From forest to fairway : hull analysis of 'La belle', a late seventeenth-century French ship
Abstract
This thesis is
a comprehensive analysis of the hull
remains of
La Belle,
a ship
wrecked off the coast of
Texas in 1684 during the failed
attempt
by Robert Cavelier Sieur
de La Salle to establish a colony at the
mouth of the Mississippi River.
The
analysis of
La Belle's hull focused
on
five
research goals.
The first
was to
reconstruct the conception and
design
of the hull. Because La Belle
was
built
on
France's
Atlantic
coast,
it
was expected that the ship would
fit into Atlantic traditions of
shipbuilding.
Instead, it
exhibits an ancient
Mediterranean
method
known
only
from
Renaissance manuscripts.
Until La Belle's discovery
no archaeological example
associated with this method
had been identified. Reconstruction
of the lines
also revealed
the unexpected use of surmarks that reflect a transition from
a
largely
empirical approach
to the architecturally-based ship plan.
The
second goal was the documentation
of a previously unstudied ship type, the
barque longue, through an analysis and
description
of the hull's
assembly and
its
comparison
to contemporary shipbuilding practices.
The third goal was an analysis of
newly
discovered
registries,
letters,
and
documents
specific to La Belle that raised
fundamental
questions regarding the ship's genesis and typological identification.
The fourth
goal was species identification
of the timbers to provide a more
detailed
picture of
forest
exploitation and to identify
whether
Old
or
New World timbers
were used
in the repairs noted
in the hull. The fifth
goal was to obtain
information
on the
origin of the wood through dendrochronological
analysis.
That
analysis raised
unexpected questions regarding
dating
and the possibility of re-use of whole
frame
sets.
Because there are no other
investigated late 17th-century shipwreck sites
from the
Rochefort
region with species and
dendrochronology data, La Belle has
provided a
benchmark for these two analyses.
These five
research foci
provide a unique picture of
late 17th-century
shipbuilding
in French Atlantic
shipyards and contribute to the study of
hull design,
ship typology,
construction and assembly, wood species use and origin,
dendrochronological dating,
and
timber reuse.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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