![]() ![]() Sometimes the ship’s carpenter had to build stalls and coops for pigs, chickens, sheep, or cattle. ![]() ![]() Besides food, provisions included all the necessary supplies: candles, firewood, brooms, buckets, rope, pots and pans, tools, beer, wine, and dozens of items needed for self-sufficiency during the voyage. These tasks filled a sailor’s time in preparation for a voyage and continued throughout the time at sea.Īs the time neared for departure sailors loaded and stowed the food, water, and other ship’s stores. Even the best of ships had leaky hulls and required frequent pumping of the bilge. Also the constant strain from wind against the masts and waves battering the hull weakened joints between boards on the decks and hull, requiring extensive scraping, re-caulking, and tarring. Masts, sails, and hull may have been damaged and required refurbishing- replacing masts or yards, sewing up sails. Before starting a voyage any ship needed some repair from her previous voyage. After the apprenticeship, they began to receive some wages, which were paid in a lump at the end of a voyage.Ī sailor’s work included many different tasks. Whether wealthy or poor, apprentices were bound to years of unpaid service to the ship’s master. Without a payment the boy often became little more than the master’s servant. Boys with such training could expect rapid advancement after the apprenticeship ended, and could anticipate becoming a first mate or a ship’s master by their mid-twenties.īoys from poor families could be accepted without a payment to the ship’s master, but there would be little hope of advancing above the level of able seaman after the apprenticeship. In return the ship’s master would see that the boy learned everything about sailing. The boy’s parents, if they had the means, paid a ship’s master or first mate a hefty sum to train the boy for up to nine years as an unpaid apprentice. To become a sailor a boy started as an apprentice no later than age fourteen. We may read accounts of early explorers sailing to unknown lands in the New World, but we seldom learn details about their ships or about the life of a sailor on those small caravels and carracks. NOTE TO READERS: After March 21st 2023 the URL will become inactive.The new URL for this website will be: ![]()
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