SEALIFT: The Costs and Logistics of Richard I of England's Third Crusade Voyage (Part 1 - England to Messina)) (original) (raw)
Related papers
2009
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Thomas Walsingham, Chronica Monasterii Saint Albans, 2 vols., ed.H.T.Riley, Rolls 'In a very short time the wind had filled the sail and blown us out of sight of the land of our birth. And I tell you now that anyone who sets out on such a dangerous course is foolhardy. For at night you fall asleep without knowing whether you will find yourself the next morning at the bottom of the sea.' ' 'Let me tell you of the great peril that befell a Catholic king in the presence of the Old Pilgrim. This king was crossing the sea between Cyprus and Syria in company with other ships and galleys. The weather was fine. Suddenly a squall sprang up which did not last long but can be extremely dangerous if it strikes a ship with all sail spread. An old sailor said that it would be wise to lower the sail. But the captain paid no heed. Hit by another squall in such wise and with such violence that the ship went over on her beams-ends and was half under water. The great sail and topmast were in the sea ' 2 The above two passages suggests that maritime travel during the middle ages was a dangerous affair, and indeed it could be, as Edward Ill's return journey hi 1343 from his campaign in Brittany amply shows; sea journeys could be perilous.3 Nevertheless, by the time Edward III crossed the Channel on 28 October 13594 English forces had already achieved many successful crossings to launch campaigns hi France.5 If the numerous flotillas of the diplomatic embassies, 'micro-fleets' and trading vessels were added to these major expeditions, one could safely say that the English had, by this period, developed a safe and secure system of cross Channel communication and transportation. Nor is the maritime contribution to the Scottish wars of this period to be underestimated.6 Indeed, without ships supplying garrisons and armies, blockading enemy ports and providing the surprise element inherent hi amphibious landings,
8 The Middle Ground: The Passage of Crusade Armies to The Holy Land By Land and Sea (1096-1204)
A Military History of the Mediterranean Sea, 2018
The crusades were wars unlike any others in the history of Christianity. Two especially significant differences marked this form of holy war from other forms of warfare in the Middle Ages. The first was the character of participation in the crusade movement. Crusades had the status of penitential pilgrimages which offered the opportunity to gain spiritual rewards, and thus often attracted large numbers of participants from beyond the traditional military classes of nobles and knights. The second difference was the sheer magnitude of the undertaking in practical terms. Crusade expeditions had to travel vast distances from their starting points in Western Europe in order to reach their geographical objective, the Holy Land, and later, Egypt, meaning that they were in transit for many months, or in some cases, years, before they could engage with their Muslim enemies. Edward Peters has drawn attention to the fact that much of the modern historiography of the crusades has concentrated on two main areas. On the one hand there is the organisation of crusades in Europe, together with everything associated with it: ideology, motivation, finance, preaching, recruitment and so on; on the other hand, there are the primarily military activities of crusaders in the Holy Land and other theatres of war. What happened in between these two complexes, he claims, has tended not to attract the attention of historians. 1 The aim of this essay is to examine the factors which influenced the choice of land or sea routes in the passage of crusade armies to the East, looking at the relative aims and practicalities of land and seaborne crusades, as well as other issues contingent upon this choice, in the hope that it might serve as a useful starting point for further research. Soon after Pope Urban made his famous appeal for the liberation of the Holy Land from Turkish rule at the Council of Clermont in November 1095, several seaborne expeditions were evidently being planned, but the majority of the forces that took part in the First Crusade (1096-99) and the expeditions which followed it in 1101 travelled by land routes. The smaller naval expeditions in the First Crusade and those that followed in the course of the next forty years tended to come from two regions with strong maritime traditions and capabilities:
Maritime Logistics in the Age of the Northern Crusades
2017
This is the cumulative doctoral thesis of Dr. Daniel Zwick based on five peer-reviewed articles and a main part, which is monographic in character (although this thesis is not officially a monographic thesis). The doctoral project was based at the University of Kiel and took place in cooperation with the University of Southern Denmark (Syddansk Universitet) and the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (Vikingeskibsmuseet). It examines the maritime organisation of predominantly Danes and Germans in the period of the Northern Crusades, which includes navigation and orientation, fleet organisation, but also shipbuilding and the establishment of a maritime trade network and other maritime-related infrastructure. While the chronological framework of this study is defined by a historical period - of the Northern Crusades - spanning four centuries, a great variety of historical and archaeological sources are addressed in the course of the investigation. This study starts with an examination of the natural physical landscape of the Baltic Sea in chapter 1 and how its populations adapted to geographical and climatic factors in the maritime sphere. Chapter 2 examines the logistical links from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, bypassing the Jutland peninsula, which opened up to a large-scale colonization and urbanisation movement and long-distance trade networks from western European, particularly from Danish and German places of origin in the wake of the Wendish, Baltic and Prussian crusades, starting in 1147. The foundation of Schleswig and Lübeck and the growing importance of the Ummelandfahrt are identified as paradigm shifts, which can be both corroborated by privileges on the one hand and ship-finds on the other hand. Early Bremen-type vessels seem to have played a particularly important role, and presently the overwhelming evidence points for a southern Jutlandic origin of this type. The great variances observed in the constructional characteristics strongly suggest a maritime organisation that was not bound to a singular local tradition, but can be most likely linked to long-distance trade networks of this time, which bounded merchants of different denominations together, such as the Gotlandic-Lübeckian gilda communis or the fraternities danicum in Cologne. While the previous chapter was most focussed on the legal and environmental precondition as well as the driving forces – i.e. actors – behind the opening up of the Baltic Sea, chapter 3 also investigates maritime organisation, but its practical aspects, i.e. navigation, orientation and fleet organisation. A major focus of this chapter lies on the re-evaluation of a 13th-century itinerary – colloquially known as King Valdemar's Iitnerary – describing the sea route between the then Danish territories of Blekinge and Estonia, along the Swedish and Finnish coastline. By drawing analogies to similar sources which served the orientation and army and fleet logistics, a new interpretation can be suggested according to which the itinerary was meant as basis for calculating travel time and organising leding fleets. This chapter is first and foremost focussed on Danish maritime logistics to its Estonian enclaves. This is compared and contrasted to an evaluation of actual 13th-century ship-finds in chapter 4 in the wider region associated with the Baltic Crusades, i.e. Riga (historical province of Livonia, today Latvia), the Matsalu Bay (Estonia), Kuggmaren (Sweden) and Egelskär (Finland), all of which – except the Riga 3 ship – are Bremen-type vessels too. In the concluding section, the question is raised whether Bremen-type vessels corrospond to the historical cog type, which was frequently mentioned in contemporary chronicles and source in connection with the crusades in general (as was deduced in paper E) and this region in particular. In contrast to the preceding parts, chapter 5, is first and foremost focused on trade – i.e. Baltic timber trade – and examines the probable impact of the availability of high quality Baltic oak on western European shipbuilding. The Beluga Ship (paper C) is introduced as exemplary case study, from which contextual study (paper D) further research questions are derived, assessing the use of timber imports in the light of possible cost-benefit decisions. Chapter 6 examines the local transport geography of a castle where lime was cut and distributed via ship. A nearby wreck's role within this context is analysed. In its conclusion, Chapter 6 takes a longue durée approach to make a hypothesis for Saaremaa's strategical importance, reaching back in time to the very beginning of the chronological framework of this study, i.e. the early attempts of the Danes to gain a foothold on Saaremaa in the Valdemarian period in the 12th and 13th centuries.
A Brief Analysis of Crusader Maritime Technology: Changes over Time
A brief, heavily historiographical survey of maritime technology in use during the Crusades, with attention paid to the effects of methods of production and predominant weather patterns in the Mediterranean. Paper written for an undergraduate class at the University of New Hampshire in 2005.
History, 2017
Volumes such as this are all too rare in the present age, in which research assessments set the agenda and scholars are encouraged to prioritize their own 'original' research over service to the wider academic community. For this reason alone, we are all greatly indebted to Lynda Rollason and the contributors to this fine book. It contains not only the first scholarly edition and discussion of the Thorney Liber Vitae, but also colour and black-and-white plates of the entire manuscript (the latter annotated to show different hands). The reader is thus not only presented with an accurate text, but also has the ability to follow the arguments made by the commentators, palaeographical or otherwise. This makes the volume an invaluable research tool, one which will find a welcome place in all serious research libraries. The Thorney Liber Vitae is, of course, no stranger to scholarship. Its importance was already grasped by Dorothy Whitelock, who dedicated a typically insightful article to the subject in 1940, and the edition and discussion builds on preliminary work by no fewer than three scholars: Cecily Clark, Olof van Feilitzen and Neil Keir. Striking new findings are, therefore, not to be expected. Rather, the signal contribution of the volume lies in presenting and discussing this material in greater detail, revisiting old finds and situating lesser-known individuals and entries more firmly in their immediate textual and historical context. The volume opens with a detailed historical introduction by the editor, which is followed by an appraisal of the manuscript by Richard Gameson, an assessment of the personal names by Olof von Feilitzen and John Insley (the latter revising the former's unfinished work), and a prosopographical introduction by Katherine Keats-Rohan. These are not designed as exhaustive treatments, but rather as background to the critical edition, which then follows. The heart of the book, however, lies in the ensuing commentaries, which constitute some 180 pages. It is here that we find the minute palaeographical analysis which underpins Gameson's more general observations, and it is here too that we find a full onomasticon (by von Feilitzen, as revised and corrected by Insley) and prosopography (by Keats-Rohan). There are also shorter notes on matters of specific interest, such the entry for Thurstan the moneyer and the Thorney relic list. this subject should take steps to read this eminently readable book, which is well illustrated with maps and images of ecclesiastical artefacts.
Proceedings of the International Symposium of Boat and Shiparchaeology in Mainz, 2009
The time of the crusades (1095-1291) and of the occupation of the Holy Land can be considered to be one of the biggest „take offs“ in the medieval times with widespread influences and a cultural exchange all over Europe. Exchange has always been related to and connected with transport: in those time the travelling by land and journeys by sea. The transfer and exchange of shipbuilding technology and technology experience between the Mediterranean and Northern Europe in the Middle Ages is one of the main open scientific questions of our time. On the basis of general considerations regarding shipbuilding technology we think of more or less separate shipbuilding technology developments on both sea areas. New investigations in the Mediterranean with the discovery of sensational engravings in Majorca, Cyprus and Greece connected with new discovered written sources of frisian origin shed a light of the technological similarities of the used watercrafts and implementation of the influence of hundreds of north european ships travelling the around 4000 sm to Acre (Akkon). Portugal played on a very early stage an important role for the crusaders travelling over sea from Ribe (Danmark) and other north european harbours to Akkon. The information Odo of Deuil mentioning concerning the Siege of Lissabon could be given as an example for the intensity of seatransport already in the Second Crusade. In 1147 164 north european ships with 2000 people aboard reached Lissabon. Until now very little research was done how this ships look like and how the could be transformed into vessels which could transported such a great amount of people on a month journey. In connection with investigations of maritime landscape infrastructure of the stopovers and the information we gain from the written sources concerning repair and the building of ships in Akkon, Tyros and Antiochia we will raise a colourful picture which still lay momentary in the shadow of resarch which was focused mainly on the maritime activities in the Mediterranean.