Heart of Oak

Posted By Sarah on May 9, 2013

Dowdy ready to serve. The sketchy little pan behind it is custard.

With bags of ship’s biscuit stashed around the house after a recent hardtack-making binge, I realized I needed to start figuring out some good recipes to use them in. As I’ve said in a previous post, they make great dumplings in soup, but man does not live on soup alone.

Along came figgy dowdy.

There’s a great conversation in Patrick O’Brian’s book Post Captain in which some of the characters explain how the dish is made, and their directions are pretty close to the exact recipe.

‘We take ship’s biscuit, put it in a stout canvas bag –’ said Jack.
‘Pound it with a marlin-spike for half an hour –’ said Pullings.
‘Add bits of pork fat, plums, figs, rum, currants,’ said Parker.
‘Send it to the galley, and serve it up with bosun’s grog,’ said Macdonald.

 

Figgy dowdy is a boiled suet-and-crumbs pudding fairly typical of its class. My recipe comes from Lobscouse and Spotted Dog.

The recipe:

Hardtack bashed to crumbs.

1 pound Ship’s Biscuit, or enough to make ~4 cups of crumbs
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup chopped figs
3/4 cups currants
3/4 cups raisins
1/2 lb pork fat or suet, finely grated
2 tsp freshly grated ginger
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup rum (more for the cook if necessary – Editor’s note)
3/4 cup water

How do you pound the hard tack to crumbs? Traditionally a marlin spike is used, but I’ve used everything from a chunk of kindling wood to a baseball bat (put the hardtack in a bag first).

The dowdy all wrapped and ready for boiling.

Put the crumbs in a large bowl, add flour, sugar, nutmeg, and salt; stir to combine. Add the raisins, currents, and figs, breaking them apart (the flour and crumbs will coat them and keep them from clumping together). Mix in the fat. Add the ginger, eggs, rum, and water, and work the mixture thoroughly with your hands.

Tie tightly in a well-floured cloth. Place in a large pot with boiling water to cover. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, and cook rapidly for three hours. I recommend keeping a kettle going throughout this process so you can top off the pot without dropping the temperature.

Remove the pudding from the pot, untie it, and turn out into a serving dish. Slice into thin wedges and serve with custard sauce.

The custard sauce is optional and wouldn’t have been available to the foremast jacks, though the officers might have had it. Officers could sometimes carry a few animals along on larger ships to supplement their rations with eggs, milk, or extra meat.

When this was cooking, the suet scent was strong. It smelled like an exotically spiced stew. After a while of boiling, the meat smell went away and was replaced by the delicious home-warming aroma of spices and raisins. The water looks sketchy while you’re cooking this, but that’s normal for these things. I live on a very rustic farm with primitive facilities (including a lack of running water), so this was boiled on top of our old woodstove.

If you’ve floured your cloth heavily enough and kept the water temperature up the whole time, the pudding should come out with little effort or mess. When warm, it’s got a surprisingly delicate texture and tastes like a slightly sweet and spicy raisin bread. Be warned, though – when it gets cold, it’ll get hard. Cold suet puddings are a real stick-to-your-ribs (and roof of your mouth) dish. They soften up again when reheated, though.

Finished dowdy turned out onto a trencher. Yes, it looks like a brain fresh out of the vat.

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s also delicious to fry leftover slices in butter for breakfast the next morning.

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Posted By Sarah on May 2, 2013

I got the chance to go home for a while last week (I’ve been helping out an elderly relative) and so of course my camera came along. Heron looks a lot bigger with the snow gone. Ekk and I spent a lot of time sitting inside and cheerfully arguing over the layout of the internal compartments. Still to come in the construction process: Dutch ribs, bulkheads, footlings, hanging knees, and bunks. And then the caulking begins, not to mention all that rigging…

Our small cannon, Moneymaker, is presented here for scale.

The deck is in place, though not fastened down yet. The boards are settling into place and picking up the curves of the beams below. She was covered with a couple of tarps over that to protect the interior space, since even without being caulked yet, her bilges are holding water when it rains. We dragged Moneymaker up on deck to get a feel for how a barrel protruding through the gunports would look. Heron will be armed with between three and six carriage guns and two to four swivels, depending on how her finished stability plays out. There will be six gunports cut into bulwarks that will run halfway up the stanchions seen in the photo. The stanchions are slightly bevelled to give the bulwarks a little bit of tumblehome.

Looking forward through the aft cabin, galley, and towards the crew quarters. Deck prisms will brighten the living spaces.

The aft cabin is the roomiest spot belowdecks, at least in the headroom category. It runs from the vertical beams seen here (which will be a watertight bulkhead) to a set of small gallery lights at the stern. An overhead hatch gives access to the space (seen here covered with a board and bit of blue tarp in the middle top of the photo). The aft cabin will have two bunks built along the forward end on either side of the companionway ladder.

Beyond the aft cabin is the galley space, seen here with a three-step ladder and a woodstove. The woodstove was to keep Ekk warm during winter work. Heron will eventually have a small stove of some kind, but the jury’s still out as to what she will end up with. The aluminum ladder is a temporary access under the main hatch, which runs next to the mizzenmast.

Wanna-be ship’s cats Silky (the black tom) and Fang (our big tabby girl) explore the bow of Heron.

Past the galley is sleeping quarters / hold space. There will be bunks on either side of the ship with a partial bulkhead between this space and the galley. A tiny head will fit right where Silky (the black cat) is standing. Thanks to the popularity of the preparedness movement, there are a lot of nifty little portable RV/marine toilets on the market now. The frame just forward of Fang will be a collision bulkhead and cable tier.

Looking aft down the length of Heron’s interior towards the stern.

She’s going to start looking a lot smaller once the bulkheads go in, but for now you can really get a feel for how long 35 feet looks when you’ve pounded every trunnel and tarred every plank yourselves. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but she’s definitely getting there.

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Tags: Heron

Posted By Sarah on January 28, 2013

One thing that isn’t immediately obvious when we talk about the work going into building a traditional boat by hand is all the stuff that has to happen in the background before we even get to the boat building part. Specifically, nails and trunnels. You see, we’re hardcore nerds who also happen to be skilled blacksmiths and woodworkers. That means we’re going all-out and actually making these fasteners for ourselves instead of purchasing them.

Sarah cuts one of hundreds of trunnel pegs for use in fastening Heron’s frame together.

In the case of the trunnels, we started by logging out a couple of locust trees that had been knocked down by a windstorm on a friend’s property. These were then cut down to reasonable chunks and then further into long thin splits. Each split was then pounded through a sharpened metal tube which turned them into finger-sized dowels. One end of each trunnel was pointed to facilitate driving it into a pre-drilled hole somewhere on Heron’s framing, and then it was tossed into a bucket, ready for use.

Nails are a bit more complicated. Ekk and I are dedicated scroungers who have collected quite a pile of scrap metal for use in his blacksmithing forge. Old lawnmower blades, shock absorber springs, and propane tanks all go through the shop and come out as everything from cutlasses to plow blades. In this case, we were making nails.

Each nail takes a few minutes, which doesn’t seem like much until you realize there are hundreds if not thousands in Heron’s beams and planking. In this video clip, Ekk draws out a couple of nails in his forge at home in Northern Vermont. (These videos were taken over the summer.) He has two or three pieces of scrap iron in the fire and is heating them while he works with each one in succession.

Cutting and putting heads on nails made by hand. It’s hard to record speech over the anvil, but what he is doing around the 30 second mark is checking the nail’s thickness to see how it measures on his nail header (a piece of stock iron with a hole in it – this keeps them all the same diameter, and gives a surface to pound a nail head around). It also gives a leverage point to break the half-finished nail off its rod.

So now you’ve got a glimpse into the thousands of man-hours that go into the construction of a vessel like Heron before her frame even gets put together.

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Posted By Sarah on July 12, 2012

The Battle of Plattsburgh is always one of our favorites, and with any luck, this year we may well have a special surprise to unveil!

See the full calendar of events put on by the Battle of Plattsburgh Association: http://www.champlain1812.com/calendar.html

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Posted By Sarah on July 12, 2012

Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s annual Rabble in Arms event will be August 18-19, 2012 in Vergennes, VT. From the LCMM website:

History comes alive for the 200th Anniversary of the War of 1812 as costumed re-enactors in traditional boats at North Harbor recreate the British attack on Fort Cassin, at the mouth of Otter Creek. Enjoy demonstrations of maritime skills, presentations of firearms, boat maneuvers, open air cooking, blacksmithing and more.

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Posted By Sarah on July 12, 2012

Founder’s Day Weekend Re-enactment and Colonial Trade Fair, July 21-22, 2012.
Lighthouse Point, Ogdensburg, NY  http://www.fort1749.org/

Open Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Admission is $8/adult, $2/children 7 to 12 and children under six free.

Merganser & crew will be there!

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Posted By Sarah on May 16, 2012

Ah, hard tack. The mere name evokes thoughts of broken teeth, weevils, and mold. Mm. Just like mother used to make. We were therefore pleasantly surprised to discover if made correctly, it makes a tolerable snack (if you’re hungry enough) and – this is its true vocation, I believe – amazing dumplings. We learned this a couple of years ago at the Burning of Kingston reenactment in Kingston, New York. This event takes place in October, and the weather is frequently chilly. This was the case in 2009, when it alternately rained and snowed all weekend. Crewman Brian had brought along some of his homemade ship’s biscuit. It proved far too hard to eat on its own. I was reduced to hitting it with the reverse of a hatchet on our shore camp’s splitting log, to the amused amazement of a passing British Army reenactor, who exclaimed in appreciation of how tough we Navy folks were. Eventually, I put the fractured biscuits into our cauldron with its mixture of sausage and root vegetables. The end result was delicious, and not only because we were freezing. That soup inspired all of us to try our hands at versions of the standard hard tack recipe.

The stew that saved us, Kingston 2009.

Ekk and I are currently gearing up for the 2012 reenacting season. We’ve spent a couple of nights experimenting with the recipe for the ship’s biscuit this summer. Our basic recipe came from William Falconer’s description of biscuit and its production from his 1769 work A New Universal Dictionary of the Marine. We modified it a bit to test the difference between a whole wheat version and a white flour version.

Ship’s biscuit is simple: flour and water, kneaded into a stiff dough, shaped into round cakes, pricked all over (we used a convenient marlinspike), and baked until hard and dry. Some redactions add salt, but salt attracts water which then encourages mold. We experimented with entirely whole wheat flour, entirely white flour, and a half-and-half mixture of the two.

Ship's biscuit. Whole-wheat on the left, white flour on the right.

The white version was extremely hard, but unpredictable. Some of the white biscuits split perfectly down the middle like a Vermont common cracker, while others revealed an almost glossy brittle interior. My oven probably doesn’t heat evenly. The whole wheat version came out somewhat softer, but took forever to dry. They seemed to rise a bit in the oven. Both of the above biscuits were cut with the same tool (a tuna can, okay), but the size difference is dramatic. The half-and-half versions were the best of both worlds – they split relatively well and are the most palatable of the two.

No weevils have appeared yet. We’ll keep you posted.

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Posted By Sarah on February 12, 2012

We’ve finally got enough snow out in the deep woods to make logging possible, so the long process of cutting and hauling spars has begun. We own a little over 40 acres of mixed pasture and woodlot, all of it on a mix of steep ravines and small mountains, and at the very back edge of the lot stands a tall grove of straight spruces. Needless to say, this grove is on a very steep incline over some rather rough terrain! We made the first trip out there a couple of days ago and selected the trees to be cut.

Ekk pulls the sled containing chainsaws, snowshoes, rope, and the come-along. Shown with optional goat.

The first part was easy. There is a logging road going to the back of our property. We keep it plowed for a friend who has a deer camp back there. Our young harness goat in training, Oscar, tagged along for the adventure.

Snowshoes were required for the next leg of the trip.

Once at the end of the road, it was snowshoe time. We put the chainsaw in a plastic half-barrel that would later serve as a skid to keep the end of the logs on top of the snow. From the road, it was about half a mile or so to the spruce grove.

This is some of the terrain leading to the spruce grove. Snow depth varies from 6 inches to 3 feet.

We selected tall straight trees of the approximate diameter and marked them for later use. While Ekk cut two down for later hauling, the goat and I wandered around and harvested spruce gum for later use. Spruce gum can be boiled and added to beeswax, which is then used to wax thread for sewing canvas.

Hauling spars back to the road

By the time we got trees down, it was getting dark, so we made plans to come back the next day. It had been much colder, so the snow was frozen hard and would (mostly) support our weight. Here I am hauling the log that will eventually be a gaff. The project was good training for our goat, who is still working on the whole “getting out of the way” idea. Once I got the log moving, there was no way I was willing to stop. Oscar got his revenge, though – at one point I tripped and took a solid face plant into the snow in the middle of a raspberry patch. Oscar promptly ran over, jumped on my back, and used me as a stepping stool to get the brambles he hadn’t been able to reach.

Taking a break with my portable lap-warmer. This spar will eventually be a yard for the forward square sail.

The weather started to turn for the worse after we’d hauled two logs out to the road. There are more trees out there in the spruce stand, and we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us. Heron still needs another half-dozen logs for spars and masts, not to mention spares. All these logs will need to be barked and shaved down to their final dimensions. And that’s not even mentioning all the canvas…

The rough model for Heron's prospective sail plan. The scale is 1 inch to one foot. The little scale indicator amidships represents a 5'8" person.

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Posted By Sarah on January 8, 2012

With winter solidly upon us, work on most outdoor projects has slowed or ceased. Heron is securely put away for the time being, and Merganser sleeps on her trailer. We made a lot of progress on Heron this year – from starting with just a laid keel, sawn frames were stood, ribs steamed and put into place, most of the planking nailed up, and all but five of her deck beams are in their final positions. The sawmill we’ve been using has closed down for now, and so those final five beams will have to wait.

Ekk and I are spending our evenings rereading Howard Chappelle’s books The History Of American Sailing Ships and The History of the American Sailing Navy. We sit by the woodstove and whittle or sew, listening to audio books of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series. And occasionally, recipes from Lobscouse and Spotted Dog show up on our dinner tables.

And all the while, we dream of the Caribbean.

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Posted By Sarah on September 22, 2011

We began cutting the main deck beams yesterday. The steam chest was refurbished and put back together for steaming the remaining ribs. (Heron uses both sawn frames and steamed ribs.) Ekk finished the calculations for deck camber this week, and she’s looking bigger every day.

The steam tank on its own. The tank is partially filled with water and a fire built underneath. Steam is then piped to the steam chest (not shown).

So far, we’re still on schedule for having a fully planked and decked over hull before snowfall. We’ll probably be looking for folks who want to come up and have a caulking party (or two, or three) at some point this fall. We can promise beer, barbeque, and space to pitch tents.

The current plan is to get the hull as finished as possible by snowfall so that we can do interior work and rigging all winter. Heron has several interior bulkheads to be put in, as well as a few bunks and storage lockers. A lot of the rigging can be done in the house by the woodstove. Like Merganser, all of Heron‘s sails will be handsewn from natural fibers. There’s also a variety of small-scale woodwork to be done, from belaying pins to gratings. Fortunately, both Ekk and I are pretty handy, and there are worse ways to spend a winter night than sitting around a woodstove with a hand project!

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