This is because the material characteristics were so important that there simply were no good alternatives. Just like you would use steel for one thing and aluminum for another today. There were whole libraries of wood samples that you could go and look at or even test to ensure that your structure held up. Windmills are another item where wood from multiple locations came together.
Wood ranges from one extreme to another in terms of density, hardness, ease of working, strength in various directions and so on. There are hardwoods that are so hard that you can't really work them with normal tools and there are softwoods so light that you have to handle them carefully or you'll dent them.
I live in a late 18th-century rowhouse where there is large stonework for window sills/surrounds/doorways all done in a very specific pink granite that was carved from a shoreline quarry a significant distance away. Massive stones, 100kg+ each, had to be transported by horse-drawn cart, over not-easy-terrain, a distance that would have taken two horses probably 8-9 hours per trip, and enough stones that it was probably 15-20 trips. Let alone the effort that had to have been required to carve surprisingly square/cuboid shapes from solid granite without power tools. It's mindblowing to me that someone was able to afford such a home construction, let alone the time taken to do it, in ~ 1790. It isn't a particularly rare style in this neighborhood either.
Fast forward 200 years, and I was sweating at the cost just to hire someone to deliver new hardwood countertops from a place not much further away. By truck. By a single person. In a single afternoon. No horses required.
> Per the statement, the large vessels were made to sail north from the Netherlands, around Denmark and toward the Baltic Sea. [...] Uldum adds that shipbuilders made the cogs as large as possible to transport bulky cargo, like timber
Once you've built one cog, you've got the ideal tool to fetch Polish timber to build more!
Yea, this is like the early railroads making steel cheaper via cheaper transport of bulk ore/coal, that made cheaper railroads, that then ship more products made of steel to larger markets opened by the extended rail networks, etc.
This happened with tin all the way back in the Bronze Age, where a lot of it was shipped as ingots from industrial-scale mines / smelters in Cornwall all the way to the Mediterranean empires to mix with copper to make Bronze.
A cog-based auto-catalytic wood industry is super interesting.
Also this stuff never happens by design. Some entrepreneur notices things and the costs, make a decision, suddenly more products exist, organic trading routes appear. There is no need for computers or grand design or hyper-managerial government. The market solves the problem
In the US context that's largely true, with the government providing useful regulations after the fact (allowing national corporations, railroad right-of-way law, etc.).
The exception being guys like JP Morgan who organized industry cartels that acted as private "central planners", part of which turned into the current Federal Reserve Bank.
But for countries like China and many others in Asia with strong state capacity, industrial policy was planned top-down for the "commanding heights" of industry like: roads, rail, shipping, airlines, telecom, steel, energy, etc., and that actually worked very well, faster than private markets alone, with the benefit of existing tech and models to follow.
We are talking about a sophisticated international trading system that happened 600 years ago. Clearly you don’t need anything like that to make it happen. Let alone Ancient Rome, Greece, Assyria, Sumer…
Check out the History of the Germans season on the Hanseatic League [0]. The bulk goods trade was in the Baltic / Northern Europe was actually huge. The Hansa themselves traded all the way from London to Novgorod. Anyway, it's an absolutely fascinating subject and period.
You might be interested in tin transport during the bronze age then - You'll find tin mined in Cornwall in ships that sank off the coast of Turkey 3500 years ago.
> On its stern, researchers were shocked to find extensive remains of a castle, a kind of covered deck where the crew would have sought shelter. Records show that castles were distinctive features of medieval cogs, but no physical evidence of them had previously been identified.
I suppose this explains why the thing that exists on more modern ships is called a “forecastle”.
PS go check the pronunciation for that word as it’s quite surprising.
Smithsonian Mag used to be the Institution’s brain‑child, now it’s just a click‑bait lifestyle tabloid full of celebs. The magazine’s editorial directives have diverged from the institutions mission. They care more about pageviews and ads than research.
I can appreciate their troubles. How is someone supposed to pay for all the overhead that goes into research and writing these articles without a source of income. People also seem dead against subscriptions. The only way that seems to work is appealing to the LCD and raking in stream bucks but not all media/literature, especially the valuable kind, is conducive to that model.
The baltic has tons of wrecks. Because of its brackishness, both marine and fresh water wood decomposing organism dont survive there and thus old ships got preserved really really well. Some are in really shallow (walkable) water, especially in areas where the land is rising.
That may be not that amazing for a shipwreck in the Øresund. According to Wikipedia, its maximum depth is 40m (130’) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Øresund), so chances are a lot of it is less deep. There also may be sampling bias, with shipwrecks in shallower water being more likely to be found, and, if the tides flow faster in deeper water, survivorship bias.
ships are less likely to wreck in deep water. Storms can sill overturn them (though if they are unstable getting to deep water is questionable). You mostly expect wrecks from hitting rocks on the bottom. Though in war time sinking happens in deep water.
I'm surprised the raw materials came together over such a distance. That transporting lumber was economical back then is remarkable.
Wood ranges from one extreme to another in terms of density, hardness, ease of working, strength in various directions and so on. There are hardwoods that are so hard that you can't really work them with normal tools and there are softwoods so light that you have to handle them carefully or you'll dent them.
Fast forward 200 years, and I was sweating at the cost just to hire someone to deliver new hardwood countertops from a place not much further away. By truck. By a single person. In a single afternoon. No horses required.
> Per the statement, the large vessels were made to sail north from the Netherlands, around Denmark and toward the Baltic Sea. [...] Uldum adds that shipbuilders made the cogs as large as possible to transport bulky cargo, like timber
Once you've built one cog, you've got the ideal tool to fetch Polish timber to build more!
This happened with tin all the way back in the Bronze Age, where a lot of it was shipped as ingots from industrial-scale mines / smelters in Cornwall all the way to the Mediterranean empires to mix with copper to make Bronze.
A cog-based auto-catalytic wood industry is super interesting.
The exception being guys like JP Morgan who organized industry cartels that acted as private "central planners", part of which turned into the current Federal Reserve Bank.
But for countries like China and many others in Asia with strong state capacity, industrial policy was planned top-down for the "commanding heights" of industry like: roads, rail, shipping, airlines, telecom, steel, energy, etc., and that actually worked very well, faster than private markets alone, with the benefit of existing tech and models to follow.
It's cogs all the way down!
[0] https://historyofthegermans.com/hanseatic-league/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_during_a...
Also, there's a "rings" joke in here somewhere about Tinder not being for finding a marriage but I can't figure it out.
I suppose this explains why the thing that exists on more modern ships is called a “forecastle”.
PS go check the pronunciation for that word as it’s quite surprising.
You aren’t wrong.
Statement from the Viking Museum:
https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/about-us/news-and-press...
Documentary referenced in the statement (I think):
https://www.dr.dk/drtv/episode/gaaden-i-dybet_-fra-ukendt-ha...
https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
Not quite as old but preserved almost intact and now restored on dry land. Well worth a visit.
Isn’t the greatest experience on mobile when so little of the content can be seen due to popups.
I forgot that I use Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin. I don't see any ads NEVER.
So you see some ads occasionally? Then why are you asking "what ads"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_(ship)
larger ships in the later middle ages were the Caravel and the Carrack, which typically had more than a single mast.