Grantville Gazette Volume 93

by Bjorn Hasseler

  Some of the sections that follow are specific to either the man overboard or the shipwreck situations, and others are applicable to both.

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  Grantville Knowledge

  The Ring of Fire, creating the new timeline of Eric Flint's 1632 Universe, occurred in April, 2000, so first off, there is no knowledge in Grantville of anything that happened or was written after that date in the old timeline. Second, (fictional) Grantville is a rural West Virginia town of around 3000 people, with a small public library, a high school library, and a voc-ed center. It is not a center of higher learning by twentieth century standards.

  Looking at the up-time characters grid, Jack Clements (1940-) was with the Coast Guard for eight years, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. He told Eddie Cantrell, "Put in a lot of time handling small craft, and I've owned half a dozen good-sized boats of my own since." At the time of the Ring of Fire he owned a Century 3200 powerboat (32L x 10.5B ft.) (Flint and Weber, 1633, Chapters 34, 35, 38).

  Louie Tilman (1930-) was a thirty-two year veteran of the US Navy, reaching a rank of chief warrant officer 4. At some point in his service he was a member of the crew of the minesweeper Osprey. If we figure he joined the Navy at 18 (1948), then he served until 1980. He, too, owned a powerboat, a 28-foot Chris Craft which he took out on the Monongahela River (Id.).

  Anson Coffman (1951-) was a Vietnam veteran, eight years in the Navy (1969-77?). Don McConnell was in the Navy 1958-78; Michael Shaver, 1981-87; Ernesto Trelli served in the Navy during the Gulf War. And of course there's John Simpson, a naval officer in Vietnam.

  Any of these individuals may have recollections of Coast Guard or Navy practices during (or even after) their periods of service and may have personal libraries with material of interest. Navy safety regulations were based on those of the Coast Guard, which in turn were based on those of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the related Life-Saving Appliances (LSA) code (1998).

  There undoubtedly were some departures because of the perceived need to strike a balance between safety and military capability, especially in wartime. But I will look to the 1974 SOLAS (as amended 1983), the LSA, and the 1999 Coast Guard regulations (CG1999) as references they may have some knowledge of. I will also consider the 1914 SOLAS as showing what can be implemented with a less advanced technological base.

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  The Risk of Death from Immersion

  Depending on the location and the season, water temperatures can vary widely, from over 90o F in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and in the 80s in most tropical waters, all the way down to just above freezing. In temperate waters, the water temperature is likely to be well below your body core temperature. Heat flows from where it is hot to where it is cold, and the greater the temperature difference, the faster the flow. Water transfers heat much better than air, and the more of your body surface area is exposed to the water, the greater the rate of heat transfer. The movement of water over your body helps to remove heat, too.

  According to modern science (Brooks; Bieren), there are four stages at which death can occur as a result of cold water immersion:

  Stage 1: cold shock (3-5 minutes after immersion). This can occur at water temperatures under 77o F. The shock of immersion in cold water can cause panic and loss of breath control. If you swallow water, that initiates the drowning process. You can drown by inhaling just 150 milliliters. The cold shock can also result in muscle spasms, numbness in the limbs, and loss of grip strength. These in turn can affect the ability to inflate a lifejacket or swim to a buoy raft or boat. Finally, there are sudden changes in blood pressure, etc., and heart failure is a possibility.

  Stage 2: swimming failure (3-30 minutes). The cold makes it progressively more difficult to swim, most likely because of the local cooling of arm tissue. Stroke length is reduced, and the movements become uncoordinated. If you are trying to swim to safety, or you must make swimming movements just to keep your head above water, this is a problem.

  Stage 3: hypothermia. As the heat gets sucked out of your body, you lose dexterity (and thus the ability to hold onto a floating object) and eventually consciousness. Without a PFD designed for an unconscious survivor, that means you drown. And further heat loss can kill you even if you don't drown.

  After the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805), "sailors clung to flotsam and jetsam for up to 15 hours before rescue" (TransportCanada). Water temperature was probably around 68o F (based on Tangier).

  The expected time to unconsciousness is 3-12 hours for water in the 70s, 2-7 in the 60s, 1-2 in the 50s, 0.5-1 in the 40s (USPS). However, before losing consciousness, physical impairment and despair may lead a survivor to turn to face the waves and drown.

  Stage 4: post-immersion collapse. This occurs during or after rescue as a result of the damage to the lungs by previously inhaled water, the movement of cold blood from the extremities to your core, or a sudden reduction in arterial blood pressure.

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  Safety Aloft

  Prevention is better than cure. The topmen are of course at the greatest risk. They climb into the rigging with the aid of ratlines tied between the shrouds to form a ladder. In the seventeenth century, these were probably hitched at the ends (Anderson 129). In the mid-nineteenth century, rat-boards (battens) were sometimes used in place of lines (Mondfeld 288). The ratlines themselves replaced the Jacob's ladder (a rope ladder with wooden steps) by the sixteenth century (Nance), although the latter reappeared by the nineteenth century (OED). If the wind was strong, you ascended on the weather side (Harland 93).

  Once aloft, topmen had to move out on the yards in order to raise or shorten sail. Footropes ("horses") were "nonexistent until 1642 at the earliest, and probably not until 1680 on the topsail yards" (Harland 25; cp. Anderson 152). So that meant that the topmen of the 1630s had to stand, sit, or lie on the yard itself. Lifts are lines used to support the weight of the yard and it is possible they could be used as handholds.

  A"lifeline" ("jackline") is a line (manila originally, later wire) strung along a part of the vessel for men to hold on to. Steel (1794) says they are "for the preservation of the seamen upon the yards." The first record of the proverb "one hand for yourself and one for the ship" is from 1799 (Manser 213).

  It could be inconvenient to have to keep one hand on the lifeline, and so alternatively the sailor could be tied somehow to the yard or the lifeline. In the nineteenth-century Italian merchant marine, one end of a tether ("lasso") would be tied around the sailor's waist, and the other around the yard (Mercieca). Brady's The Kedge-Anchor (1847) suggested wearing a belt to engage the lifeline.

  The modern climber's safety harness, developed by a climber in the 1960s, transfers the load from the waist to the thighs (Alpinist). Tall Ships America says that these are "good candidates" for work aloft, but it prefers an arborist harness or an industrial full body harness, as they reduce the risk of back injury or falling out of the harness if inverted (Boulware).

  Several up-timers may have knowledge of these harnesses. Sherrilyn Maddox was a rock climber. David Caine was a power company tree trimmer. David Colburn and Sean Miller were firefighters in Fairmont, and Archie Stannard a fire department battalion chief in Baltimore. And there are several construction workers who may have worked on high-rises at one time.

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  Safety on Deck

  The first defense against being washed overboard is the bulwark, which is the extension of the ship's sides above the level of the deck (see part 2). Period illustrations also show handrails, particularly on upper decks (Anderson plate 3). Lifelines could also be strung along the sides of the ship, although I haven't read anything to indicate that this was a seventeenth-century practice.

  Even in the early twentieth century, stormy weather could isolate the forward crew from the aft galley. To facilitate passage from fore to aft, a lifeline can be run from one end of the ship to the other. In the late 1930s, ships were finally built with "tunnels" (belowdeck
s passageways from bow to stern) (Boles). If a modern ship lacked a tunnel, the sailors could wear chest harnesses and clip them to the lifeline. (Note that these harnesses are not suitable for work aloft.)

  Boarding nets could in theory serve, literally, as an additional safety net, but in the event of a mass evacuation they could prove an impediment to escape, as they did on the Mary Rose (1545).

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  Man Overboard!

  If you are unlucky enough to fall overboard, hopefully this is observed by someone else, who shouts, "man overboard!" If not, then perhaps the ship has posted a stern lookout who will see you floating in the ship's wake and sound the alarm. Either way, we hope that your comrade throws you a life buoy (see below) while this is still possible.

  Assuming that there is no compelling distraction—a storm, an iceberg, enemy action, etc.—the ship should heave to (use the sails to halt forward motion) and, if possible, first come about. (For the detailed commands, see Totten 219ff, Harland 289ff, and it's a slow process in a seventeenth-century ship.) In the meantime, the stern lookout and the men aloft will try to keep you in view. But it is unfortunately true that at best only your head is visible, and the view may be obscured by rain, waves, and spray.

  A boat may be sent to your rescue. But the two most dangerous moments for a boat's crew are when it is lowered into the water and when it is recovered."The decision whether or not to risk the lives of a whole boat crew in the hope of saving one man, depended on the weather conditions" (Id.) And you will probably only be visible to the boat crew when both you and the boat are on the crest of a wave.

  Yet another possibility. mentioned in CG1999, is to have a crew member put on a life jacket, attach a safety line to him or her, and have him or her stand by to jump into the water to assist you.

  If it is possible for your ship to communicate with other friendly ships or aircraft—either visually (see part 4) or by radio—they may be recruited to join the search for you.

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  Shipwreck

  Shipwreck is an even greater test of the expertise of the officers and the discipline of the crew. When it occurs, the question is whether it is better to stay with the wreck (a wrecked ship is not necessarily sinking, it may be aground or dismasted and thus unable to proceed, but still able to preserve those on board from drowning) or to abandon ship. Sinking can take seconds, minutes, hours, or days, depending on the exact circumstances.

  The division of the ship into multiple compartments and decks, with limited exterior and interior openings, helps to keep the ship watertight and afloat, but it can be an impediment for sailors and passengers in the interior trying to escape a sinking vessel. The narrowness of the passages can cause bottlenecks, as happened on the Mary Rose (as evidenced by the positions of the skeletons in the wreck).

  If the ship is to be abandoned, the best chance of survival is to do so in ship's boats, lifeboats, or life rafts, as these keep the survivors mostly out of the water and thus reduce the risk of hypothermia. These may be guarded until the captain orders "abandon ship!", lest a panicked sailor or passenger decide to help himself to a boat before the captain has given up hope of weathering a storm or other calamity.

  If you must jump into the water, your chances of avoiding drowning are best if you are wearing a personal flotation device. And even on a boat, a PFD may come in handy, as boats can founder, too.

  While landlocked Grantville is not likely to have much in the way of books for shipowners, it probably does have some popular books relating to survival of maritime disasters (the Titanic, the USS Indianapolis, various explorers, etc.) from which some useful information can be extracted.

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  Preparation for Disaster

  What up-timers are accustomed to: Under CG1999, all items of lifesaving equipment must be of a type approved by appropriate government authorities [199.40] and maintained and inspected periodically [199.45, 199.190]. To be accepted as an able seaman in the US Merchant Marine, you must pass an examination and have sufficient sea service (some of which may be on training ships). The examination includes demonstrating competence as a lifeboatman.

  On board, there's a muster list that details the emergency signals, the duties of the crew during an emergency, the substitutes for key persons if they are disabled, and how the order to abandon ship will be given. Muster and survival craft embarkation and launching stations are specified. For passenger vessels, there must be procedures for locating and rescuing people trapped in their staterooms [199.217].

  There must be trained people on board to muster and assist the untrained ones, and to operate the launching arrangements and survival craft. Training materials must be on board each vessel. Crewmen with emergency duties assigned by the muster list must be familiar with them before the voyage begins [199.180].

  A safety briefing is given to passengers the first day. Emergency instructions must be posted in passenger cabins and at muster stations, and operating instructions in the survival craft [199.80, 199.90, 199.100, 199.110, 199.120, 199.220, 240]. All crew members must participate in abandon-ship and fire drills at least monthly, and every three months, the abandon-ship drill must include an actual lifeboat launch and wearing immersion suits [199.180]. Use of line-throwing appliances must also be drilled every three months. Man-overboard drills (launching rescue boats and maneuvering them in the water) are conducted every month [185.520]. On passenger vessels, there are weekly abandon-ship drills for passengers and crew. [199.250].

  What the down-timers are accustomed to: None of the above. The up-timers may propose some of these measures, but they are likely to encounter resistance from the down-timers. There is a greater acceptance of risk among the latter; seventeenth-century sailors learned their jobs by aping the more experienced sailors, rather than in the classroom. There probably were no "man overboard" and "abandon ship" drills. There was no dedicated safety equipment.

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  Ships' Workboats

  Pre-Ring of Fire, sailing ships of a certain size carried boats. This was necessary because it was rare for ships to dock at a port, rather, they would moor (which by the way means anchor fore and aft) at a convenient spot and transport men and goods between ship and port by means of the boats. The boats of course drew less water than their host ship. They may raise a sail or be rowed.

  Ship's boats could also be used to haul the host ship if it lost its masts or ran aground, or to carry the carpenter around to inspect the hull for damage. Those of a warship might be used to carry sailors and marines to an enemy ship or to a beach near an enemy fort or town.

  Based on a 1625 inventory, a period warship probably would only carry at most three boats: longboat, pinnace, and skiff (Little). A later source (Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 1780), says merchant ships "seldom have more than two, viz., a longboat and yawl" (By then there were warships that carried five boats.)

  Harland (282) says that "until about 1800, all the boats were stowed on the booms amidship, sometimes nested one inside the other." However, that is not entirely true for our period. Its longboats were so large (21-52 feet) that they were usually towed behind the warship (Little; Morison 344; Baker 11-2). Montaine's The Seaman's Vade Mecum (1761) gives lengths of 29-36 feet for longboats, 23-30 for pinnaces, and 15-22 for yawls. Davis (163) states that the length of the largest boat would be about the square root of the length of its ship.

  "Before the introduction of davits in the 1790s [sic, see below], boats were hoisted using tackles attached to the yards. . . . The introduction of davits undoubtedly made this process faster, but their real value lay . . . in recovering men overboard, where seconds represented the difference between life and death" (Willis 79).

  Boats on davits were often stowed on the stern or the quarter (side near stern) of the ship, but that wasn't the only place a boat could be squirreled away. The nineteenth-century paddle-box boat was laid upside-down on top of the paddle-box of a paddle steamer, as can be seen on a model of the steam frigate HM
S Tiger (RMG).

  Ship's boats can be used either to rescue a person who has fallen overboard, as previously discussed, or to escape a shipwreck. As an example of the latter, in 1629, when the Batavia struck an Australian reef, the ship's longboat and yawl were used to reach the nearby islands.

  If a ship-boat wasn't available, it might be possible to use the wreckage to build a raft and reach shore that way, as happened with the La Salle in 1686. Even if one can't reach shore, you don't drown on a raft (although you may die for other reasons, as in the case of the Medusa, 1816). Even if you reach shore, you might not want to stay there. In 1609, the Sea Venture was deliberately driven ashore on Bermuda, and thus wrecked, and the castaways built pinnaces from local wood.

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  Survival Craft ( Lifeboats and Liferafts)

  Unlike the traditional ship's boat, a lifeboat is one designed and earmarked for use in carrying off the ship and crew in the event of a shipwreck. According to OED, "The first ship's lifeboat is generally considered to have been that designed by James Mather (1799–1873) of South Shields, Tyne and Wear in 1826, for use on his father's ship the Mary." And in 1831, the Times printed a letter suggesting that "all vessels employed in steam navigation, for conveyance of passengers, &c., shall henceforth, by act of Parliament, be furnished with two life-boats."

  Lifeboats (and rafts) may be classified according to their structure (rigid vs. inflatable) or means of propulsion (oars, sails, engine). Nowadays, typically, lifeboats are rigid and motorized, and liferafts inflatable and rowed. Typically, liferafts can be launched faster than lifeboats.

  An early objection (1870) to providing enough lifeboats for all on board was that "they would encumber the decks, and rather add to the damage than detract from it" (Wikipedia). Of course, shipowners were probably more worried about the effect on the bottom line. Lifeboats used only in an emergency occupied deck space that could carry cargo or passengers. Davits did help somewhat, as they had a small "footprint" and they held the lifeboats over the side of the ship where they didn't consume deck space.