17th Century Dutch seafaring

In my planned new book ANANSI, shipping plays a major part because most of the slave trade went overseas. I’d probably take things too far writing an extensive article about this subject - it might bore many readers. Therefore I will restrict myself to a short introduction and a few images.

replica of Henry Hudson's 1609 vessel, showing the tall narrow stern

 

Around 1600, the Dutch Republic was at war with Spain, meanwhile developing into an important trading nation, which cried out for shipping tonnage. Apart from smaller coastal and inshore craft, hundreds of seagoing vessels a year were built in the Netherlands. The invention of the wind-powered sawmill in 1592 speeded up shipbuilding. Nor did the development of new types of ships hesitate - better hull shapes and rigging emerged. The first thing noticeable was ships increasing in size, and a reduction of the tall and extremely narrow stern to better proportions. This can be seen in the replicas of early ships such as Henry Hudson’s Half Moon of 1609, and the slightly older White Swan of Willem Barentsz, the polar explorer who perished at Nova Zembla, 1597.

replica of Willem Barentsz's vessel of 1596, also showing the tall stern and tubby shape

 

Types of ships used in Dutch seafaring

The first one to publish an extensive description of Dutch shipbuilding was the Amsterdam alderman Nicolaes Witsen. His cousin Jonas Witsen, another member of that wealthy family, owned three plantations in Suriname, where his harsh policy caused a slave revolt in 1704.

a fluyt (left) and a pinnace (right), the latter beeing careened and its hull scraped.

 

Nicolaes Witsen in 1671 described several types of vessel that gave a great boost to Dutch seafaring. One of those was the fluyt, a long-hulled ship with rounded bows and stern, which had a simple rigging plan, a large cargo capacity and surprisingly good sailing properties. Another vessel described by Witsen is the Dutch pinnace, a medium-sized ship with an ornate stern, looking like a smaller version of the great Dutch East Indiamen.

another view of a fluyt, showing the rounded hull, steep tumble-home and narrow poop

 

The fluyt was a three-masted vessel about 120ft long, a general-purpose cargo carrier of the Dutch mercantile marine, with an acute tumble-home to the hull and a narrow deck. About 80% of Dutch seagoing cargo vessels was of this type. They sailed to the Baltic, to the Mediterranean, went whaling near Greenland and made far voyages to the East and West Indies. Thus, they also took part in the West India Company’s slave trade. The number of enslaved people carried on such a trip was up to 600, they were armed with 15 or 20 guns and had a crew of up to 60. The mean round trip on the triangle trade (see below) took 516 days, including time spent at anchor or chasing after cargo, human or otherwise.

a mid-18th Century galliot, gaff rigged with a tiny mizzen mast - note the flush deck, the pronounced sheer and the square topsail and topgallant sail

 

For coastal traffic, and also in the colonies, smaller vessels were used such as the hooker and the galliot, probably developments of fishing and inshore vessels. They were up to 80ft long and usually flush-decked with a pronounced sheer. Originally galliots had two masts and a sprit or gaff rig, but in the late 18th Century three-masted square-rigged galliots were built as well. For communications purposes and for transporting Company Directors and members of Government at home and in the Colonies, both the East and West India Companies used armed yachts. And finally there were real warships, two- and three-deckers, which are outside the scope of this article. They were comparable to big East Indiamen.

typical armed yacht with an ornate stern cabin

 

General arrangement of seagoing ships

Both the fluyt and the pinnace, to which I will restrict myself, had a tweendeck or steerage below the main deck. A screened-off section of this forward of the mainmast was usually assigned to the crew as accommodation. Astern of the mainmast most ships had a quarterdeck extending to the stern, even though it doesn’t show as such in Nicolaes Witsen’s drawing, which only has a short quarterdeck. Under the quarterdeck was the officers’ accommodation. Right at the stern was a poop deck, below which the skipper’s main cabin was situated. Forward under the forecastle was the domain of the warrant officers - the boatswain, the carpenter and the cook and their mates. The area of deck between the forecastle and the mainmast was commonly called the waist. Often there were gangways along the bulwarks at the level of the quarterdeck, to enable the forecastle to be reached without passing through the waist.

Nicolaes Witsen's drawing of a medium sized pinnace, this one with a quarterdeck cut short forward of the mizzen mast

 

The headroom in the steerage under the maindeck depended on the size of the vessel, and commonly was between 5 and 6 feet. It should be remembered that for the carriage of slaves, the steerage was converted in West Africa, fitting half-height berths, if that word decribes hard planking, for an additional row of inmates a few feet above the tweendeck level. Thus, such a ship could carry 500 or 600 people. The kind of conditions encountered down there can easily be imagined.

Rigging

The rigging of most merchant vessels was simple, in order to enable the ship to be sailed with as few people as possible. This particularly was the case in the fluyts, which only had lower sails and topsails to each mast, one fitted to the lower mast and the other to the topmast, an extension. The sails were square-rigged to yards, spars that were braced round to the wind. The luff (forward) side of the sails had to be braced by a tackle called the tack, in order to present a tensioned edge to the wind and prevent the sail from flapping. The leech (the downwind edge) of the sails was tensioned by the sheet (another tackle) and could be released a little to spill the wind and let the sail do its work.

a late style galliot, three-masted and square-rigged, sailing close to the wind

 

Sailing close to the wind, these ships were not at their best - they ran better with a beam wind or the wind on the quarter or from astern. Therefore the route of these square-rigged vessels usually followed the prevailing wind. Fore-and-aft rigged vessels such as a galliot perform better when sailed close to the wind.

Cargo and passages in the triangle trade

The triangle trade to West Africa and the Caribbean consisted of three distinct passages, and was laid out in such a way that the vessels followed the prevailing wind and the ocean currents, or at most sailed with the wind abeam. From Europe they carried trade goods used as bartering material to buy people, ivory and gold on the West African coast. These ships sailed with the north wind along the Portuguese coast, which carried on into the Northeast trade to Cape Verde and the anchorage of Gorée near what is now Dakar. Thence they continued south into the ocean for some distance, to avoid the chance of contrary wind at the edge of Africa. They then continued east towards Elmina, where they had to report to the Dutch Governor. From Elmina they might be directed towards other trade posts to discharge and load. The ship was re-supplied there and the steerage converted into a slave deck.

crowded conditions aboard a slave ship - note the plan of the additional 'berths' created on a gallery about 3ft over the steerage deck

 

Often vessels spent weeks or even months at anchor on the coast, or they sailed to and fro to collect cargoes of people being offered on the beach or at other trading posts. The skipper had an important function in negotiating the trade. When eventually the (often human) cargo was completed, they departed to their destination across the ocean, sometimes venturing as far south as Angola to find the wind. Then they continued in the trade winds and through the doldrums (the belt of calms on the equator) to the Caribbean. This part of the trip could take months and often took place at a great cost of life.

schematic map of the Atlantic, showing the routes of the triangle trade

 

It must be remembered that the crews were also prone to disease and death in those ships, due to the bad food and spoiled water. Sickness and death touched them as well as the cargo of human wretches in the steerage, the crew's death rate for the entire trip being about 10%. In the steerage this was often exceeded due to the frightful living conditions of the poor people chained down there.

From Suriname or Curaçao, the vessel eventually turned north to the North American coast carrying tropical produce, picking up the west wind there to sail back to Europe.

To be continued.