How a 16th-Century Explorer’s Sailing Ship Worked: An Animated Video Takes You on a Comprehensive Tour

These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past anoth­er announce­ment about some new tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment (real­ized or sched­uled) relat­ed to space explo­ration. Some react to this by won­der­ing what could pos­si­bly be out there in the uni­verse to jus­ti­fy such enor­mous­ly cap­i­tal- and research-inten­sive projects. Cen­turies ago, sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were no doubt voiced about the more adven­tur­ous kinds of sea­far­ing. In the new Ani­ma­graffs video above, you can see all that went into the con­struc­tion and equip­ment of a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship in great detail, from the keel to the fish davit.

The par­tic­u­lar ship you see bro­ken down into its con­stituent parts in this video nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed. But it may look famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you’ve seen the recon­struc­tion in Lon­don of Gold­en Hind, the galleon in which Fran­cis Drake cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the world in the fif­teen-sev­en­ties. The video’s cre­ator Jacob O’Neal drew a good deal of inspi­ra­tion from that par­tic­u­lar ship, but also incor­po­rat­ed oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics bor­rowed from the Mary Rose, the Mayflower, Swe­den’s Vas­sa, and var­i­ous Span­ish galleons of what we now regard as “the ear­ly age of sail, when ships began to cross the globe instead of mere­ly fol­low­ing coast­lines or cross­ing inter­nal bod­ies of water.”

How­ev­er advanced a mod­el it would’ve been in its day, this ship could only make a long transocean­ic jour­ney so com­fort­able for its crew of 80 or so, most of whom would’ve been sleep­ing on mats, sub­sist­ing pri­mar­i­ly on bread and beer (rationed at one gal­lon per man per day), and using rudi­men­ta­ry out­door toi­lets. Pre­sum­ably, few would have signed up for such a tri­al if not for the promise of bring­ing rich­es back from dis­tant lands — sup­ple­ment­ed, in the par­tic­u­lar case of the Gold­en Hind, by “unof­fi­cial­ly sanc­tioned pira­cy of Span­ish galleons.” We have here, in oth­er words, a vari­ety of pirate ship, the vehi­cle for swash­buck­ling adven­tures fan­ta­sized about by gen­er­a­tions upon gen­er­a­tions of young­sters.

I myself nev­er dreamed of pira­cy, but I do remem­ber the rap­tur­ous gid­di­ness with which my first-grade class react­ed to learn­ing about the sail­ing ship’s “poop deck.” O’Neal does­n’t neglect that com­po­nent, but nor does he dwell on it, hav­ing many more impor­tant parts to explain and con­tex­tu­al­ize in 40 min­utes. To get an idea of how dra­mat­i­cal­ly ships evolved as the age of sail pro­gressed, have a look at his hit video on the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry HMS Vic­to­ry just above. Though the age of space explo­ration seems to have yet to begin in earnest, some of us are no doubt already psych­ing our­selves up to climb into the mod­ern equiv­a­lent of the Gold­en Hind for the 34-month trip to Mars.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

16th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese His­to­ri­ans Describe the Odd­ness of Meet­ing the First Euro­peans They Ever Saw

How an Ancient Roman Ship­wreck Could Explain the Uni­verse

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.