Posted: February 10, 1999 at 11:12:26: by Russ McRory
: Wooden ships have an inbuilt size limitation beyond which "Hogging" (the ends of a ship drooping relative to the midship) becomes excessive and results in appalling sailing characteristics. In the age of Nelson the largest ships in the world were the great three-decker warships, such as the Victory of 100 guns. These ships, particularly the 120 gun vessels such as the French Commerce de Marseilles or the British Caledonian, were reaching the upper size limit for wooden construction. Indeed the largest vessel in the world, the Spanish Santissima Trinidad of 130 guns, had perhaps exceeded the limits as she was noted to be a poor sailer and was on the point of being relegated to harbour duties when she was destroyed at Trafalgar.
: These ships had a crew of around 1000 men, and they were very tightly packed together.You make a very interesing point. However, I think you may be underestimating the number that could have fled via the ships. The interior volume of a ship is deceivingly big. The old ships of the line were crewed by 1000 men but the men and their living quarters (oftentimes just hammocks) would only have taken a small amount of space in the volume of the ship. Most of the huge amount of volume available is taken up by cargo and ships stores. In the case of Elendil, you rightly point out that they would have needed sufficient ships stores to feed the refugees and ahead of time they would not have known that they were going to get a boost over to Middle EArth. However, I think that a large part of the cargo space would have been converted over to extra berths space and ships stores space. If we look at the slave ships or the irish famine ships we see that quite a surprising number of people can be crammed on a ship. I don't mean to say that Elendil crammed the failthful on like a slave or famine ship but I think adding only 50% of the crew complement understates what was possible. Lastly, we care only talking about potential space for the refugees. That tells us nothing about how many actuallly went over withthe Faithful Russ
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