General Chat

:-D :-D :-D :-D Well done!

Oh joy of joys!

Good old You Tube. I went on there last night and had a look. To my delight, I Found several new videos about cogs (niche market I would think!) including one that cracked it for me.

Cogs were flat bottomed like narrow boats and could be towed by draught animals. That would be the engine needed to exit against the tide wouldn't it?

Thank you for your input.

There is a bishops palace and an animal pound to come!

The cog was not very big by modern standards, the biggest being about 80 ft long and 26ft wide. They would certainly have fitted into the mill pond.

I am just wondering about the logistics of entry and egress.

I take your point Sharron and Maggie but somebody obviously doesn't know what he's on about. :-\

I thought the thread was about cog boats, not the development of mills and demise of mill ponds!

BTW the article quoted by RTR doesn't mention that it's a cog boat - merely a 15th Century boat - and there were quite a few types - and it looks too big to go down a canal!

Don't bother taking it apart Island. I know what I am asking about and I can see nothing even relevant to it i the usual essay.

".....once navigable canals in the Midlands...." What? :-S They still are navigable.

There are many mills connected to once navigable canals in the Midlands and East of England such as Langley Mill and the restored Houghton Mill. However the mills and canals were constructed in the C18 and the navigation were all narrow boats. with the exception of Lynn.

In the south of England the many mills were powered by small fast flowing rivers such as the Arun, the Test, the Itchen, the Avon and the Stour. They were not large and the idea of somehow using the mill pond and the sluice for even small ships as a way of working around the tide is not really on. Certainly there was never any kind of gates and sluice constructed in Portsmouth Narrows as a navigation aid. Such a construction would have been way beyond the available technology before 1809 and by then the Admiralty would have quashed any such plan.

Christchurch has a restored mill complete with a working wheel, millrace etc. The adjacent harbour and navigable Avon were never associated with small ships or even boats. However given the shallow draft of the harbour a flat bottomed boat would have had no trouble but it would have had to obey the tides and wait for a fair wind to progress up and down the coast.

This is interesting:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-39353551

The River Arun flows at a fair lick and Arundel was a port, twelve miles up I think.

This idea of diverting tidal flow is another topic. Salzman cites the sinking of a ship by the men of Dunwich, I think, to silt up a harbour somewhwere to grab the harbour dues from some other place. Pagham Harbour is partially in Sidlesham (Bishopric of Chichester) and partially in Pagham (See of Canterbury) and there used two entrances.

Thanks for your knowledge, Andysmum, I might come back to you as you know what you are talking about.

It is quite impossible go against the tide on the turn or a foul wind with a flat bottom boat such as this:

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/newport-medieval-ship-opening-date-17288380 which is similar to the trow which gave a famous pub in Bristol its name

or indeed any sailing boat without an engine or a tug - in the days of the tall masts it was quite usual for them to get out to sea towed by rowing boats.

Today the remaining flat bottomed east coast sailing barges can make way by dint of lowered larboards and clever manipulation of a complex gaff rig with a large sail area. Only one remains without an engine, the
https://thamesbarge.org.uk/boats/edme/ EDME

There have been of course many different ways to get around the problem.
The Vikings used longboats with a deep keel which could cut into the water and rowing for motive power plus a rudimentary sail when possible. The Saxons had nothing like it and never had much in the way of men of war. The Romans , Greeks, Persians, Carthaginians and Barbary pirates went in for rowing powered by slaves. Very effective in the med but not in the SW approaches. The traders of Flanders with their cogs and wotnot simply did the sensible thing and waited on the tide and wind. Their main destination in Britain was London where the Thames had not yet been channelled. The cog sort of trader was idea and was the basis of the traders of the Hanseatic league.

South coast harbours have never been an easy proposition whether sailing an old school merchant man up to the turn of the century, J-class yachts or early engineless yachts such as the Folkboat. AFAIK today Christchurch, Lymington, Portsmouth all require an engine while for Lymington & Pompey there is the need to use VHF and have a berth booked and paid for. . The most sail friendly harbours are Keyhaven and Langstone.

I would not agree that there was much in common between early merchant ships, built for trade and the killing machines of war which were the Viking longboats There has never been much crossover between war and peace.

'I have sailed with Burgess once before, I think I know him well
If a man's a sailor he will get along, if not then he's sure in hell'

Apparently, the "increased flexibility further enhanced by the ships flat bottoms enabled them to land on beaches and shallow mud flats"
So, one can only presume, if they could land on these areas, they could get off!

And then I found this:
"Manoeuvring and docking was done in the early cogs (descendants of the Viking knorrs) by oars, but as the ships developed they had too much freeboard to be rowed, so it had to be done with the aid of longboats and kedging. The single sail did not allow for manoeuvring."

Which came from this:

https://www.startedsailing.com/cogs-and-other-12th-century-sailing-vessels.html

I hold a mensa certificate - doesn't mean I'm an expert on Roman Catholic altars!

Now, this is an interesting snippet:
"In 2012, a cog preserved from the keel up to the decks in the silt was discovered alongside two smaller vessels in the river IJssel in the city of Kampen, in the Netherlands. The ship, dating from the early 15th century, was suspected to have been deliberately sunk into the river to influence its current"

So, it appears they physically tried to change the water flow to adapt to the cog.

Not a chance (holder of Yacht masters cert.)
Not only would the cog need the tide in its favour if would also need a fair wind.

The answer to your first question is that it would depend on how strong the tide was.

We used to sail out of Portsmouth harbour, which has a narrow entrance that the tide rips through at speed. Our first small yacht didn't have an engine and we made a point of never trying to sail against the tide - we would simply have gone backwards!! The harbour authorities later introduced a rule that all boats had to use engines when negotiating the harbour entrance.

The answer to your second question I'm not sure about. Can you sail round the side of the sluice gates? If you can, and the tide is diverted, then you probably could go against the tide. It would not be practical to use the mill-pond as a harbour run by the port authorities, but there would probably be nothing to stop owners of small boats using it as a sheltered anchorage.

I hope this is of some help. :-)

But I can Google it myself!

Don't know but I do know of a man who probably does ;-)

I know absolutely nothing about sailing and seamanship and I am not sure if anybody on here can shed any light on this but I will put it to you anyway.

Could you sail a cog, medieval coaster (unless anybody knows better!) with a shallow draught, out of a harbour mouth against the tide?

It is not actually a harbour mouth I am looking at, it is a possible mill-pond which would have hinged sluice gates which would open with the incoming tide and close with the outgoing tide to divert the water to the mill-race.

I want to know if the mill-pond, which would be quite substantial, could also be used as a harbour or if the port facilities would have had to end on the sea side of the sluice gates.

Now you know I have nothing to think about all day don't you?