Saturday, August 07, 2004

A Dutch warship from 1629: the Thetis

I have only scratched the surface of analyzing the Dutch warship lists from 1628 to 1633. I will continue to publish tidbits, as I can, to give you a flavor for what we have. I picked out one ship for today, the Thetis, a ship of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. The Thetis was commanded by Captain van Abt. She carried 30 guns and had a crew of 100 sailors. We don't know dimensions, but we know she was of 250 lasts. To give you an approximate idea of how large a ship of 250 lasts was, I have two example sets of possible dimensions:

1) 130ft x 34ft x 13.5ft

2) 134ft x 32.25ft x 13.5ft

Amazingly enough, we know the list of guns for the Thetis:

2-24pdr, 2-Chambered 18pdr, 2-18pdr, 12-12pdr, 10-8pdr, 2-5pdr, 6-steenstukken plus 12 chambers for them

Chambered guns were typically lighter and made of brass. They had a chamber for gunpowder that was of smaller diameter than the gun bore. As for steenstukken, I had long assumed that they were similar to fowlers, but Jan Glete says that they were swivels, and despite their name, they probably fired iron shot, not stones, as least by this date.

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