The landscape of life and work aboard H.M.S. Debraak
Date
1998
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
As His Majesty’s Sloop-of-war traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, a multivalent landscape shaped the experiences of the eighty-rive men living and working on the ship’s decks. The Royal Navy Admiralty Board and its subsidiary administrative branches established on the decks of the DeBraak a landscape of spatial organization with the specific intent to maintain the naval hierarchy, impart discipline, and regulate the crew. As a defining factor in die lives of each of the ship’s inhabitants, the design of the decks and the constellation of objects used in the ship’s living spaces embodied the standardized patterns of daily life and expressed the intended crew relations as established by the Admiralty Board, thus satisfying the expectations and requirements the Royal Navy had for the ship. ☐ Some scholars assert that this established setting of order and hierarchy created for the eighteenth-century Royal Navy seamen a life devoid of social interaction, sensory stimulation, and meaning. However a closer examination offers insight into the nuances of the ship’s material world and the crew’s experience of it Within the static architectural setting, the crew acted to complete the landscape. As the men shared intimate details of life and work in confined spaces, they imparted color, sound, texture, and smell to the ship’s utilitarian interior, thus creating a reverberating landscape that held meaning for them. In forging group identity, asserting individuality, claiming ownership, and imparting domesticity to the ship accommodations, the artifacts of daily life played an important role in shaping the reality of life aboard die DeBraak. ☐ The recovery of the DeBraak has brought the texture and details of eighteenth century shipboard life to the present In this synthesis of evidence from artifacts, ship plans, and secondary sources, the material world of the DeBraak's interiors emerges through a series of narrative vignettes, descriptive text detailed catalogue, and photographs.