that she looked nothing like the model. When I launched a campaign to change the label and call Crabtree's creation a model of an "Armed Brig, Circa 1810," I was almost accused of heresy. (I eventually won that one, but not without some pretty spectacular fireworks.)
On the other hand, close by the Crabtree Gallery stood a permanent exhibition of figureheads. One of the nicest was from a late-nineteenth-century yacht called the Mayflower. Next to the figurehead was displayed a photograph of the actual ship - complete with a big cloud of black smoke billowing out of the funnel. With my own ears I heard a visitor tell one of her kids, "Look, Jimmy! That's from the Pilgrims' ship!"
At such moments one finds onesself thinking the ominous words, "why do we bother?"
Anyway - I firmly believe that reconstructing important old ships, including those for which the available evidence is scarce, is a worthwhile activity. But I also think it's imperative that everybody concerned understand that such reconstructions are just that: reconstructions. I really like the idea of an exhibit tracing how interpretations of such vessels as Columbus's ships have changed over the years. May they continue to do so.