Side gallery (shipbuilding)

Side galleries on the French liner Le Tonnant (front left in the picture) and a British liner (back right) around 1798

A side gallery is a side extension on a ship's hull, which was often used in the age of wooden sailing ships and slowly disappeared again from the majority of shipbuilding with the displacement of the transom by round stern variants.

history

Side gallery on the hull of a Dutch warship around 1672

With the introduction of the transom in sailing in the 16th century, shipbuilders began to construct lavishly decorated open balconies and galleries along the stern.

At that time, first on Italian ships, the stern mirror decorated in this way represented the wealth and artistic skill of a particular nation and in a sense became a national figurehead. This type of representation quickly found application in other ship-building nations that wanted to be in no way inferior to the Italian example.

Covered, but not completely closed side galleries on the replica of the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia (construction 1628)

The decorations sometimes even got so out of hand that, towards the end of the 16th century, some heavy oak-carved and elaborately decorated, sometimes gilded saints, ancient gods, putti, emblems, coats of arms, balustrades, garlands, sea monsters on the transom or in the periphery at the expense of the armament and the protection of the aft ship. There is evidence that some captains had these decorations knocked off after sailing, so that the extremely stern-heavy ship was seaworthy again.

At the beginning of the 17th century, these galleries and balconies were built over and placed beyond the stern on the rear sides of the ship.

Analogous to the decorations at the rear, these were also artistically designed very extensively, so that the entire rear view was combined into a total work of art.

Side gallery of the French Soleil Royal (1670)

Up until the middle of the 18th century, a well-informed observer could identify the nation of the ship simply by looking at the decorations on the transom and the side galleries, as the constructions differed from nation to nation:

England and later the Kingdom of Great Britain constructed the side galleries closed and with a semicircular cross-section. The construction was usually provided with one or two rows of rectangular windows.

Dutch ships were provided by the local shipbuilders with long, strongly arched side galleries, which were mostly windowless and quite low. Since some Dutch ship designers were also active in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Russia, these side gallery types can also be found on ships of these nations.

Shipbuilders from France and Spain again created side pockets in which partly open galleries with a round or oval central window were integrated.

From the middle of the 18th century, the national forms merged and gave way to a mixed form, which was composed mainly of French-British elements and was adopted by many nations. The cross section was taken from a quarter section of an ellipse. The side galleries could usually have one to three rows of square windows, depending on the size of the ship.

HMS Victory's port side gallery

With the disappearance of the transom from the middle of the 19th century and the implementation of the round stern (cf. e.g. HMS Unicorn (1824) ), the side pockets also disappeared in shipbuilding on the majority of ships.

function

Interior view of a side gallery with toilet

Since the roofing of the side galleries, these served mainly as a toilet for the commandant, the elevated passengers and the officers. They could accommodate a washing facility and were initially also storage space for personal goods of the above-mentioned group of people. On smaller vehicles, they were often mere dummies that, apart from decorative purposes, had no function and were also not accessible.

Remarks

1. ↑ In more modern literature, the term side pocket is used instead , but it probably has no historical basis. The term is z. B. von zu Mondfeld in the model building manual “Historical Ship Models” on p. 110f. used. The author calls open walkways there as galleries, while overbuilt galleries are side pockets. The term side pocket is apparently not used in historical parlance.

literature

• Jean Boudriot: Le Vaisseau De 74 Canons . Editions des Quatre Seigneurs, Grenoble 1977, ISBN 2-85231-009-0 (4 vols.).
• Hendrik Busmann: Sovereign of the Seas. The sculptures of the British royal ship from 1637 . Edition Convent, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-934613-19-5 (also dissertation, University of Hamburg 1998).
• Frank Howard: Sailing ships 1400-1860 ("Sailing ships 1400-1860"). Bechtermünz, Augsburg 1996, ISBN 3-86047-164-3 .
• Werner Jaeger: The Dutch yacht in the 17th century. A technical-historical documentation . Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2001, ISBN 3-89534-415-X .
• Klaus Krick: self-built historical ship models. Handbook for the budding ship model builder . Neckar-Verlag, Villingen-Schwenningen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7883-3136-8 .
• Wolfram zu Mondfeld: Historical ship models. The manual for the model maker . Orbis Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-572-01464-6 .
• Scott Robertson: Basic knowledge of model ships ("Model ships from scratch"). vth-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2004, ISBN 3-88180-733-0 .
• Batavia Cahiers 1-5, Stichting ´Nederland bouwt VOC-Retourschip´, Lelystad 1990-1994, ISBN 90-73857-01-5 to 90-73857-05-8.