life at sea is better
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A History of HMS Surprise
From Wikipedia:
L’Unite was a French corvette, launched on 16 January 1794, and was armed with 24 eight-pound and 8 four-pound long guns. She was captured on 20 April 1796 at Annaba by HMS Inconstant. Unité was renamed HMS Surprise because another French ship also named Unité had already been taken into the navy. Surprise was re-classed by the British as a 28-gun, sixth-rate frigate. Under Captain Edward Hamilton, the Surprise sailed in the Caribbean for several years, capturing several privateers.
She gained fame for the cutting-out expedition in 1799 of HMS Hermione. Hermione’s crew had mutinied, and had sailed her into the Spanish possession of Puerto Cabello. Captain Edward Hamilton of Surprise led a boarding party to retake Hermione and, after an exceptionally bloody action, sailed her out of danger under Spanish gunfire.
She was sold out of the service at Deptford in February 1802.
HMS Surprise was the ship chosen by author Patrick O’Brian to restore Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, of the Aubrey–Maturin series, to his place as a captain, and eventually see him raise his flag as an admiral of the Royal Navy.
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…Dr Maturin came aboard in his usual elegant manner, kicking the port lids, cursing the kind hands that propelled him up the side, and arriving breathless on deck, as though he had climbed the Monument at a run.Patrick O’Brian, in The Fortune of War
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Once below and free of good mornings right and left, he [Jack] went straight to sleep, with barely a pause between laying his long wet hair on the pillow and unconsciousness; and fast asleep he remained, in spite of the rumbling boots of regimental soldiers and the din inseparable from working the ship, until the faint tinkle of a teaspoon told some layer of his mind that coffee was ready. He sprang up, looked at the barometer, shook his head, dipped his face into a kid of tepid water, shaved, ate a hearty breakfast, and appeared on deck, fresh, pink, and ten years younger.
Patrick O’Brian, The Mauritius Command
Haha, Jack and his coffee.
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from “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”
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It’s the officers of the Surprise singing Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmates!
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See also, the whole song and lyrics!
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Plans for HMS Surprise.
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You danced?’ Cried Jack, far more astonished than if Stephen had said ‘as we ate our cold roast baby’.Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander
(Source: thingsweread)
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Yeah… so that thing about me doing more personal posts? No bad feedback on that, I simply haven’t had the time. Barely finding the time to reblog something or post a photo. I want to do some more historical posts, but haven’t had a chance to put anything together.
I’ve been working at the Maritime Museum Wednesdays through Sundays, doing three one-hour harbour tours on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Californian’s been taking the place of Pilot while she’s being worked on in the yard. And while Californian can carry more passengers than Pilot, she needs at least three crew compared to Pilot’s one. It’s good fun to be out on the water, even though we’re not setting any sails. And I get to act as mate, which is a step up. But they really make me appreciate the Friday-Sunday four-hour sails. As fun as motoring in circles around the bay is, it is nothing compared to setting every sail and doing manoeuvres out in the ocean. Anyway. That was a rather long way of saying that I’ve been a tad busy lately.
So, I figured I’d share the scrimshaw on my knife handle that I did a bit ago. I chose Surprise for the front because she was the first ship I sailed as Sail Crew. And, well, it’s Surprise. I added a rose to her name to acknowledge her time as the Rose, of course. The compass rose on the other side was my very first scrimshaw. I wanted a design that would be simple to do and contained mostly straight lines, so that I couldn’t mess it up too badly. There is a fairly obvious mistake on there, but it’s hard to catch unless you stare at it for a while. I added the anchor a bit after that to fill up the empty space. Hold Fast we all know from Master and Commander, and it had a legitimate meaning of clapping on tight to a line. The rest of the edge was looking rather bare, so I included a rope pattern, which I may or may not attempt to shade in the future. This was all done by hand with a sailmaker’s needle. First I come up with a design on paper, then copy that onto the knife handle with a pencil before scratching it in with the needle. Instead of searching for white or silver India ink, I used a fabric marker I had lying around and it’s worked out pretty well. It was a lot of fun to do, and now I want to get another knife just to do more scrimshaw!
So, there’s a blog post for you. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with some more interesting things to post about in future.
Hello, there! My name's Katherine. I work at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, where I get to sail some lovely ships.
Here I post about my adventures aboard 