Ships' Bilge Pumps: A History of Their Development, 1500-1900

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Texas A&M University Press, 1996 - History - 105 pages
All wooden ships leak, a stark fact that has terrified sailors since the earliest days of ocean travel. Maritime historical literature is filled with horrific descriptions of being aboard a slowly sinking ship. Starting from this human perspective, then, Thomas J. Oertling traces the five-hundred-year evolution of a seemingly mundane but obviously important piece of seafaring equipment--and tells the story of nautical innovation--in this one of a kind history of the ship bilge pump. Beginning with early sixteenth-century documents that recorded bilge pump design and installation and ending at about 1840, when bilge pumps were being mass-produced, Oertling covers a period of radical technological change. He describes the process of making long wooden pump tubes by hand, as well as the assembly of the machine-crafted pumps that helped revolutionize ship construction and design. Also given in detail are the creation, function, and development of all three types of pumps used from about 1500 to well into the nineteenth century--the burr pump, the suction or common pump, and the chain pump. Of further interest is Oertling's overall examination of the nature and management of leaks in ships' hulls. This work is well illustrated, with line art depicting the placement and use of pumps aboard the ships, early drawings showing pump design, and photographs revealing artifacts recently found at shipwreck sites. Of obvious interest to nautical archaeologists, maritime historians, and ship modelers, this book is written in an interesting and informative style, rendering it easily accessible to laypersons and amateur enthusiasts.

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Contents

Of Leaks and Men
3
The Construction of Wooden Tubes
10
The Burr Pump
16
Common or Suction Pumps
22
The Chain Pump
56
Later Pump Types
74
Summary and Conclusions
79
Notes
83
Bibliography
91
Index
99
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Page 6 - The standards of the cockpit, an immense quantity of staves and wood, and part of the lining of the ship, were thrown overboard, that if the water should again appear in the hold, we might have no impediment in bailing. All the guns were overboard, the fore-mast secured, and the machine, which was to be similar to...
Page 8 - Then men might be seene to labour, I may well say, for life, and the better sort, even our Governour, and Admirall themselves, not refusing their turne, and to spell each the other, to give example to other. The common sort stripped naked, as men in...
Page 8 - ... example to other. The common sort stripped naked, as men in Gallies, the easier both to hold out, and to shrinke from under the salt water, which continually leapt in among them, kept their eyes waking, and their thoughts and hands working, with tyred bodies, and wasted spirits, three dayes and foure nights destitute of outward comfort, and desperate of any deliverance, testifying how mutually willing they were, yet by labour to keepe each other from drowning, albeit each one drowned whilest...
Page 6 - ... that no man could go into the hold with safety. There was nothing left for us to try but baling with buckets at the fore-hatchway and fish-room ; and twelve large canvass buckets...
Page 14 - And our pumps being faulty and not serviceable, they did cut a tree to make a pump. They first squared it, then sawed it in the middle, and then hollowed each side exactly. The two hollow sides were made big enough to contain a pump-box in the midst of them both, when they were joined together ; and it required their utmost skill to close them exactly to the making a tight cylinder for the pump-box, being unaccustomed to such work. We learned this way of pump-making from the Spaniards, who make their...
Page 6 - I perceived the ship to be settling by the head, the lower deck bow-ports being even with the water. At this period the carpenter acquainted me the well was staved in, destroyed by the wreck of the hold, and the chain-pumps displaced and totally useless.
Page 52 - In the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the first decades of the twentieth...
Page 8 - The carpenter assured me that the ship could not swim long, and proposed making rafts to float the ship's company, whom it was not in my power to encourage any longer with a prospect of safety.
Page 7 - All this night they passed in great trouble and distress, for everything they could see represented death. For beneath them they saw a ship full of water, and above them the Heavens conspired against all, for the sky was shrouded with the deepest gloom and darkness. The air moaned on every side as if it was calling out "death, death...
Page 8 - Some appeared perfectly resigned, went to their hammocks and desired their messmates to lash them in, others were securing themselves to gratings and small rafts : but the most predominant idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes.

About the author (1996)

Thomas J. Oertling received a B.A. from Tulane University and an M.A. in anthropology with a specialization in nautical archaeology from Texas A&M University. One of the field's recognized experts on the ship pump, he has done extensive research and site work in ship reconstruction and has published numerous articles relating to nautical archaeology.

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