Learning About Building A Ship part two

Learning About Building Part 2

Picking up with where I left off from the last posting. I do need to mention that I do live very much near the Great Lakes and I could have gotten a “free” boat and towed it home but many are smaller sail boats- which would be nice when repaired- as a nice small sail boat but not the older looking pirate ship that I needed. The old, worn out, work boats found along the ocean coasts would be tempting, but as you have read in my last blog post that the alteration to a non-floating structure made this sort of operation impractical.

My early thought was to build the ship on dry land, making it look like a wreck that had been deposited on the sands of the shoreline. The Bristol Renaissance Faire has two ponds, one is called Lake Elizabeth and the other has no name that I know of and is more of a wetland then a water feature like Lake Elizabeth is. Lake Elizabeth is the pond located on the southern end of the faire property and has a long wooded bridge across it.

Building a structure on dry land is a very good idea and one that I would eventually wish to have stuck with. So if you have your own dreams of building something like the Dreadnought for your self I would suggest STRONGLY that you build it on land and keep it as a shipwreck.

The shipwreck idea allows the builder/owner to walk around the structure, put up ladders, scaffolding and what not all on a dry firm surface. Shipwrecks tend to be romantic looking to most people and that is a positive image. Yes a pirate ship on the water is impressive and fun but the work it takes to do the simplest things, like tighten a screw on a board a yard below the deck line on the outside of the ship, takes some thinking and skill. Yes it can be done but there are times when you do not want a challenge just to tighten a screw. And believe me when I tell people this and they come back with something like just tie a rope around your self and sling over the side--- well go ahead and try it yourself, once or twice or for all day in the cold or heat and see if you are up to the challenge. Dry land is the way to go. The other benefit is less amounts of moisture to deal with under the ship and with that cheaper building materials and methods.

So you can see that I have went from a Skull Cave display space, to a ship reworked, to now a shipwreck ship on the beach as a building to operate out of. What is next?

Thanks for reading.