When did people start building model ships inside bottles, and who was it that built them? I don’t think it was the old “bored sailors killing time on long voyages” story I’ve heard. You read a lot about skrimshaw, carvings, and such in original sources, but I’ve yet to read about anybody building a ship in a bottle while at sea.
How long before people started “cheating” with hinged masts and welded together bottle halves? Was it ever considered to be a time consuming and meticulous artform or have they always been a novelty item?
This site has a bunch of extremely small Ships in Bottles (SIPs), some in flashlight bulbs. I’m told that people who glue bottles together are laughed at by the artists. The ones on this site are all put together piece by piece inside the bottles. As I recall, there’s an amusing example of one that was slightly mismeasured, so that the piece were slightly too big to fit together inside, but he had to build it nearly to completion before discovering that.
Interesting link, billehunt, but if those ships were all built entirely inside the bottle, then 1: Why do the hulls all the ships appear to be able to fit down the neck of the bottles they are in, and 2: Why are there no pictures of ships in progress, or even better, a picture-journal of at least one ship, so we can see the step-by step process?
Well, it’s not my site, and I can’t prove or disprove the reality factor. It looks real to me, but you be the judge. This link seems to be a good example of a complex ship that couldn’t be built with the hinged-mast technique.
That would be a nice addition to the site, but it’s lack doesn’t disprove the site’s authenticity. Maybe you can email the author and suggest it.
For what it’s worth, I conversed with the site’s author via email several months ago. He seemed pretty real to me.
The problem I have with the bored sailor theory is that I don’t believe the average man in the fo’c’sle wouldn have had any bottles to put ships in. Bottles take up space which the average sailor had little of. It would be more economical for the ship to carry barrels as opposed to bottles. As well, I thought booze on most ships was strictly controlled by the captain (grog rations and so forth), and any other bottles would be contraband.
So, would it have even been possible for a bored sailor at sea to acquire a bottle to put a ship in?
Well, hoarding your grog for a binge was a big no-no in the navies of old, so I’d guess that any container like a bottle would be considered contraband. That said, most sailors weren’t in warships. Merchant sailors certainly didn’t have as many restrictions and could well have had access to the materials needed. Officers on all ships carried a cache of bottled spirits on their voyages.
My objection to the “bored sailor” theory is that I’ve never come across any mention of this being a sailor’s pasttime, not to mention the “steady hand” needed for such an activity would be hard to master on a ship at sea.
If you should ever visit Denmark, there is a town on the small island of Aero (Aeroscobing) with a house (now a museum) that conatins 800 bottle ships. It belonged to an old sailor-Bottle Peter-who made them in his spare time. I’m not clear about when he did it-it may be that he made most of them after retiring from the sea.
Sailors had a short professional life as the physical demands were so great. A few might make mate, and many would lose their lives on the job but many others had no choice but retire and I guess they could try to earn a living making ships in or out of bottles. Probably their nostalgia would also push them to this kind of activity. I cannot imagine they would do anything like this on board as the life onboard would not allow it. They were just too busy and tired.
The US Naval Academy in Annapolis has a fine collection of model ships http://www.nadn.navy.mil/Museum/rogersshipcollection.htmlhttp://www.nadn.navy.mil/Museum/rsmcgallery.html
they have a collection of ships made of what appears to be ivory but is in fact chicken and beef bones. These were made by French sailors while being held prisoners by the British during the Napoleonic wars.
None of these are in bottles though.
I believe the ship in a bottle started when sailors were making model ships for sale and someone realized you could get much more for it if you put it in a bottle where it seemed it was impossible to introduce it.
A good model ship is a beautiful object but, unfortunately, very much outside my budget