If I had a Boat

Saturday, October 9, 2010

With decent weather forecast for today and half of Sunday, I determined Betsy and I would make a trip.  Pulled out of the garage about 9:30am heading south, to either Portiers, Bordeaux, or Rochefort.  Didn't know at the time but I programed the GPS to avoid toll roads and take me to Aizenay.  This route puts me out in the countryside and away from major roads.  After reaching Aizenay I programed in Luçon and kept on keeping on.  It was a great little ride.  I not only avoided super-slabs, I found myself on some quaint little lanes.  One could barely call them roads, though hard paved and with sufficient room for two way traffic.  Some, surrounded on both sides by tall trees with overhanging limbs were just pleasant lanes to calmly ride down with no "troubles in mind," as the old Merle Haggard song goes.

Some of the countryside heading south from Nantes.
 

In need of a cup of coffee I pulled into a McDonald's in La-Roche-Sur-Yon.  Why McDonald's?  Because there I knew I wouldn't have to make two stops, one for a croissant and the other for coffee.  There are some PMUs/restaurants, etc. which will sell both, but you just can't be sure.  I don't know if it's the law, or what it is, but I have often stopped for coffee and had to walk a block or so to buy a pain-au-raisin (raisin bread), then haul it back to where the coffee was.  Crazy.  I need to get on line and figure this thing out.  But, boy, if not illegal, is there a money-maker here.  Open a shop that sells, what?  Both?  Wow!  Who'd a thunk?
It was not your normal McDonalds.  Pretty neat place.



 As you enter there's an old Wurlitzer jukebox.

And great jazz figures throughout.  The gentleman on the right is the great Satchmo!



After a nice little ride past La Rochelle, I pulled into Rochefort about 1:30pm.  I'd decided on Rochelle because it was the closest and I wanted to see the Marine Museum my friend Didier has told me so much about.  This plus the fact that my throat kept getting scratchier and scratchier and I felt something coming on, as they say.  I was right.  By mid-afternoon I was sneezing and blowing all over the place.  Don't know what it was but it felt like allergy.  This getting old crap is a pain in various places, most of the south.  Before I was forty-five or so, I was never allergic to anything.  Now I get blasts of this hay-fever-like stuff four or five time a year.  Feels like crap and I usually have to go through a couple of packages of tissues or rolls of toilet tissue before it ends.

But, once again making lemonade out of lemons, a nice sneeze or two will certainly clear the tourist lanes in front of you in a museum.  So...

After finding and checking into a local Ibis hotel, I went a few blocks west to the Muséé National De La Marine, the Museum of the Sea.  According to Wikipedia, Rochefort was built as a shipbuilding stronghold a few miles upriver from the Atlantic in 1665.  The approaches were extremely protected with redoubts and forts along the winding way to the shipbuilding yards.  What do ships of the line require a lot of other than wood?  Rope.  Between 1665-69 Louis XIVth built the "Corderie Royale" to build cordage.  At the time the longest building in the world it stands today as a library and unique shopping area near the shipyard.

The museum itself has a ton of old models used for design and training for the actual builders of the ships, supplemented by some modernly constructed as well.





 Finished goods (for the manufacturing folks out there)

Above is a working model of a capstan, the mechanism used to raise and lower the anchor.  This was not a job for the faint of heart or weaklings.  The wheel at the top rose above the deck and the sailor pushing on a giant log constantly turned it raising or lowering the anchor.  Of course, a couple of slips and the anchor would lower itself while taking off a head or two.  The operation at which I am now working pioneered steam-driven capstans in the mid-1800s here in Nantes.  They still make winches, electric today, to perform this onerous task.

Each ship had its own unique bow figures.  I noted nudes seemed to prevail.

Tools to hold a wooden ship together

Another bow figure.  I don't know if I'd want to sail on the ship with this one on the bow.  She seems to be saying, "Oh, I don't know...how about that way?"

Outside one of the dry docks used to build the ships of the fleet.  It's amazing to think of hundreds of workers scrambling all over this place at various levels doing the thousands of tasks required to build a ship.





And, of course, off in a nice office somewhere there would be some project management types with their little schedule sheets reflecting schedules dates they'd conjured up in their little "Pretend" room, saying,  "You're behind schedule...here...here...and here."   Some things never change.

 Behind the tower begins the "Cordage" Building

As you can see, it goes a long way down there.

Out back a couple of boats standing by.  The little sailing sloop was out of England.

I'm not sure what this was.  It looks like a replica of a ships rigging setup.  While I'm pretty sure this is a modern construction, perhaps it's a replica of a place where they had to measure off various lengths of cabling.

The "Cordage" Building from the other side.

Some school girls resting on the lawn.
(Hmmm...Do I want to remember the old joke about what is the difference between a Junior Varsity Girls Track Team and a tribe of sly pygmy warriors?)


Behind the dry dock shown earlier, was the real treat of the trip.  In 1780 Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette sailed to America on a 26-gun Frigate named Hermione.  And in this dry dock they are building an exact, working replica.

It's a giant 400,000 piece jig-saw puzzle, but you have to saw the parts before you fit them.  The original Hermione, built in these docks took 300 men working 6 years.  Using modern electronic saws and drills, the schedule for this replica, true in every form, is scheduled to take 6 men 10 years, augmented to  8 or 10 for various periods, depending on the requirements of the time.  Assuming an average of 8 this would indicate a savings in time of 70 man-years, or about 46% that could be attributed to the use of modern tools.  But, as you'll see in the pictures, the parts being manufactured, including metal pins, fasteners, etc. are true to those produced in the mid-1700s.

Midships

The capstan.  Imagine catchin' one of those up side your head?

The Poop Deck.
There's always time to learn something.  The name does not have anything to do with having toilets in the aft portion of the ship.  It stems from the French word "la Poupe," or stern.

The Aft Section













The Front, awaiting a Figurehead.  Wonder if it'll be one of the ones shown above?

The metal shop.  Most parts are hand-forged, much as they were "back then."











In a supply room nearby, important items wait their turn.  A lifeboat, gun mounts, and the Wheel.

Sometime in late 2011, or early 2012, this dry dock area will be cleaned out and a floating dam will be built in the section shown above.  It will be flooded and the Hermione will fittingly sail for America again.

I think this is neat as hell.



At the Battle of Yorktown there were 7,800 French troops (out of 18,000) and 29 French warships.  Some Americans who believe France ungrateful today would do well to understand that we would not exist without them.  But, just as we didn't storm the beaches of Normandy for the French, they didn't come to Yorktown for us.  All countries have their own agendas.  Then, and today.

But my experiences here in France convince me that most French like America and Americans.  There is a kinship of birth and renewal between us that is, I think, quite strong even into the modern time.  Seeing the Hermione sail into American harbors again will be a great thing.  I think I'll have to take a motorcycle trip to that first landfall.  That, too, would be neat.