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They have raised the Maud!
Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen's ship, the Maud, has been raised from where it sunk in 1930, off of Victoria Island, Canada. Plans are being made to return the wreck to Norway.
Article in Live Science here.
Along with the Fram, these ships were the extreme science platforms of their time. They were built of wooden hulls that could withstand being frozen into the Arctic ice cap, and traveling with it. Amundsen sailed the Maud through the Northeast Passage.
From 1918 to 1920, Amundsen and his crew sailed from Oslo, Norway, along the Russian Arctic coast to Nome, Alaska, traversing a Northeast Passage. Amundsen eventually abandoned the plan to go to the North Pole. Maud spent a total of seven years exploring the Arctic before the ship was seized by Amundsen's creditors and was sold to Canada's Hudson's Bay Co., according to Norway's Fram Museum.
Nice to see the old girl up and about again. They certainly don't make them like that anymore. Now they make Boaty McBoatfaces.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 26 2016, @11:18PM
Having been on board a few, the thing you notice really quickly is the complete lack of privacy on a typical-sized ship. For just about anything: The reason the poop deck is called the poop deck is because that's where sailors would poop over the side. They slept in hammocks packed in like sardines, and if the ladies of the night came on board when they were in port, well, guess what, they were doing that right in front of everybody too. The captain might have a separate cabin, about the size of a small closet. Everybody else, tough luck.
Naval vessels were a different story, because they were much larger than your typical merchant ship, but even then space was very much at a premium.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 26 2016, @11:41PM
Naval vessels were no more "roomy". Warships always carry more men than they need - if it takes 80 bodies to crew the ship, then the crew is set at around 240, because you expect casualties in combat. The old sailing ships' only sizeable space that was sheltered from the elements was the gun deck. Hammocks were strung right around and above the cannon. Lowly seamen and petty officers were only permitted a small sack of personal items, because every morning, ALL personal gear had to be stowed away, and secured, so that the ship was ready to fight at the drop of a hat.
Besides which, the military and privacy are anathema to each other. The officers expect their chiefs to know what the men are thinking, their fighting spirit, morale or lack thereof. Privacy degrades the ability of the chiefs to read the enlisted men's minds. On the ships I served on, "privacy" meant closing the curtain on your bunk. Bunks were foughly 3 ft wide, 7 feet wide, and your locker under it was about 10 inches deep. These bunks were stacked 3 high, so the guys in the upper bunks were constantly putting a toe on the edge of the bottom bunk to hop up.
A person who treasures privacy will have a difficult time even aboard modern fighting ships.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deadstick on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:03AM
that's where sailors would poop over the side
I'm gonna disagree with that: poop is from a french word that has nothing to do with poo. Nobody pooped from the poop deck but the senior officers, whose cabins were below it and overhung the water below the stern. The crew toilet was typically a two-holer flanking the bowsprit at the front end (hence head) of the ship.
Square-rigged vessels sailed before the wind as much as possible, so the crew were quartered in the bow and the officers in the stern where they usually didn't have to smell the crew quarters. "Sailing before the mast" meant being an enlisted sailor.