Hi Guys,
interesting thread,
regarding the ship i have read the same story that Gollum mentions, and is more than likely to be correct,
when salt gets into timber and it is in conditions like the desert area referred to the rot is minimal due to the very dry conditions once the moisture evaporates out it becomes hard and doesn't rot much after that and the salt preserves it, rot is caused by a fungus which needs the moisture to survive and in dry conditions the fungus dies, except in the case of dry rot, which needs moisture at the start of the life cycle and then draws moisture from the air, this doesn't occur in saltwater conditions the salt kills it before the spores can grow,
many wooden ships in later years packed salt between the frames in between the outer planking and the inner planks called a ceiling to stop rot,
and its more likely that when it is called a pearl ship they are referring to mother of pearl which are the shells,
common round the pacific are are black lipped and gold lipped shell about 9 to 10 inch across when fully grown,
they were used before plastic for buttons, only the well off could afford them, peasants (like me) had to make do with wooden toggles to fasten their coats,
and only about one in a hundred had a pearl inside, and only about 10 percent of those were good enough to be worth anything, so any pearls found would probably be in a small chest on the ship and that at least to me could account for the wealth the guy who used parts to build his place came into,
a pearl is like an onion in layers (called nacre) about 3 to 5 layer of this are removed until the lustre shows,
until about WW2 there were about 50 pearling lugers operating out of Broome in Northern Australia, using natives islanders to dive for them in the gulf of carpenterier, and even up until the 1960s there were still a few operating there, any pearls found were sold and the money split between the divers and crew, they were a bonus and only a small proportion of the value of the entire cargo, the real money was in the shells,
also tidal conditions are such that Chinese ships are found in an area of Baja California, having drifted there over time, perhaps abandoned in a storm or some date back hundreds of years, there are photos of quite a bit of the stuff that has ended up in a gulf area, there are photos of this in a Book called hunting the desert whale by Earl Stanley Gardener, including hundreds of the glass balls used to float Chinese fisherman's nets before they invented plastic, all deposited there by ocean currents,
in the 1960s a ship carrying 60,000 plastic ducks the little yellow ones you see in fairgrounds, sank in a typhoon and have turned up all over the world, oceanographers track them and have used their findings to chart the ocean currents last year a few turned up on the Hebrides off Scotland, and that's a long way from the south Pacific, and it's more than likely that many of the ships found round America could have landed there that way, and not necessarily from Vikings or any other ocean goers exploring distant lands,
the carving on the rock could show oars when they are shipped, Viking ships and any open boat with oars including Greek and other Mediterranean single deck ships would place the oars just like the drawing unshipped and held vertically when approaching land so that they didn't get damaged and if the grounding was bad could easily drop them back into the thwarts in the gunnel's to back row out of trouble if a swell was running,
Roy is correct about the figurehead and fancy bow and stern sections regarding Mediterranean ships, most were designed like this as it finished of the keel and stem and stern pieces as it swept up at both ends, it makes for an easy run for the planks without tight bends , the stern normally in either a single curved piece flattening to an axe shape or carved like a palm leaf, although there were many variations in the design, and the majority a swans head as he mentions at the bow,
just my 2 cents worth,
John