Neat neat manual

[MorganTyre]

Well, I believe the Elissa has set sail from my home port and is bound back to her own but she left me absolutely in love. I'd done quite a bit of work with and on smaller square riggers in the past but nothing near so grand and beautiful. Among many other things, the staff put on a one day quick sail-training session and though the turnout was sadly low, the enthusiasm was high. We hoisted 15 of the 19 sails (Three headsails, fore course, fore lower tops'l, fore upper tops'l, main t'gallant stays'l, main topm'st stays'l, main course, main lower tops'l, main upper tops'l, mizzen topm'st stays'l, mizzen stays'l, spanker, and gaff tops'l) and went through the motions of tacking. All in all a great time. Now to the point - All volunteer trainees get as course material a seamanship manual which covers an incredible amount of info from the simple such as belaying to a pin correctly to the obscure and arcane such as the "stroke oarsman" aboard a small boat. They offer this manual for sale in their gift shop area for $30 or so but they also sell a CD with the entire book in PDF format for $5. I don't know this for a fact but I assume one can probably get that same file if you contact the galveston seaport museum and do some sort of donation over the phone or via the internet. It's a neat neat book, way late for our period, but chock full of square rigger handling goodness.

[Dorian Lasseter]

That's excellent!

Wish I'd have seen that when I was there in Galveston couple years back. I did the little tour of the Elissa and the museum, very nice. When I have time I'll look on their website and see if they have it there.

Slainte!

[Red Cat Jenny]

Wow..I'm off to look right now. Thanks! Sounds wonderful!

[Patrick Hand]

Jenny... If you can find it in PDF (and who we send the money fer it to)..... that would be cool.......

[MorganTyre]

I'm going to do the legwork here and give the seaport museum a call today. I'll post this afternoon what I find out. As I said, I'm assuming they'll distribute it but I may just be making an ass out of Ume. Still, very cool book - I hope I can get it somewhat available.

[Coastie04]

Definitely sounds like a good thing. Another one that I have is often found on ebay or amazon is Eagle Seamanship. It's issued to all Coast Guard Academy cadets to teach them the basics of sailing on Eagle (as with Elissa, much later than GAoP, but some good basic seamanship for square riggers). And, since cadets stand just about all the duty onboard during the summer cruises, it goes into calling sail, organization, safety, etc. It's only about 200 pages, and a small pocket-book size, but it's full of info and good drawings. Another one that I have not seen personally, but sounds great and more period, is Seamanship in the Age of Sail: An Account of the Shiphandling of the Sailing Man-Of-War 1600-1860. It was just one of the recommended readings when I made sure that Eagle Seamanship was still on Amazon and it immediately caught my eye.

I'm not trying to defer attention away from the Elissa's seamanship manual, but just throwing some more resources in the pot. I'm really curious about the Seamanship in the Age of Sail book, since it's not necessarily a manual to sail by. However, there was the following review:

"As a relatively inexperienced captain of a small square-rigged vessel, this is an invaluable work. It has helped me learn to sail better. I have been using the book for reference for around a year now, and I have ordered a second copy for one of my crew (I'm unwilling to loan my copy out, as I keep using it)...There are a few petty typos and formatting issues, and I could wish for a better index, but the quality of the textual information is top-notch and the illustrations and beautifully clear"

Anyway, keep us posted on the possibility of getting that pdf.

Coastie