How Accurate Was Tim Severin's ARGO?

The Argo in Istanbul. All images in this post are from The Jason Voyage by Tim Severin. Click any image to enlarge.

In The Jason Voyage: The Quest for the Golden Fleece , Tim Severin describes his recreation of the legendary Greek's quest. As in his other books detailing his reenactments of other legendary voyages, Severin's main objective is tell a rousing tale. While his reenactments all seek to demonstrate that the original voyage described in the legend was feasible -- and thereby lend credence to the legend -- Severin doesn't overdo the argument. He retains his credibility by never pretending to be doing serious science, the way that Thor Heyerdahl did. Instead, Severin combined an  adventurer's urge with a fascination for voyaging legends and a skill at writing exciting first-person narratives into a tremendous career which I can only envy.


To the extent that a date can be ascribed to any truth that lies behind the legend of quest for the Golden Fleece, 1300 BC is the best guess. But no Greek ships of that era have ever been recovered, and the only evidence of their form comes from sketchy, stylized illustrations found on pottery of the era. We do have firm archaeological evidence for Greek ships from several hundred years later, however, and that evidence drove the design of the new vessel, which was drawn by British naval architect Colin Mudie, who had designed the curragh for Severin's previous project, The Brendan Voyage (also discussed in a prior post).


While Jason's Argo had 50 oars, according to the epic poem of Apollonius, Severin's Argo would have but 20, making the vessel considerably smaller and more economical to construct and campaign. Severin felt that if a 20-oar vessel could complete the voyage of reenactment, that would more than demonstrate the feasibility of the original legendary voyage. 

As discussed in a previous post, the form of Greek warships of even Homer's date is debatable, so the form of a ship of Jason's era is even less sure. With this uncertainly permitting flexibility on Mudie's part, he designed the vessel with an eye toward safety, with fairly full lines, high gunwales and even higher ends. The new Argo was an aphract -- a vessel with all the oars on one level -- 54' LOA, 9' in beam, and 3' of draught. As shown above, the hull is lovely in profile, and only moderately slender in plan view. 


All this is a kind of preface to asking: just how close did Mudie come to an accurate reproduction?

Argo struggles against the current in the Bosphorus -- the most difficult rowing of the voyage.

Ships with 20 oars -- the smallest mentioned by Homer several hundred years following Jason's quest -- were used "for ordinary transport and dispatch work," according to Lionel Casson in Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World. Dispatch-carrying, of course, demands speed. But the new Argo did not prove notably swift. Although driven without too much trouble in calm airs (ten men pulling could move the boat at 3 to 4 knots and make 20 to 30 miles a day), Severin found it nearly impossible to make progress against the slightest headwind, blaming the windage of the high bow. Could Greek military units  have abided such delays in communication, or were they willing to sacrifice safety -- and accept the more frequent loss of a dispatch -- by giving their 20-oared dispatch-runners a lighter, narrower, lower, and generally sleeker hullform? (In contrast, 50-oared ships -- later known as penteconters [i.e., "fifty-ers"] were the "common troop transport" of Homer's day. I suspect that their greater horsepower would have failed to make up for their greater burthen in terms of sustained speed over long distances.) 

Severin holds the construction model of Argo. Note how the extended bow appears to be added on to a bow of more conventional form.

Looking at the profile drawing, the ram-shaped bow appears to be added-on to a conventional bow. From the upward run of the planks near the keel just abaft of the hawsehole, it looks as if the bow has a conventional run below the waterline, and that the extended bow was created by overlaying "cheeks" of partial strakes between the extended stem and the hull's main strakes where they begin to curve inward at the bow. I suspect that a real, conventional, aft-curving stem lies hidden beneath the triangular cheeks, and that the forward-curving stem is a false stem that ties into an extended keel. This appears to be confirmed by the construction model held by Severin in the photo above. (Severin's shipwright followed this model and did not work from plans.) One wonders if the area inside the cheeks, between the two stems, was filled with buoyant material or left hollow as a watertight buoyancy chamber. Either way would appear to be a breeding ground for rot.


I have never seen any depiction or description of ancient Greek ships that suggests this approach, and I don't know of any reason to believe it correct. The more logical approach by far is for the hull's strakes to run directly to the visible stem, with no hidden stem and no cheeks filling out the hollow waterlines. I can only guess that Mudie and Severin thought they'd have better luck finding a Greek shipwright who could build a conventional bow and then add a false front to it, than one willing to experiment with an unfamiliar reverse-curving stem and the attendant unknowns about how to plank up to it.

Argo under sail. A single helmsman manned the two tillers, moving them in opposite directions to steer.

With a shallow keel and no other lateral plane, Argo performed poorly under sail, unable to maintain even a broad reach until it was discovered that by moving virtually all stores and crew onto the after deck, pointing ability improved by 15 degrees. And this was without the heavy bronze fitting that would have tipped the ram on a real warship. Argo was also difficult to turn, the extended bow tending to keep the boat heading in its current direction regardless of the position of the dual side-rudders. (By the way, both rudders broke twice during the voyage, although this may have been a failure of execution, not design.) It's interesting that Viking ships managed with a single side-rudder although, without the extended bow, they were probably easier to steer in the first place.

Planks were joined edge-to-edge with free tenons ("mortise tongues") in matching mortises in the facing plank edges. All was held in place with wood plugs through the planks and the tenons.

As in  Homer's  vessels, the hull was built shell-first, with frames added only after the planking was complete. Plank-to-plank fastening was done with the mortise-and-tenon method, as illustrated above and discussed in a previous post. Although it is an effective fastening method, the high intensity of labor that it requires is well recognized. Severin disagrees, however, claiming that it was quite efficient. But one gets the sense that he says this as a tribute to his shipwright's skill, for he also acknowledges that, where the shipwright handled every other aspect of construction single-handedly, using only hand tools, the free tenons were cut by a helper, who also did the mortising with the help of a machine. 


The "Jason voyage" was successful in its objective of traveling from Greece, across the Aegean Sea, through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosphorus, and along the entire southern coast of the Black Sea, to Poti, Georgia -- a distance of some 1,500 miles. (And Severin later used it  to recreate the tale of the Odyssey in The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey.) But partly because the questionable accuracy of the boat in which the voyage was accomplished, the validity of any conclusions that may be drawn from the voyage are questionable as well. 


This is not to imply that the new Argo was poorly designed or in any way deficient. We simply don't know enough about the ships of Jason's era or their performance, and Severin's experiment provides a useful benchmark against which future research can be compared. And all technical issues aside, the book is still a fine adventure, stirringly and sensitively told.

Authentic Fiberglass Birchbark Canoes

Of course the title of this post is meant as a malapropism, but John Lindman of the Bark Canoe Store comes as close as anyone to making an "authentic" birchbark canoe out of fiberglass.


Lindman is well-known as a skilled builder of real birchbark canoes, of which he's built a variety of styles.  But as anyone who has ever looked into owning a real birchbark canoe quickly finds, the craft are expensive. Lindman's least expensive grade runs $345 per linear foot, and I know of at least one bark canoe builder who charges $1,000 per foot. Furthermore, they're not the easiest boats to maintain, and they don't fare well in dry climates like the U.S. Southwest.


Because of these drawbacks, there is a small but apparently worthwhile market for canoes that look like birchbarks but are made from modern composites. (We're not talking here about the products of some canoe makers who take a standard canoe hull and just paint the outside to look vaguely like birchbark. These are generally laughable, since they invariably show the wrong side of the "bark" facing out.) This would include at least three sub-groups: i)  folks who simply want something that looks credibly like an authentic, old-time artifact but either can't afford one or can't be troubled with the practical liabilities of owning the real thing; ii) historical reenactors; and iii) producers of movies, historic documentaries, and public events.

One of Lindman's "hybrid"-construction Algonquin replica canoes

Lindman serves these markets with a range of fiberglass replicas in three grades. The bottom of the line is built like a conventional fiberglass canoe, with lines that replicate Algonquin and Ojibwa types. Gunwales are real wood, lashed with plastic imitation split root. Next up is an infusion-molded version of the same designs, with internal ribs. In infusion molding, the fiberglass or other fabric is laid up dry on the mold. It is then covered with a plastic sheet which is hooked up to a vacuum pump. As the pump draws air out from beneath the sheet, liquid resin -- in Lindman's case, vinylester resin -- is drawn in by the vacuum. The result is consistent wet-out of the fabric without any excess resin to add weight. Lindman's website says the ribs are made of "core material," but since various materials may be used as cores in composite boatbuilding, this is ambiguous. Both the economy and the infusion-molded canoes are available fully assembled or as kits with the hulls complete and components that must be finished and assembled by the customer.


The third and most costly of the fiberglass replica canoes is a hybrid, using a fiberglass outer hull and cedar sheathing and ribs, and real split-root lashings, as in a real birchbark canoe.


All three versions are properly painted to represent the dark brown inside surface of the bark facing out, with seams between bark panels and at gores sealed with pitch. They really do look quite authentic -- good enough for use in movies and reenactments -- and I suspect they consistently fool folks who have never seen a real birchbark canoe.


Lindman publishes an occasional e-newsletter with news about bark canoes and his shop's doings. Subscribe here.

Why Keep it a Secret?

Edwin Deady, who maintains the fascinating website Dark Age Boats, recently posted the following comment to one of my posts. Rather than having it languish there in the Comments section where only a few dedicated readers will see it, I thought it worthwhile to repost it here for greater visibility:

"May I pose a question about the reproduction and use of indigenous boats? Some builders seem reluctant to share plans other than with the indigenous group for whom they are build, see http://www.applegateboatworks.com/coastal.html for example. Now I am not criticising their particular stance and had a very friendly and helpful email on construction details from them but I do wonder what point is served by exclusivity. The same is seen in the singing of some traditional songs where I have even heard a performer say that they had sought permission from a Council of Elders before singing to a non-ethnic audience. If all of my culture is available to the World, you play football everywhere and paddle coracles where you will, why should not the same apply to indigenous boats from other countries?"

I can understand why a group of reenactors or serious academics might want to hide technical aspects of work in progress: so that they can claim credit for new insights and/or gain the glory of a "first." But I agree with Edwin that, once they've introduced their glorious reproduction, there seems to be little reason to hold the information as proprietary. I also question why people of any given culture should attempt to restrict access to elements of their culture's artistic expressions: it seems like the fruits of a parochial worldview, to say that this or that culturally distinctive activity is what separates us (i.e., makes us better than) everyone else.

The Hawaiian Double Canoe Hokule'a

Hokule'a is without a doubt the most famous Hawaiian double canoe in existence. After a rough start beset by political and personal conflicts that nearly wrecked the project, she has gone on to complete many impressive voyages, the last one in 2007. Owned by the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), she serves as an icon of native Hawaiin culture and a training platform for teaching traditional navigation and seamanship.

Hokule'a had her start around 1973, when Ben R. Finney, an anthropologist with an interest in the settlement of the Pacific islands, decided to scale up from a smaller, self-funded double canoe on which he had begun his investigations of the type. As described in his book Hokule'a: The Way to Tahiti, his original motivation was primarily scientific: to test whether the double canoe type had sufficient windward sailing capability to have made feasible the intentional colonization of the Pacific from west to east. This was in contrast to countervailing views that the colonization was either unintentional -- a result of unplanned drift voyages by castaways -- or that it had occurred from east to west, starting from the South American continent. (This latter theory was promoted by Thor Heyerdahl.)

Finney and his early partners founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society to help organize and fund the project but, according to Finney, the organization and the project were hijacked by nativist Hawaiians who wanted to use the canoe to promote Hawaiian cultural identity. Finney felt that the two objectives were almost entirely incompatible, and his book concentrates mostly on the resulting conflicts. (He acknowledges, however, that his narrative is quite one-sided.) The book is a tale of a terribly-managed project that just barely managed to fulfill its original goals in the face of tremendous personnel problems. Along with insubordination, there were fistfights and threats of mutiny.

Somehow, the Polynesian Voyaging Society turned the situation around later, and Hokule'a has clocked more than 32,000 sea miles on a half a dozen voyages, visiting most areas of the Pacific, mostly on cultural missions. (A circumnavigation is apparently in the planning stages!) Finney's name is hard to find in any context on the PVS website: he doesn't appear to be currently associated with the PVS, and it wouldn't surprise me if he dropped out immediately following the first awful voyage and has been placed under a taboo by the organization. PVS seems to be almost exclusively concerned with using the boat as a way to champion cultural identify -- there is very little about serious science on their website.

(In addition to the PVS website, much information on Hokule'a may be found on Wikipedia, although the article appears to hew closely to the PVS orthodoxy and gives little credit to Finney.)

The boat itself is unusual and impressive. The PVS calls her a "performance-accurate" replica, meaning that she is believed to perform like the traditional boats she resembles. Construction-wise, however, she's quite different. The hulls are cold-molded, with several intermediate bulkheads, rather than carved from single huge trunks. (PVS has subsequently built another canoe, Hawai'iloa, from huge Alaskan cedars -- about as close to the original construction as is possible at this time, since Hawaiian koa logs of the necessary size are no longer obtainable.) Steering is done with steering oars, which do not pivot side to side; direction is controlled by simply lowering the oars into the water or raising them out of it. With an LOA of 62'4" and beam of 17'6", she is much narrower than a modern catamaran of the same length but in keeping with the traditional configuration, which was narrow "due primarily to the limited ability of the wooden cross-pieces and coconut fiber lashing to withstand the phenomenal stress the ocean imposes on a widetrack double-hull craft," according to Tommy Holmes in The Hawaiian Canoe.

Her original rig was a very modest 540 square feet of sail area on two crab-claw (spritsail) masts, which gives her performance on the order of 3 or 4 knots upwind, and 5 or 6 downwind . She is capable of tacking to within 70 or 75 degrees of the wind -- comparable to the pointing ability of square-rigged ships -- which, based on the results of the first voyage, from Hawaii to Tahiti, was sufficient to have allowed double canoes to have indeed colonized Polynesia in an intentional effort of exploration and settlement.

(All images in this article from PVS website.)