Yards

Ships of the Golden Age were built in shipyards from Deptford and Amsterdam to Boston and Bermuda, where shipwrights raised oak frames on the keel, planked the hull, and fitted the masts and yards, the long spars that carry the sails. A merchant vessel of the period took months of skilled work to build.

In the Golden Age of Piracy, ships came from busy shipyards on both sides of the Atlantic. At England's royal dockyard at Deptford on the Thames, at the Dutch East India Company's yard at Oostenburg in Amsterdam, and in many smaller private yards in Boston and on Bermuda, shipwrights laid a keel, raised oak frames on it like ribs, planked the hull, caulked the seams with oakum and pitch, and then stepped the masts and crossed the yards.

The yards are the long horizontal spars hung from the masts; the square sails are bent (tied) to them, and the crew turned them with ropes called braces to catch the wind. Building a merchant ship of a few hundred tons took a large crew of carpenters, sawyers, caulkers, blacksmiths and riggers many months.

Parts & Labels

Note
Backbone timber laid first.
Title
Keel
Note
Rib-like timbers that give the hull its shape.
Title
Frames
Note
Boards fastened to the frames.
Title
Planking
Note
Horizontal spar that carries a square sail.
Title
Yard
Note
The outer end of a yard.
Title
Yardarm
Note
Ropes that swing the yards to the wind.
Title
Braces

Historical Overview

Note
Henry VIII founded the Deptford dockyard in 1513; it built and repaired warships for the Royal Navy for more than 350 years.
Title
Royal dockyards
Note
Dutch yards used wind-powered sawmills and standard designs, which let them build ships faster and cheaper than their rivals.
Title
Dutch speed
Note
Abundant timber made New England and Bermuda important builders. Bermuda sloops of local cedar were fast, and pirates prized them.
Title
Colonial yards

Timeline

1513Deptford dockyard foundedHenry VIII.

1660sVOC yard at OostenburgAmsterdam.

1697–1698Peter the Great studies shipbuildingAmsterdam and Deptford.

Comparison Panel

Note
The same word names the place where ships are built and the spars that carry the sails.
Title
Yard (shipyard) and yard (spar)
Note
Square sails hang from yards across the ship; fore-and-aft sails, like a sloop's mainsail, run along its length.
Title
Square sail and fore-and-aft sail

Interesting Facts

Note
Peter the Great of Russia worked as a ship's carpenter in Amsterdam in 1697 and studied at Deptford in 1698 to learn shipbuilding.
Title
A tsar in the yard
Note
Ships were built on a sloping slipway so they could slide into the water at launch.
Title
Slipway
Note
Big yards had ropewalks, sheds hundreds of meters long where hemp was twisted into rigging.
Title
Ropewalks

Sources

Note
Period definitions of ship parts, watches and the log.
Title
William Falconer, An Universal Dictionary of the Marine (London, 1769)
Note
Dutch yards and methods.
Title
Richard W. Unger, Dutch Shipbuilding before 1800 (Van Gorcum, 1978)
Note
Colonial yards.
Title
Joseph A. Goldenberg, Shipbuilding in Colonial America (University Press of Virginia, 1976)
Note
Bermuda sloops.
Title
Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680–1783 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
Note
History of the royal dockyard.
Title
Royal Museums Greenwich, Deptford Dockyard