Evolution of the Longboat Design The five Viking longships which have been discovered since 1935 show the full range of the type. Small levy vessels of up to 20 rowing benches (the Ladby ship and the smaller of the 2 Skuldelev warships) were maintained by local communities for royal service, to answer the call whenever the king sent around the symbolic war arrow. Standard warships…, longships of up to 30 rowing benches (Hedeby and the big Skuldelev warship) were the pride of Viking earls and kings, displaying craftsmanship of superb quality. The great ships of more than 30 rowing benches (Roskilde) appear only in the dynastic wars of the late Viking Age. These finds show that Viking shipwrights, in their search for the ultimate raiding machine, created an extreme design. The length-to-breadth ratio, greater than 6:1, combined with a shallow draft to allow the longships to land on any beach and to enter virtually any waterway in Europe. Speed was clearly a goal whether under oars or sail. The shipwrights achieved strength through resilience and lightness. They pared the planking to a thickness of two centimeters--a fingers breadth--and trimmed all excess wood from the rib frames. The longships merging of design, structure and material represents 6000 years of development. The primeval ancestors of the longship appear to be dugout canoes of the Stone Age. The earliest of these have been found at many coastal sites in Denmark and date to 5000 B.C. Using flint tools, boatwrights hewed logs of soft, durable linden wood to an even thickness of two centimeters. The shell itself provided structural integrity. These canoes reached lengths of 10 meters and may have been used at sea for cod fishing, whaling and even warfare. Some canoes later served as coffins…, a tradition that survived with the Viking grave ships. About 3000 B.C., boatbuilders in Denmark began to bore a row of holes along the upper edges of their dugout canoes. They could then secure the lower edge of a plank, with matching holes, to the top of the dugout with cords of sinew or fiber. The resulting overlap marked the birth of the distinctive northern European construction technique known as lapstrake, a strake being a line of planking. The added plank improved seaworthiness by increasing the extended dugouts freeboard, the distance between the waterline and the hulls top. Axes of Danish flint found far to the north in Norway and Sweden bear witness to the adventures of these Stone Age voyagers.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 18:13:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015