'She sails like a bird' ! - Replica French frigate to recreate Lafayette's voyage to US

[Surya Gayatri]

"The Hermione, the ship that reunited Lafayette and Washington and sealed our freedom, sails again for America..."




Some crew members wear 18th Century sailor's outfits

The project is the brainchild of a group of history and sailing enthusiasts who two decades ago embarked on the arduous task of recreating the vessel using only eighteenth-century shipbuilding techniques.



The frigate is scheduled to make more than 10 stops in the United States as it sails up the east coast, including in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston.

Hermione will also sail into the bay of New York just in time for July 4 independence celebrations, with an expected escort of hundreds of local yachts.


Building the Hermione in Rochefort – history in the making

http://www.france24.com/en/20150418-hermione-lafayette-ship-history-france-revolutionary%20/
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Wish I could be there for her launch. She's setting sail from the island of Aix near Rochefort, Charente-Maritime on the Atlantic coast.

That's where the original Hermione was built and where she shipped anchor for the Revolutionary War.









Learn more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Hermione_%281779%29

http://www.the-french-atlantic-coast.com/what-to-see/visit-the-hermione-at-rochefort/

http://www.hermione2015.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochefort,_Charente-Maritime

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele-d%27Aix

[flying rabbit]

1. K & R for coolness nt

[Surya Gayatri]

2. It IS so cool. What I wouldn't give to be on her maiden voyage.

[procon]

3. How beautiful!

The skills of the builders just astound me, that shipbuilding like that is even possible today is incredible. And then where do they find a crew with the necessary experience to know how to work on a sailing ship?

[Surya Gayatri]

4. Great article on their training and shake-down cruise in the Bay de Biscay here:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32350305

[procon]

6. Thanks!

You have to be impressed with the vision of people who undertook this project and worked through all the massive challenges to develop new (but antiquated) building skills using the same materials and traditional ship building methods of the day to complete an authentic replica of an 18th century frigate.

I've always been intrigued with the romanticism of tall ships. As a child, I covetously read my brother's complete set of Horatio Hornblower books, much to my father's 1950-ish consternation who thought his darling girl should be reading schlock like fashion mags.

[Surya Gayatri]

7. You and many people...look at the run-away popularity of the

'Pirates of the Caribbean' franchise! Tankers and steamers just can't hold a candle...

[Oilwellian]

5. I'm sure if they could build it over 200 years ago

we're still capable of building it today. LOL

[Surya Gayatri]

8. Using strictly traditional methods? Pas evident, as they say...

As it is, they had to scour the world to find traditional artisans capable of doing the job.

[hunter]

9. Skills and technologies do get lost, and have to be rediscovered.

"How did they make that?" is rarely a trivial question when recreating any human technology, going all the way back to the stone age.

The saddest thing to me is how much medicine was lost when indigenous people were conqured. Sure, most indigenous medicine was mystical dangerous nonsense, but the same was true of most Western medicine well into the twentieth century, and continuing on to a certain extent today.

"Evidence Based Medicine" frquently upsets the idols and sacred practices of Western medicine.

http://www.cochrane.org