Bow Legged Seaman

[blackjohn]

Two cool articles on the skeletal remains of a sailor found in the wreckage of Cromwell's ship Swan.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticl...ws&section=news

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3651682.stm

[Silver Steele]

BlackJohn, I had read about that a few weeks ago, and infact just used him as a reference on another post. It's pretty amazing how much they can tell about someone, considering the conditions he was found in. And it also gives quite a bit of light upon how running around in the loft would have effected a person, even at such a young age. I wonder though, how long he had been running around in the loft? Since he was 10-12? Or did that happen over just a few years?

[JoshuaRed]

Wow those are fascinating! Thanks for posting John! It's funny - sometimes I forget just how small people were in those days compared to us. It was the same thing when I went to the Whydah museum and saw the shoe/legbone/stocking display. Tiny feet! Tiny men! Wee little pirates scurrying about the ship!

I believe the average height was about 5'4" or 5'5", no?

[Madam Macaw]

Very interesting indeed. Now why was only one skeleton found - currents, animals, etc. Mayhaps this one was pinned somehow. Very interesting.

[Hawkyns]

Well, its a well known fact that all of Cromwell's army and navy were composed of rebellious freaks who had but recently escaped from Bedlam and were but a short step away from hanging.

Interesting though, how they can determine so much. I'd guess he'd been doing for quite a few years, considering how well developed they said the upper body was. I hope they publish on this, and not just in the trade journals. I'd love to see the full results on the dig when it is complete.

Hawkyns

(Captain Roderic Hawkyns, Sir Thomas Blackwell's Reg't, 3 Co,

Prince of Wales Brigade, The King's Army.)

Unrepentant Royalist

[Silver Steele]

Very interesting indeed.  Now why was only one skeleton found - currents, animals, etc.  Mayhaps this one was pinned somehow.  Very interesting.

I think I read in another article on this that initially they thought all the bones came from different people, but somehow they determined that they all came from one individual. Ill see if I can find the article again.

I found them. I had them bookmarked...

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/0...ce.sailor.reut/

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/scienc...sp?story=560544

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/commo...5E30417,00.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5962424/

[Fox]

Dr Colin Martin who has been excavating the Swan is currently working on a full report for a book. A preliminary report on the wreck is easily available in a book called "Scotland's Historic Shipwrecks" or something like that, written by Dr MArtin and published by Batsford.

A possible reason for the lack of other skeletons is that many of the men were ashore at the time, a contemporary report says that the ships floundered "in sight of their friends ashore". Also, many probably tried to jump ship and swim when they realised she was going down. Finally anybody still on deck when she finally went below the surface would have been washed away.

[John Maddox Roberts]

The assymetrical physique makes sense in this case. With his weak, bowed legs, this man probably used his arms to haul himself aloft. with his powerful arms, shoulders and chest, and his weak, stunted legs, this guy was a human chimp, ideal for a topman. And remember, while people of that era averaged shorter than modern westerners, the difference wasn't all that great. His 5'2" height was partially because of his deformed legs. Had he not suffered from ricketts, he probably would have been around 5'7" or so. Diet was also a factor. George Washington, raised on an aristocrat's diet, was 6'3", quite tall for a man of that era but not unheard of. Skeletons recently recovered from Herculaneum show that Italians of 2000 years ago averaged nearly as tall as their modern descendants.

[Fox]

The height issue is one which I have had to deal with a lot working with members of the public who almost all say "of course, they were much shorter in those days..."

The skeletal remains recovered form various archeological sites tend to show that people in the past have not generally been much shorter than we are today (though in the last 40 years or so we have grown enormously very quickly - I am noticably taller than my father, who was noticably taller than his for example...), certainly the upper end of 5 feet seems to have been common. What is often the case though (and I'm thinking particularly of an investigation into a number of buff coats from Littlecote House in Wiltshire here) is that our forebears were often much skinnier and had narrower chests than we do.

The common fallacy of people being much shorter comes I think from the Industrial Revolution period, when there was a mass migration from rural to urban areas. Thousands of people who had, for generations, worked long hours in the fields, eating very nutritious food and doing muscle building physical labour suddenly moved to an envirinment where living space was cramped and food was sub-standard producing a dramatic shrink in size. Since that time we have been steadily growing to our current heights.

To prove that people in the past really were shorter people often cite the low doorways to be found in many old buildings. However, you don't often find particularly low doors in the upper storeys of these buildings. The reason: over the centuries successive layers of flooring and raised thresholds have contributed to the shortening of doorways, but in the upper storeys the level has always been determined by the floorboards and they have not been raised. I don't say that this is always the case, but frequently.

[John Maddox Roberts]

The low doorways argument always causes me to posit this: In the far future, archaeologists will have only the most durable items in our houses to study: to wit, our bathtubs. Thay will deduce from these that Americans averaged about 5' in height, while Britons were closer to 7'. It would never occur to them that Americans bathed with their chins on their knees because of poor design. When I lived in Scotland was the only time that I could really stretch out in a tub, and I'm only 5'8".