The Phoenix The Boats That Built Britain


The Phoenix

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Britain is an island surrounded by a cold and unforgiving sea.

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For centuries, it protected us from attack.

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But to prosper and thrive, we would need to do more than just hide behind her salt water shield.

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Britain needed brave men, willing to venture out into the unknown.

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And she needed good boats to take them there.

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I've spent my life at sea.

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Now I'm going to take passage on six boats that, together, tell the story of modern Britain.

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Built for exploration, war, fishing, industry and our very survival...

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these are the boats that built Britain and changed the way we live forever.

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This time, I'm sailing on a square-rigger.

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This one form of rig did more to shape the world we live in today than anything else afloat.

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Carrying goods all over the globe, the square-rigger was the workhorse

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of the industrial revolution and the ship that turned Britain into the richest country in the world.

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This is the Phoenix.

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She's got two masts which makes her a brig, and to see her come over the

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horizon, thundering down on you on a windy day with a bone in her teeth and her topsails bellowing out

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to the wind, is one of the great thrills this world has to offer.

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It's been said that the wooden square-rigged

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sailing ship was the most important vehicle ever devised by man.

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These were the vessels that took sailors to the four corners

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of the earth, and made Britain the world's first industrial superpower.

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At the beginning of the 19th century, with the Royal Navy

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policing the high seas after the battle of Trafalgar,

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the world opened up for ships like these.

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Now, merchants were free to trade around the globe without fear of attack.

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And it was the square-rigged ship, with its forest of shrouds, stays

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and spars, that became the vessel of choice.

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Pushed by the trade winds that circle the world, these ships could travel huge distances, sailing

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non-stop for weeks at a time and handling everything that the oceans could throw at them along the way.

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Vessels like this made fortunes for their owners

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in the mid-19th century, but to understand where they've come from, we have to understand that

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trading on the water goes back to the days before the dawn of history.

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As an island, Britain has always depended

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on trade with the outside world for things we can't produce ourselves.

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Long before the Romans came over here and stirred things up a bit, the Celtic tribes living in these

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south coast harbours and creeks used to trade with their opposite numbers over in Brittany.

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Back then, trade was simple and restricted to a few luxury goods.

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Maybe wine from the Rhone, or olives from Provence.

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It's a simple equation, trading one thing for another.

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But as boats got bigger and the world grew smaller,

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the complexity and scale of sea-trade began to grow.

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And with the expansion of the British Empire at

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the beginning of the 19th century,

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Britain was exploiting business opportunities all over the world.

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Here at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the very fabric of the

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building testifies to the vast wealth this period was generating.

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And on the museum walls, pictures capture the world the sqaure-rigged ships created.

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One painting in particular depicts a scene that must have been repeated

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thousands of times at docks up and down the country in the 1800s.

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Henry O'Neil's The Parting Cheer.

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Wow. It's alive, isn't it?

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It really gives you the feeling that the world is expanding.

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These people are going out looking for new horizons.

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It's...I guess boom time for the British Empire.

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Absolutely. You're talking about the mass movement of people

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and goods, but also ideas and cargos

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all moving round the British Empire,

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and for that you need a step change in the size of ships as well.

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As this shipping company atlas proudly shows,

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by the middle of the 19th century, Britain either

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controlled or was trading with virtually every country on earth.

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And it was the square-rigger that tied it all together.

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So, until really quite late in the nineteenth century, square-riggers are

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carrying the bulk of Britain's trade, especially the high bulk, low value goods like coal and cotton and this

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is still an age of high adventure on the high seas for Britain's sailors.

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So how did these sqaure-rigged merchant ships come about?

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Britain had been trading with the Far East and the Americas since the beginning of the 17th Century.

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But with the European powers almost continually in conflict,

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and pirates lurking behind every other headland,

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the sea was a dangerous place in those days.

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Merchant ships looked more like men of war,

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weighed down with the guns and troops they needed for protection.

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But as the oceans became safer following Trafalgar,

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merchants were finally free to trade without fear of constant attack.

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Now, speed, sailing ability and cargo capacity were more important than firepower alone.

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Relieved of the need to carry a serious battery of artillery,

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merchant ships could become leaner, faster, more manoeuvrable craft.

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Time was becoming money, and ship builders looked to new designs.

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The efficient brig and her big sister, the full-rigged three-master, now developed rapidly.

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And as the focus switched from war to wealth, these rigs drove sharper, speedier hulls.

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They would soon become the backbone

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of the greatest merchant fleet the world had ever seen.

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Fortunes were there to be won.

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And it wasn't just foreign goods, Eastern spices and silks, that were making money.

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Every corner of Britain was getting into trade,

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exploiting whatever was at hand in the pursuit of profit.

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And one place captures this new attitude perfectly.

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And it's here, in deepest Cornwall.

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You don't expect to see slag heaps and open casts pits like this in Cornwall, do you?

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But they're a mute witness to the Cornish people's urge to get rich quick over the past 150 years.

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These vast mines once produced tens of thousands of tons of clay.

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The particularly fine clay demanded by makers of bone china,

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the must-have domestic item for any fashionable 19th century household.

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The only problem was that British manufacturers were based up in the Midlands.

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With land transport ineffective and prohibitively expensive,

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only the sea offered a viable means of conveyance,

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and the mine owners stopped at nothing to get their cargo ships as close to the clay as they could.

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This is Charlestown harbour, carved out of the solid rock of the hillside.

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An impressive feat of engineering in a place where nature never intended there to be a harbour at all.

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But it was all in a day's work to the industrialists and ship owners of the mid-19th century.

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The sort of thing they would do at the drop of a hat in the pursuit of profit.

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And that profit was made by the ships that could now come and go,

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laden, in the case of Charlestown, with the clay mined just inland.

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Throughout the 19th century,

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this little dock would have been packed with all the boat-related

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businesses you need to keep a fleet of trading vessels afloat.

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Most of that has long gone now, of course.

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But here at Charlestown, you can still get a flavour

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of what it must have been like when square-riggers were the shuttles of the loom of industry.

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Today they're replacing the mast on one of these great ships.

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And it shows the first thing you need if you're going to build a square-rigger...

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wood.

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Lots of it!

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Francis Browne is a skipper and shipwright who has spent his life working on square-riggers.

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He knows every inch of what goes into making one of these wonderful craft.

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This is the inside planking. It's known as the ceiling.

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This planking runs all the way fore and aft on the vessel

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and it adds terrific longitudinal strength to the vessel.

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You can see the thickness of the planking here, this is a good three inches thick.

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It's very solid. And the frames behind and then, of course, the external skin of planking,

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which on this vessel, is another three and a half, four inches.

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So, there's a massive amount of timber in these vessels.

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It's unimaginably strong, isn't it?

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-Very, very strong.

-And we've got metal work here, haven't we?

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This is actually iron work,

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forged iron hanging knees, and they run right down inside.

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And that's continuing here under the deck.

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This beefs up these

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deck beams and ties it all together.

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It's very much a living component.

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The way it's been constructed, it all works together and it all does move a little bit at sea.

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Nothing is so rigid that it can't move and give a little bit as it makes it way through the seas.

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And every one of these planks had to be hand made and fitted by a team of craftsmen.

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Today, another of the Charlestown fleet is in dry dock having new

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planks fitted to her hull, which gives us a chance for

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a close-up view of the work that goes into building and maintaining these boats.

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First of all, the gap left by the plank to be replaced is measured and a template is transferred

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onto the new plank so it can be cut to the right size.

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They then have to make sure that the bevel of the plank is correct so that it fits perfectly.

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Now, the boys are drilling the plank so it won't split when they fasten it in with giant nails.

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Before the plank can be offered up into place,

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the edges are greased with tallow to help it slide in more easily.

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Of course, they're hoping that their measurements are right, so that when

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they insert the plank, it fits perfectly.

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Good job, lads.

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Now, it's 'hold the forward end up with a jack and hammer it home',

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leaving the aft end over-length so they can cut the exact fit

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after she's been half-secured.

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Once they're happy, they can start fastening

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by driving six inch nails through the plank and into the frames.

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To finish off, the nails are countersunk to really make sure they're not going anywhere.

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It's great to see these guys whacking away with these big hammers.

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The explosive force that they're using

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to drive in these great big spikes and every single one of those bangs

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is putting strength into this ship.

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The strength in a wooden boat is remarkable

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and this is the way they've been built since time immemorial.

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These are ancient skills.

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With 19th-century Britain crying out for ever more ships

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to meet demand, vessels like these were being built in their hundreds

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up and down the country.

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And it was happening in some unlikely places.

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It wasn't just fully-fledged shipyards that were carrying out this work,

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boats were being built anywhere they could find the materials and the labour.

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I've just brought you in here while the lads are sledging in the plank

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under the ship out there to make a point.

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We're in a full on shipyard here, great bit shed, all sorts of things

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going on around us, substantial establishment.

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It wasn't always like that, and in fact, in the 19th century,

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a lot of ships were built in an extremely vernacular environment.

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There's a picture here of a schooner being built literally under a cliff in a Cornish village.

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You see the size of the chaps here?

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This is a substantial vessel.

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What really impresses me about her is this beautiful shareline and the sweet shape of her stern.

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That is an extraordinarily beautiful vessel.

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Her masts are rigged and ready to go.

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They've done the whole thing, these guys, these villagers on the beach.

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No shipyard, no nothing.

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Just a bunch of guys who could do it.

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This was happening all over Britain.

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Today, large-scale wooden ship-building is virtually a lost craft, kept alive by a few good men

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who still have the skills that were once so common.

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-That the last one, Scott?

-That is the last one.

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They're now in the final stages of fixing this one plank in place,

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a job that's taken the whole afternoon,

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and this boat is skinned with more than 200 planks.

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Now, the plank's in. The last lap is caulking to make her watertight.

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The caulking material is oakum, hemp fibres soaked in pine tar.

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It's hammered in with a special tool called a caulking iron.

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When the boat gets back in the water the planks will expand,

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squeezing the oakum even tighter, an effective and natural way to get a strong, tight hull.

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The whole process is rounded off with a liberal application of tar.

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Planking a wooden ship like this is a timeless art.

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But what's under the water on a square-rigger is only half the story.

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Her real glory, the part that gives her the name, is up in the sky.

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A cathedral in wood and rope.

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This riot of a maze of wood and rope up here looks like chaos

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to a landsman, but to a seamen, it is the pure poetry of motion.

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It's the beating heart of sqaure-rig, where every spar and every rope is counted.

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And before you set sail on a square-rigger, it's as well to understand the basics.

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If we look at the main mast here, we can see that there are three spars going across it.

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The sails are attached to those at the top edge.

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The rest of the sail comes down and fills the gap beneath the spar.

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The spar is called a yard.

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The bottom one is called the main yard.

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The next one up, that's the topsail yard and the sail is set then underneath it.

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That's a big, big sail when that yard is hoisted

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but it's the working sail of the rig, the powerhouse.

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The one above it, for fair weather, is the royal.

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But the reason why this is so special, is because it is a single sail.

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It took a lot of men to handle that sail and there's some brutal work attached to doing it, too.

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Later on, square-riggers divided their topsails into two halves, one above the other.

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This made the rig easier to handle, and allowed it to be sailed more cheaply with smaller crews.

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That single topsail proves to us that she's as she would have been in the middle of the 19th century

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at the height of trade at the peak of empire, and at the zenith of sqaure-rig.

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Now I'm going to get the chance to sail one of these iconic ships for myself.

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Skipper says we've got to get on top of the tide, so we've got to go. It's the only time they can.

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Still, I've been looking forward to sailing on this little ship for a long time, so...here we go.

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Over the wall.

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As we hit the top of the tide, we're faced with the task of manoeuvring the ship out of the dock.

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Today we've an engine, but it's still a highly-skilled operation.

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150 years ago, without the benefit of diesel power,

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we'd have had a team of dockers armed with rope, capstan and work-hardened muscle,

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inching the boat out to sea.

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Ease it down gently, now. Ease down gently.

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It's nerve-wracking stuff and it's a tight fit.

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But the skipper and crew know what they're about

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and with only the merest kiss of the dock wall, we're out.

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Now that we're safely clear of the harbour, we can begin the serious business of setting sail,

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which is no small undertaking in a boat this size.

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On modern boats, the furling and loosing of the sails is done from the deck.

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With a square-rigger, you've got to go to the sails and that means climbing the mast.

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Back in the 19th century, they'd never heard of health and safety

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and for a young seamen, getting sent up the rigging at sea was one of the first tests of nerve he'd face.

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And looking at the heights involved, it isn't hard to see why you'd feel just a little apprehensive...

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OK. The boys and girls have gone aloft to release the topsails.

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The two topsails are the first we're going to set, so the guys have got to undo the gaskets.

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That will let the sails fall a little way away from the yard

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and they're then free to be handled from the deck.

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What you don't want when you're half way through hoisting that yard is a foul up.

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She's coiling up the little gaskets, the ropes, coiling them up neatly

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and just tossing them down over the front of the sail.

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With so many sails and lines, there's a lot that can go wrong.

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So it's vital that each task is done neatly, properly, and in the correct order.

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Back in the 19th century, practice over and over again would

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have drilled every seamen to get it right at any time in any conditions.

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Wondering whether you're tying the right knot 70 feet above the water in a gale of wind wasn't an option.

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Just the windage of the rig, the weight of the wind just blowing

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in the rigging and those two little rags of canvas, is blowing this ship along at three knots.

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As each additional sail is set, the speed of the ship slowly builds up.

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The mate and her hand here are working the braces.

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Those are the ropes that actually control the angle of the yard to the wind,

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so they're now actually controlling the set of the sail.

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Troops are giving the halyard another tweak and the boat is picking up speed.

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We've now got two topsails and a jib set, and already, The Phoenix is travelling at a fair lick.

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But even with gale force eight forecast, there's more canvas to set.

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Next it's the main staysail.

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The skipper wants more speed, so we're going to set the forecourse,

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that's the big sail at the fore end of the ship, set on the foremast.

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Unlike their navy counterparts, merchant skippers couldn't rely

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on military discipline to control their crews.

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With small crews relatively free to jump ship, a more consensual approach

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was required to maintain morale and get the job done.

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And what's so nice about this is that this is a small crew.

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It's the sort of crew that would have sailed this vessel had she been a cargo vessel 150 years ago.

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It's great teamwork, isn't it?

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Now, as then, a well-drilled crew is the way to get the best from a boat.

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With five sails set, The Phoenix is starting to move beautifully.

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Back in her working days, a boat Phoenix's size would have carried a cargo of around 80 tonnes.

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Sometimes bulk goods like Cornish clay, but mostly high-value merchandise

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such as tobacco from America, a journey she'd have made in around 30 days.

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Out on the high seas for long passages like that, square-riggers could run into some serious weather.

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But these were capable, ocean-going vessels,

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and today with the wind touching gale force, Phoenix is handling it without a second thought.

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Absolutely marvellous. This is the power.

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This is the wind that drove these ships around the world, because it was harnessed by the sailors.

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They made it work for us,

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they turned it into miles and they turned those miles into profit.

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The wind, the free engine of God.

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With a steady wind behind her,

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a square-rigger will just keep on going.

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And by the 19th century, huge amounts of data had been collected about those winds,

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put together by thousands of English-speaking captains sailing the oceans,

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all of whom needed to know just what the wind would be doing, where and when.

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The special charts that were compiled from this data meant that with a little forethought,

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a merchant captain could be confident of finding what became known as the north-east trade winds,

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and the powerful westerlies that would drive his ship across the oceans and get the job done.

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Ocean sailing is all about planning.

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A lot has been known for centuries about the way the wind blows in oceans.

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Suppose you're going to trade sugar from London to the Caribbean.

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Once you can get down here, you've got almost guaranteed

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north-easterly winds that are going to chase you

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across the Atlantic.

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That will take you to the Caribbean.

0:23:190:23:21

Down here, down the coast of Spain and Portugal,

0:23:210:23:24

You've got almost certain northerly winds, which are absolutely fine.

0:23:240:23:28

With a bit of luck, you'll have some southerlies

0:23:280:23:31

and south-westerlies to bring you up the coast of North America.

0:23:310:23:34

Once you get into the North Atlantic,

0:23:340:23:36

you're almost guaranteed to have westerlies

0:23:360:23:38

to carry you home again to London.

0:23:380:23:40

So, if you can plan to be in the right place at the right time,

0:23:400:23:45

the wind's fair. The square-rigger is bowling along without a care in the world.

0:23:450:23:50

With the trade winds and westerlies to power them, square-riggers straddled the world,

0:23:560:24:01

from the West Indies to South East Asia, and all points in between.

0:24:010:24:05

Driven by a rig, perfectly adapted to the job in hand.

0:24:050:24:09

It's been a good few years since I went aloft on a square-rigger,

0:24:140:24:18

but without getting up into the rig, there's no way you're ever going to

0:24:180:24:22

understand what these boats are really about.

0:24:220:24:26

This is absolutely amazing.

0:24:280:24:30

I'm up here in the engine that drove commerce, from the time of Noah

0:24:300:24:38

until steam started to take over in the latter part of the 19th century.

0:24:380:24:42

And the feeling is of flying through the air like a bird.

0:24:420:24:47

If you're not used to it, it's a little bit frightening. It's year since I've been aloft.

0:24:470:24:52

But I won't have missed it for anything.

0:24:520:24:54

From here, of course, you've got a fantastic view of the horizon.

0:24:540:24:59

Sailors have been seeing stuff coming up over

0:24:590:25:01

the edge of the earth from here since the Vikings and before.

0:25:010:25:05

But the best views of all were in that latter part of the 19th century,

0:25:050:25:10

when the masts were tall, and the ships were fast

0:25:100:25:13

and the yards were well slung and the sailors were at their very peak.

0:25:130:25:18

This is the place to see the sea.

0:25:200:25:23

This was the golden age of sail.

0:25:300:25:33

And as the 19th century progressed, the ships got bigger and ever faster.

0:25:330:25:38

But just as these glorious craft were reaching their peak, a new technology arrived that

0:25:390:25:45

was to exert a slow stranglehold from which they could never recover.

0:25:450:25:49

Steam ships didn't have to wait for a favourable wind to make progress.

0:25:520:25:56

They could travel anywhere, at any time, and they could guarantee a schedule.

0:25:560:26:02

In a world where time was now money, the writing was on the wall for sail.

0:26:030:26:09

Today, very few of the great square riggers remain to paint

0:26:120:26:16

a true picture of the incredible scale of the trade they drove.

0:26:160:26:20

But at ports like Liverpool, a harbour which once handled cargo from all over the world,

0:26:220:26:28

you get some idea of the astonishing place these craft once held in our national and international life.

0:26:280:26:35

Believe it or not, this is sailing-ship country.

0:26:390:26:44

They walked them into here.

0:26:440:26:46

There's a capstan on the quay over there

0:26:460:26:49

that's left over from the days that the last sailing ship was in here.

0:26:490:26:54

It's a place of ghosts.

0:26:540:26:56

Remarkable atmosphere.

0:26:580:27:01

You can hear the crowd singing the shanties

0:27:010:27:05

as they walked round that capstan to get the sailing ship out to go out through that gate,

0:27:050:27:12

turn starboard into the river, pick up her tug,

0:27:120:27:14

down to the bar, spread her topsails and away for Australia.

0:27:140:27:20

Today, the square-rigged ships are long gone from Liverpool.

0:27:220:27:26

But the memory of the time they filled these docks lives on in the songs that the sailors sang.

0:27:260:27:32

And in Liverpool's harbourside pubs, you can still find men who

0:27:320:27:35

know the tunes that once rang out on British ships all around the world.

0:27:350:27:40

INSTRUMENTS OBSCURE VOCALS

0:27:400:27:42

# Running the east wind now

0:27:510:27:53

# Running the east wind now... #

0:27:530:27:55

The docks are still here,

0:27:550:27:58

but the men who worked them have faded away.

0:27:580:28:01

They've been replaced by ever-more efficient machines.

0:28:010:28:05

You can't argue with progress, can you?

0:28:050:28:07

But I wonder if in 50 years' time,

0:28:070:28:10

men will still be writing songs in praise of container ships.

0:28:100:28:15

But it's not hard to see why they sang about the square-rigger,

0:28:180:28:23

a magnificent ship that changed Britain and the world for all time.

0:28:230:28:28

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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