Hanseatic three-masted cogg of the 15th century. Seaworthy sailing ship Hanseatic cogg Ship drawing Hanseatic three-masted cogg
Hanseatic coggs were, as a rule, single-masted, but in the second half of the 14th century a type of three-masted cogg appeared - hulk, or halq.
The average assembly time for one vessel is estimated to be three years. The main building material is oak wood. Massive structural elements (beams) were sawn from oak trunks, and not cut down, as in Viking ships. For the thickest beams, low grade wood was used, which significantly reduced the overall cost, and, accordingly, the durability of each ship.
Straight keel, short hull - the ratio of keel length to hull width was approximately 3:1. An almost straight, rather steep sternpost, as well as a high-mounted plank hull of the ship with clinker (“covered”) plating and an open deck.
In the 12th century, cogs - for the first time in the history of European navigation - had a rudder attached to the sternpost, equipped with a tiller. Before this, the steering oar served as the rudder of the ship.
A characteristic feature of the coggs was the high, crenellated superstructure on the forecastle and poop, designed to accommodate an armed crew, slingers and archers and crossbows. The North European cogs had one mast, with one straight sail.
A characteristic feature of the cogg is the hinged rudder. Superstructures with crenellated fencing for protection were built at the bow and stern of the ship; soldiers and guns were housed in them. If there is a keel, the vessel is practically flat-bottomed, due to the increased width of the middle part of the hull.
Kogg - the main type of ship of the Hanseatic League. This is a high-sided, decked, single-masted (later double-masted) vessel with a powerful hull. A characteristic feature of the cogs is a hinged rudder and straight stems, strongly beveled towards the keel line. The maximum length of the vessel is 30 m, waterline length is 20 m, width is 7.3 m, draft is 3 m, load capacity is up to 200 tons.
A straight rack sail with an area of 180-200 m2 was raised on a mast made up of several logs collected and fitted into a single trunk. The aft superstructure (sterncastle) was structurally connected to the hull. A platform with a jagged fence was attached to the sternpost. The stern area occupied about half the length of the ship. Below it there was a room with an entrance from the deck, and cabins, in the side walls of which windows were sometimes cut. The stem ended with an inclined mast - a bowsprit, which served to stretch the sail in front. Coggi Hanse rendered big influence for development sailing ships Northern Europe.
The model was assembled in 2012 (production time 4 months), my second model. The material is seasoned oak (more than 50 years old - used parquet). Scale 1:50. Dimensions of the model: length 600 mm, height 650 mm, width 320 mm. A cut was made on board to view the interior..... since the ship is a merchant ship, it has a hold with cargo - barrels, bales, bags.........
You can see more details on the neighboring forums - Parus, Free Swimming, Serikoff.
In the 13th and 15th centuries, a new type of vessel, the cog, spread in northern Europe. It was a high-sided vessel with straight fore and stern posts and one deck. The cog carried one mast with a straight sail. A distinctive feature of the Koga was the hinged rudder - the most important achievement in shipbuilding. At the stern and bow there were high platforms with jagged fences; soldiers were placed on them if necessary. Later, the space under the aft platform was sewn up from the sides, forming a room where the first cabins were located, sometimes with windows in the walls. The Kog was the main type of merchant ship of the Hanseatic League. The emergence and development of the Koga, capable of swimming in the open sea, had a strong influence on further development ships. The proposed koga model bears the distinctive signs of the Polish city of Elbląg (1350). The dimensions of the vessel are: Before starting work, carefully review the drawings and understand the design of all parts. Decide on scale. To obtain a scale of 1:100, the side of the square in Figure 1 should be equal to 2 cm, and for a scale of 1:50 4 cm. If the model is floating, it is better to take a scale of 1:50. For the body, select two pieces of dry wood for the future halves of the body. Cut them on the side and plan them in plan according to Figure 1. Between the resulting blocks, glue the keel, stem and sternpost made from planks. Process the sides with a knife and chisel in accordance with Figures 2 and 3. Remember that the hull is made only as high as the deck, without bulwarks. Hollow out the body of the floating model from the inside, soak it in hot drying oil, and after drying, draw a pater line. Having placed the model on the floor, load it with lead or other ballast so that it sits 2-2.5 cm above the waterline, and secure the ballast. Cut a deck from two pieces of 3mm plywood and secure it to the hull with glue and nails. Cut the bulwark out of plywood or cardboard and attach it to the sides with glue and nails so that its lower edge covers the junction of the hull and deck (see Fig. 3). After this, proceed to the final painting of the hull and bulwarks inside and out, varnish the deck, and make a hatch and windlass from wooden blocks (Fig. 5). While the model is drying, make bow and stern platforms from plywood along with their guards: make a steering wheel with a tiller, as well as vertical bars on the sides from scraps of planks, and make supports for the rear platform from wooden blocks. After preparing these parts, assemble them on the body according to Figures 1, 4 and 7. Make a mast, yard, bowsprit and flagpoles from square slats, varnish and install in place according to Figures 1 and 7. Attaching the yard to the mast is shown in Figure 6. Make shrouds, stays and other gear from thick threads, twisted if necessary , several times. Sew a sail, flags, pennant and lace them in place. Model color:
The sail is white or yellowish, the flags and pennant are red and white (red cross on a white background and white cross on a red one). Y. KAZAKOV, Odessa
maximum length 27 m
waterline length 20.5 m
width 7.5 m
draft 3.0 m
underwater part of the hull black-brown or black
freeboard brown
bulwark outside green-white
inside bulwark red
stern platform support brown
platform railings red
decks, masts, yardarms, flagpoles natural wood color for varnish
flagpole tips gold
Established over centuries trade relations between European states by the late Middle Ages led to the formation of shipbuilding centers. While the Italian maritime republics flourished in the Mediterranean, in northern Europe the coastal cities of the North German principalities began to unite into merchant leagues. The most famous of them is Hansa.
In 1241, Lubeck and Hamburg entered into an agreement to protect the sea trade route connecting the Baltic Sea with the North Sea from Scandinavian pirates. Hansa merchant offices appeared in Wismar, Luscheberg, Rostock, Gdansk, Berlin, and London.
“Mr. Veliky Novgorod”, owning the key to the main trade routes coming from the east and south, received especially important importance in European markets.
Hanseatic merchants recognized the Novgorod Gostiny Dvor in the city of Visby on the island of Gotland as one of the most important trading offices in their league. All goods transported on Hanseatic ships passed from the east and south through Novgorod and Pskov. The Novgorodians themselves sailed along Lake Ladoga, Gulf of Finland, Baltic and North Sea. The merchant boats of the Novgorodians, in addition to German cities, went to Sweden and Denmark.
At the end of the 14th century, the Hansa consisted of 64 cities, including Novgorod, Pskov, Riga, Tallinn, and the Slavic cities of Kolobrzeg, Gdansk, Wolin, and Gaitgaba. From that time on, the Hansa became a powerful trade and political union of the cities of Northern Europe, controlling three-quarters of trade in the Old World. For three centuries the Hansa dominated the sea routes of Northern Europe, and even the ships of such great maritime republics as Genoa and Venice avoided invading the area of its activity.
The Hansa carried on maritime trade with Russia - furs, timber, grain, flax, resin, salt, wax, honey, exported through Baltic ports Persian and Chinese silk, carried English wool to Flemish cities. The Hansa bought, salted and exported herring to Russia, Poland, and Germany. She controlled the supply of shipbuilding materials to England, Swedish iron, and Russian timber.
Engels considered Italian shipping in the south and Hanseatic shipping in northwestern Europe to be the beginning of world maritime trade.
Hansa entered its own type of ship into the chronicle of world shipbuilding - the Hanseatic cog. Navigation among the peoples of the north of medieval Europe, who did not have a significant number of slaves, could not be based on the forced labor of oarsmen. Therefore, instead of multi-oared galleys, in which the sail played only an auxiliary role, the Hanseatic merchants built ships designed to move with the help of sails alone.
The prototype of the Hanseatic Koga was the nave, one of the earliest types of large cargo ship. It was the opposite of the slender and maneuverable Viking longship: wide and heavy, with a length equal to three widths, it had one mast and high sides. The mast was placed in the middle and supported by stays and shrouds. The ray, lowered onto the deck, carried a large rectangular sail on which it was possible to take reefs, that is, reduce the area of the sail by tying its lower luff with reef pins.
Until the middle of the 12th century, naves, instead of a hinged rudder, had a steering oar mounted in the stern on the starboard side. Serviced by one person, it did not allow increasing the sail area and performing complex maneuvers. In this regard, the voyages of such ships were, as a rule, short and their routes passed close to the coast.
The rudder, hinged under the stern in the center plane of the ship, opened the way to great sailing. In the Middle Ages, such a ship became the cog.
Rice. 20 Hanseatic Cog 1350
This is a high-sided, decked, single-masted vessel with a powerful hull. A characteristic feature of the koga is a hinged rudder and straight stems, strongly beveled towards the keel line. The maximum length of the vessel is 30 m, waterline length - 20 m, width - 7.3 m, draft - 3 m, load capacity - up to 200 tons. The voyage sail with an area of 180 - 200 m2 was raised on a mast made up of several logs fitted into a single trunk . The aft superstructure of the koga was structurally connected to the hull.
The ships of Hanseatic merchants could also be used for military purposes. In this case, wooden forts for archers were placed on the bow and stern ends, reminiscent in shape of the battlements of fortress towers. During the Crusades, the cog, like the Venetian ships, became a transport vessel for transporting troops from northern Europe to the Mediterranean Sea.
The Hanse Kor as a type of vessel influenced the development of sailing ships of states not included in the Hanseatic League, for example England, Denmark, Sweden.
The appearance of medieval cogs is well known from images on numerous seals of coastal cities. From the drawings on these seals it is clear that a triangular platform with a fence like the battlements of a fortress appeared at the bow end of the ship, and under it a room with an entrance from the deck was formed. The stern area occupied about half the length of the ship and was somewhat lower. In the room under the aft platform there were cabins, in the side walls of which windows were sometimes made. At the top of the mast there was a “crow’s nest” – an observation post. The angled stem ended in an inclined mast - a bowsprit. It served to stretch the sail at the front.
The inlay depicts a warship (21) that belonged to the English king Richard III (mid-15th century).
Rice. 21 Richard III's Ship Very similar to a 14th century Danish warship (22).
Rice. 22 Danish warship from the 14th century In northern Europe, kogi were built until the end of the 15th century, until the decline of the Hanseatic League, when the discovery of America and the sea route to India dealt the final blow to the Hanseatic merchants. Hansa trade with Russia ceased with the conquest of Novgorod by Ivan the Terrible.
This is that rare case when a copy ship built today exactly repeats (at least in the hull) the original, no less than 600 years ago.
In 1962, while excavating on the banks of the Weser River, not far from Bremen, relatively well-preserved remains of the hull of a medieval ship were discovered. At first glance, experts determined that this was a single-masted cargo ship of the Hanseatic League, built no later than the 14th century. Conventionally, it was dated 1380. The find was of great interest, since scientists had no descriptions or any reliable images of this seaworthy sailing ship, classic for its time and widespread in Northern Europe.
Archaeologists individually extracted 550 parts of the crumbling hull from the ground, preserved them for a number of years to prevent further rotting of the wood, and then assembled the cogg hull and exhibited it in the German Shipping Museum (Bremerhaven). Along the way, the idea was born to build an exact copy of this vessel to test the seaworthiness of ancient sailing ships.
In June 1987, the main drawings were ready and arrived at the E. Rathie shipyard in Kiel. The work was supervised by Uwe Bajkowski and engineer. V. D. Hoheisel (from the museum mentioned above). All labor-intensive work, reproducing the technological techniques of the distant past, was performed manually, and this provided a significant number of jobs for local youth.
On October 30, 1989, the "Bremen Kogg" was launched, after which approximately two years were spent on its equipment and equipment in accordance with modern requirements German Lloyd. In particular, a 278-horsepower MWM Deutz V8 diesel engine was installed.
The ship "Ubera von Bremen" was not only used by shipping historians for comprehensive experiments that confirmed the good seaworthiness of sailing cogs and their suitability for fairly long sea voyages, but also continues to be used as a pleasure and excursion vessel. It makes short trips under sail (sail!), accepting up to 50 passengers. At the same time, those who wish to do so are happy to take on the task of knocking out the most “natural” medieval windlass (a prototype of a halyard winch) and hoist a massive 14.6-meter yard with a straight sail with an area of 192 m2 onto a 25-meter mast. To work with braces and sheets, a manual capstan is placed on the aft deck.
What was the found vessel that served as the basis for this cogg?
The main features of its body:
The main characteristics of the vessel are as follows: overall length - 23.23 m, length along the vertical line (without rudder) at maximum loaded draft - 18.1 m. Overall beam - 8.37 m, deck width - 6.46 m. Draft in ballast (rocks on the bottom) with the bow - 1.4 m, stern - 1.9 m. The volume of the hold, occupying the entire length of the hull, is about 160 m 3. Hull weight - 51.8 tons. Displacement in ballast - 91.1 tons, loaded - 127.8 tons.
By the way, measuring weight and carrying capacity in tons does not at all contradict historical truth. The fact is that in the Middle Ages, when transporting liquid cargo (naturally, not in bulk, but in containers), the unit taken was precisely a ton (tonne), equal to the weight of a large barrel filled with wine, which was transported on a cart drawn by a pair of horses (in our in measures this is exactly 1000 kg).
Prepared using data from the magazine "Badnyt" (No. 12, 1996) and the websites of the German Shipping Museum and "Ubera von Bremen".
Notes
1. According to Volume 2 of the Marine Encyclopedic Dictionary, the name of ships of this type comes from the ancient German word “Kugg” - convex. It is known that three copies of the Hanseatic cogg were built, differing little from each other.Bremen Cogg
In the 13th century On the territory of Europe, a unique “interstate formation” arose - the Hanseatic League (abbreviated as Hanse, Hanse). It was a trade and political alliance of cities and guilds in Northern Europe and was called upon to protect the trade interests of its members from greedy feudal lords, all kinds of pirates and corsairs, and the desire of local authorities to profit at the expense of foreigners. At various times, the Hanseatic League included more than 200 European cities from 10 different states, and the free city of Lübeck can be considered its center.
The Hanseatics quickly achieved a dominant position in trade in the North and Baltic seas. Their merchant ships carried out a significant part of their traffic in the waters of Northern Europe - from Novgorod to London.
One of the most common types of ships in the period XIII-XV centuries. became a cogg: a strong seaworthy vessel with a high side and a small length-to-width ratio. The word "kogg", according to popular belief, comes from the ancient Germanic "Kugg" (convex). Historians tend to consider the coggs to be the direct descendants of the Norman cargo ships (primarily the knorrs). Indeed, there were enough common features: the keel was made from one solid tree trunk, the planking was made “overlapping”, the only mast was installed almost in the middle of the hull and carried one straight sail. However, there were also numerous differences. While Viking ships had rounded stems, the Cogga had a straight stem and sternpost. The first of them was inclined about 50° to the horizon, the second - 70-75°. A very important innovation should be considered the appearance of a rotary rudder, located in the center plane and suspended from the rudder post. The tiller was brought out into the aft superstructure or passed over the upper deck. The sail area increased noticeably, even on early cogs it was 180-200 m2 (for comparison: on the ship of William the Conqueror - about 70 m2). All sailing equipment, despite the similarity, it became not just larger, but also more advanced - bowlines appeared, the mast fastening became more reliable. Even early coggs could walk at sharper angles to the wind. The straight stem made possible the appearance of first a retractable and then a permanent bowsprit. The greatest length of the coggs was in the 14th century. reached 30 m, length along the waterline - 20 m, width - 7.5 m, draft - 3 m. The carrying capacity was also quite significant - up to 300 tons. The cogs also had superstructures. At the same time, the stern one - the aftercastle - was structurally connected to the hull and was part of it, and the bow one - the forecastle - was in some way a “slap” on the hull. On the superstructures, platforms with fencing were usually equipped, where shooters - archers and crossbowmen - were located in battle.
Bremen Cog. Modern copy
Over time, cogs turned into three-masted ships with a carrying capacity of up to 500 tons (and in some cases, even more). In the 15th century They began to install guns on them. In general, we can safely say that the thriving maritime trade of the Hanseatic League is largely due to the merits of the cogg, which proved itself to be excellent both as a warship and as a trading and fishing vessel. However, for a long time very little was known about these ships. Even the appearance of the kogg was reconstructed mainly from images on the seals of coastal cities. An incident helped historians: in the early 1960s. In Germany, work began to expand the channel of the Weser River in the area of the port of Bremen. In 1962, during these works, an ancient ship was discovered, relatively well preserved. When it was cleared of sediment and carefully examined, it became clear that this was a kogg. The work continued for quite a long time; in total, over two thousand different fragments were recovered from the bottom of the Weser.
The vessel had the following dimensions: total length - 23.4 m, keel length - 15.6 m, width - 7 m, side height - 3.5 m. Sternpost length - 5 m, stem - 8.4 m. Vessel capacity - about 130 tons. The keel, as it was supposed to be at that time, was one-piece, the hull set included 40 frames. The outer cladding was clinker (“covered”), the cladding boards were 8 m long, 0.5 m wide, and 5 cm thick.
German scientists suggested that the ship was intended for fishing. So, on both sides of the stem it had devices for laying nets. In the room at the stern, devices were found that were almost certainly intended for cutting fish. It also became clear to archaeologists that the cogg sank unfinished. Its plating was left unfinished, the bow superstructure was not installed, and the mast was not in its proper place (its parts were found separately, from which it was possible to establish an approximate height of 12-13 m above deck level). Most likely, the ship was washed away during a flood or a strong storm, lay on the bottom and was buried under a thick layer of sediment.
The reconstruction of the ship was carried out very carefully; the wood was impregnated with a special solution to prevent rot and destruction. A dendrochronological analysis was also carried out, which showed that the wood used for the construction was cut down around 1378-1380. During the work we managed to accomplish a lot interesting discoveries. For example, it became clear that the protrusions visible on the seals in the upper part of the sides are the ends of beams protruding beyond the skin. After completion of the work, the ship was transferred to the German Maritime Museum (Deutsches Schiffahrtmuseum) in Bremerhaven, where a special room was equipped for it.
In Germany, a copy of the Bremen Cogg was built, called “Ubena von Bremen” (“Ubena von Bremen”, call sign DFDT). This vessel successfully navigates coastal waters, attracting a lot of attention. Various foreign delegations often become guests of the ship. For example, when the cogg arrived in Kiel in June 2002 to celebrate the Kiel Week, representatives of the Russian Hansa society attended. In the summer of 2011, "Ubena von Bremen" visited Rostock and, hopefully, will make many more trips. The operation of the replica vessel made it possible to establish that the maximum speed of the cogs could reach 7.5 knots, and the average speed in moderate winds was 5.8 knots.