Having 1671 and 1672 ship information sure is nice

I hadn't guessed how nice it would be to actually have some ship data from 1671 and 1672. I received some yesterday, all about ships of the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier. The 1671 information has length and beam, while the 1672 only has ship name, captain, number of guns, sailors and soldiers.

Corstiaen Eldertszoon (more name information)

The captain of the Rotterdam hired ship Roscam is usually called Corstiaen Eldertszoon. I found a little bit of information while searching online: "kapitein Cristiaen Eldersz Groendal" of the ship "de Vergulde Roscam". Corstiaen and Christiaen seem interchangable. This makes it appear that Groendal is the captain's real last name, while he is just the "son of Elder".

Writing Projects

I have three related writing projects about Dutch ships from 1600 to 1780's and the First Anglo-Dutch War. While there is still much information to find and learn, I presently know more and have more information. The challenge is to find time to write and complete what I have in work. I keep looking for a way to be able to go full time doing research and writing, but there is no obvious way to achieve that situation. In the mid-1990's, I would have said that this sort of information did not exist. However it does, and I would like to be one of the authors who publish some of it. There should be more, I would hope, as there are several researchers who know and either are or could write about it.

Dimension conversion

I thought of making an Excel spreadsheet to convert from Maas feet and inches to Amsterdam feet and inches. At lunchtime today, I implemented it. It makes the process of converting from Maas feet (308mm divided into 12 inches) into Amsterdam feet (283mm of 11 inches) a simple task.

The hired ships Pelicaen and Gouden Reael

I had forgotten that I had dimensions for the Amsterdam hired ships Pelicaen and Gouden Reael. Those two ships were hired in mid-1653 and served up through the voyage to Norway from September to November 1653. Both ships survived the storm off the Texel, as I recall. Many of the hired ships were long and narrow. Despite what David K. Brown wrote in his article about the speed and form of sailing ships. His thesis was that the form of sailing ships was irrelevant, due to the low speed-length ratio (speed in knots/sqrt(length in feet)). That is a valid assertion, but the length-to-beam ratio is still important for speed. Short wide ships have more resistance than long narrow ships. This is really intuitive and based on our experience. All you have to do is experiment with a short, wide, piece of wood. Push it in the water and see how fast it moves. Then try the same experiment with a long, narrow piece of wood. Even though both have flat ends, the long, narrow one will move faster and with less effort. Both the Pelicaen (24 guns) and the Gouden Reael (28 guns) had length-to-beam ratios above 4.0.