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Haptic & Hue
Plain Sailing: The Cloth That Turned The Tide of History
00:41:19
A coarse, plain cloth has a greater claim to being the most important textile in history than any sumptuous silk brocade or royal robe. Sailcloth is the fabric that has made it possible for humanity to explore the world, trade across seas, build great...
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- [00:21]
Jo Andrews
Sometimes when I say haptic and hue is about textiles, people say, oh, that's niche. I don't think textiles are niche. I think they're central to our history and culture in ways which are often not well explained and which haven't reached the standard textbooks. Our sales niche. This is a simple, coarse fabric that for millennia enabled us to move about this planet. Sails were the very stuff of travel, trade, exploration, war and empire. Without sails, there would have been no Greek and Trojan wars, no Viking empire, no Columbus or Magellan. The incredible Polynesian navigators would not have made it across the Pacific. James Cook could not have made reached Australia. There would have been no Mayflower carrying pilgrims to America or transports taking convicts to Australia. And there would have been no transatlantic slave trade. But no one has paid much attention to the sales themselves. Who made these incredible pieces of technology and what impact did they have on their communities?
- [01:47]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
I think there are a couple of reasons. One of them is there's hardly any preserved evidence of prehistoric tales from antiquity. They are organic materials and they quickly disappear. And also what we find is often fragmented and how to recognize a piece of a safe loss in a fragment. Another reason is that textiles are studied by women. It's also because the Industrial revolution has meant that textiles are now produced in huge numbers. We have forgotten the relationship between labor and raw materials because we can go to the shop and buy a nice dress or whatever for hardly any money. Made in Bangladesh or whatever, it's made by badly paid people in other parts of the world. And the raw materials are rarely the traditional ones, like flax or wool or it's polyester.
- [02:58]
Jo Andrews
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen is an internationally regarded expert in prehistoric text. And I'm Jo Andrews, the host of Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles and a handweaver. Interested in the stories fabrics tell us. Often the hidden hands that fashion fibre and cloth into something useful and beautiful have something new to tell us about ourselves and our communities. Sails are the very stuff of history and yet we don't know when they were first used. The earliest depiction of a sail we have is on a vase in the British Museum and it shows a small riverboat from the Nile.
- [03:50]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
That's from Egypt, from pre dynastic times, about three and a half thousand years ago. One of those reed river boats with a mast and a square sail at one end, the Egyptians had sails and they also liked to make models of all kinds of things, including ships. So there are little ship models with small sails. So I would say that's as far as I know those are the earliest.
- [04:21]
Jo Andrews
But Professor Bender Jorgensen says we mustn't assume the Egyptians invented sails.
- [04:28]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
It's always very difficult to argue from lack of evidence. I would say we have evidence from Egypt, we haven't from, as far as I know, from anywhere else. But inventions rarely only appear once. We've seen that with a lot of archaeological things like agriculture, that for long it was thought it all started in the Near East. But then when American archaeologists started looking in their region, there was also the invention of agriculture. And of course agriculture has been invented many places. You should never say never. And they could easily have invented sales. Other places, like in Mesopotamia or China, is often very early with a lot of things. But if we haven't got any evidence, we can't say so.
- [05:32]
Jo Andrews
But the oldest piece of actual sailcloth we have comes from around 2000 years ago. Fragments of a sail survive because it was torn up and used as packing for a mummy. A lovely piece of repurposing. Others come from the Red Sea sea and also date from Roman times. Several pieces were discovered in a port called Berenice, near the Egyptian border with Sudan. Textile specialists working on remains from an ancient rubbish heap. Felicity and John Peter Wild recognised that what they were looking at was a sail.
- [06:17]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
It was fragmented it, but it was a piece of fabric with some strengthening, some bands, ribbons. And I think she knew about this sail from a mummy wrapping. She could also recognize that this was the way sails in Roman ships were constructed. You can see it in various images. And they also found what's called brainling wings that were used to attach the sail to the beam. Then at the same time, another team were excavating at Mios Homos, the other Roman port on the Red Sea. And of course they found similar once they were recognized. You can find more.
- [07:00]
Jo Andrews
The port of Berenice was founded by the pharaoh Ptolemy II to import war elephants to Egypt, which must have been an incredible sight site. Later, when the Romans conquered Egypt, they used the harbour to bring in all kinds of things from India, Arabia and East Africa. And what the Wilds found was that they could tell the difference between sail fragments that were made in Egypt and those that had been made in India or Sri Lanka, because the yarn was spun in opposite directions.
- [07:42]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
And of course the trade came in from India and the ships were Roman. But of course, when they went to Sri Lanka or to India, they would have needed repairs. And so when they came back, some of the sails were made of Indian cotton. Well, it would be necessary tell any sailor, even modern sailors, that if you're going on a long distance trip, you need to be able to have repairs made.
- [08:23]
Homer
And flashing eyed Athena sent them a favorable wind, a strong blowing west wind that sang over the wine dark sea. And Telemachus called to his men and told them to catch hold of the ropes and hoist sail. And they did as he told them. They set the mast in its socket in the cross bank, raised it and made it fast with the forestays. And then they hoisted the white sails aloft with ropes of twisted ox hide. As the sail bellied out with the wind, the ship flew through the deck. Deep blue water and the foam hissed against her bows and she sped onwards. Then they made all fast throughout the ship, filled the mixing bowls to the brim and made drink offerings to the immortal gods, but more particularly to the grey eyed daughter of Zeus. Thus the ship sped on her way through the watches of the night from dark till dawn.
- [09:43]
Jo Andrews
Homer recording Telemachus setting off in search of his father Odysseus, who had been missing for years. It's a beautiful depiction, depiction of a culture that understood the power of sales and built a successful empire on the back of them, even though nowhere does Homer recognize the labor of creating sales. But it's a description that would fit many times and many cultures. Around a thousand years later, much further north, the Vikings could be found doing almost exactly the same thing, except that extraordinarily some of their sails were made not from linen, hemp or cotton, but from wool. Here's lies Bender Jorgensen.
- [10:38]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
People everywhere made sail claws out of the fibers that were available to them. And that's probably why wool sails were made in Norway, because sailcloths tended to be made either of flax or of hemp. Those are two main materials, or cottons, as we've seen in the Red Sea harbors, that is plant fibers. But along the Norwegian coast, you don't have very much arable land.
- [11:13]
Jo Andrews
So the Norwegians didn't have the flat land to grow hemp or linen, although Professor Bender Jorgensen thinks they tried.
- [11:24]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
I looked at pollen diagrams for the Norwegian coast, especially in northern Norway, and I could see that around 750 there was sort of a flurry of hemp and flax, but it disappeared. And I imagine that's my theory, that when they wanted sailcloth, they first tried to do like further south, grow flax and hemp, and then found out it was a question of priorities. Fiber or food? What should you go? Should you go food or should you go fiber? And in my opinion, they opted for food. At the same time, you could see that there's a special kind of landscape along the Norwegian coast called coastal heathland. There are plenty of little islands. A lot of them are not inhabited by humans, but they are excellent for sheep who can in fact live there all year round. They eat seaweed and are quite happy at that point, around 750, you can see that the coastal heathland, it grew. So that's why I think in Norway they probably did a lot of wool sales, because that was the fiber they could make without much problem.
- [12:49]
Jo Andrews
Around 25 years ago, a number of museums and universities across Scandinavia and in the UK got together to answer a number of questions about the Vikings, including reconstructing a woollen sail to find out exactly how it was made and why it worked.
- [13:13]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
What is it that makes a web suitable for sailcloth? Is it the weaving, the binding? Is it the furling, or is it the dressing of it? The University of Manchester, they at that point had a department of textiles and one of their professors, Bill Cook, he took charge of a lot of investigation, including question of air permeability. And his results were quite clear. It's not the weaving, it's not the fulling that hardly made anything. It was definitely the dressing, or as he called the smoking. He had adopted Norwegian word, which was a combination of tallow and fish oil and ochre.
- [14:09]
Jo Andrews
It's amazing how far good wool, tallow, fish oil and ochre can take you. But what is also interesting is that this project enabled Professor Bender Jorgensen to understand some of the incredible labour that went into equipping a Viking warship. Her estimates show that for just one ship, it would have taken 50 to 60 years of labor, and that at its height, the Viking fleet would have needed a million square meters of sailcloth. Sails were a great success, but the work of producing them meant more sheep and a reorganization of society. No one is sure how this was achieved. Were the slaves to do the work? Was there a kind of putting out system with weaving workshops organized by the nobility? Lies. Bender Jorgensen has a different theory.
- [15:19]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
Those who went to Britain, etc. They usually were sort of what we would call noblemen, and they had their followers. And if that was a local nobleman, he would be head of a number of farms and a number of cottages. And then it could be that a cottage should supply so and so much warp yarn a year. Another cottage, a similar amount of weft yarn, maybe one of the smaller farms should weave a length of cloth, etc. In that way, it is not industrial, it's a Simpler system and something that's feasible within the household economy. In a rural setting, of course, it would have meant a lot of extra work. So I think it's important not to imagine that you had to make 1 million square meters of a cloth.
- [16:19]
Jo Andrews
But the point here is that it took a community to turn out a good sail and certainly to equip a fleet. To me, these really are the hidden hands of history. The creation of sails has changed the tide of human events over and over again. But the Viking, Egyptian or Greek spinners and weavers, most of whom would have been women, are forgotten, erased from the record. Whereas the explorers and sailors who launch their expedition, conditions on the back of those sails are honored down the centuries. Sails were important technology and those who had the best had a chance of commanding the sea. By the 17th century, as we truly enter the Age of sail, some of the finest sailors in the Western world were to be found in a small set of inland villages in Somerset that come straight out of the English Tourist Board's lookbook. East, west and North Coca are built of ham stone, once described as the colour of biscuit, sprinkled with gold. Here's Ross Aitken, who was born in the Cocas and is the founder of the coca rope and sail charities.
- [18:00]
Ross Aitken
Three little villages, you're 20 miles inland, you know, why in the dickens does a sailcloth of such importance grow up there?
- [18:11]
Jo Andrews
And no one should doubt the importance of coca canvas. It became a world beating style standard, a global brand that was adopted by pirates and navies alike. This is the sailcloth they all wanted. So what's the magic of the Cocas?
- [18:31]
Ross Aitken
But the reason was that the soils here, they grow hemp and flax, which is the basic materials for making cloth and twine. And rope grows better in this area than anywhere else in Great Britain. And it's a run of Middle Jurassic cornbrush. And the soils on that, I say, grow hemp and flax better than anywhere else. The reason is that there are lines with what are called doggers in this geological formation, which means, and they're impervious, which means there are springs everywhere here. And what hemp and flax likes is a damp soil. And so that's why these soils are so good for it and that's why the industry built up here.
- [19:24]
Jo Andrews
Ross, who is a former geologist and one of those wonderful people who's dedicated a big chunk of his life to unearthing and conserving the coca's place in history, says that archaeological digs show that sail production goes back to the 1300s. But what really put COCA canvas on the map was the inventiveness of local people.
- [19:51]
Ross Aitken
The entrepreneurs were very good. They realized the potential of it and put money in to develop it. The Industrial Revolution came a bit late to Somerset, I'm afraid. So we're Talking about the 1870s, before there was any real machinery here at all. And so all the weaving of sailcloth was done in cottages and in all the villages around here. That's what your wife and daughter did. They turned yarn into sailcloth, oblongs of sailcloth on the loom and the looms were fixtures. So when the cottage was sold, that loom stayed because that what your wife and daughter would be doing. And so the whole of this area of southern Somerset and North Dorset was all tied up with either growing hempen, flax, or turning it into yarn, or turning that yarn then into sailcloth and rope.
- [20:56]
Jo Andrews
And the cokers came up with a way of making sailcloth that made it strong, stronger and longer lasting than anyone else's.
- [21:05]
Ross Aitken
The unique thing about COCA canvas was that it was bucked in the yarn and not in the piece. That unintelligible phrase is bucked is bleached and the piece is a sale. So what was different with COCA Canvas was they bleached the yarn before they made sails out of it. Everybody else bleached their sails, which meant, of course, that you weakened the sails in some places where the yarn wasn't up to standard and you couldn't do anything about it. Whereas if you bleach the yarn first, you throw away the yarn you've damaged. And so COCA canvas would last usually about twice as long as anybody else. And that's why it became so important.
- [21:53]
Jo Andrews
We heard from Lysbender Jorgensen that the Romans had to have their sails mended in India and Sri Lanka. And here is the same problem over again, years later.
- [22:08]
Ross Aitken
Do remember that the average sale only lasted eight months before it was run. So if you began to think about the navy, the merchant navy, pirates, everybody, you begin to realise that the requirement for sailcloth was enormous. And so having a sailcloth that lasted longer was really, really important.
- [22:33]
Jo Andrews
Nelson's ship, the Victory, carried COCA canvas at the Battle of Trafalgar. By this stage, sailing ships were enormously complex and the sails that powered them had multiplied.
- [22:48]
Ross Aitken
A ship like Nelson's Victory at Trafalgar had a full complement of about 60 sails, of which it set 32. And you would have two or three sail makers on board because for when they split and everything so they would keep them going. These ships were just awful. I mean that, first of all, they were, at the beginning of the voyage, they were terribly crowded because they expected at least half the people to die during the voyage with scurvy and various other things.
- [23:21]
Jo Andrews
Each sail was made of strips of canvas sewn together by hand.
- [23:29]
Ross Aitken
So the smallest sail on the Victory was its topsail, and that had one and a quarter miles of twine in it to sew the oblongs of sailcloth together.
- [23:40]
Jo Andrews
And the largest sail.
- [23:41]
Ross Aitken
Yeah, don't think about it. The reason for it is because it was so much bigger. And of course, there were different weights of canvas, so you would have heavier weights of canvas on the sails, the main sails, because they were really propulsion, whereas some of the other sails were more for direction than propulsion. And so those sails weigh several tons and that's dry. Think about it when it's wet and then think about putting those sails up in a storm or taking them down, more likely. It must have been horrific.
- [24:18]
Jo Andrews
Nelson's topsail from the Victory still exists. You can see it at the Royal Navy's National Museum in Portsmouth. Pierced 90 times by enemy fire. Now, Nelson was a fan of COCA canvas, but it cost more than other sailcloth. And the Royal Navy, which had a lot of ships to outfit, preferred to save money and buy cheaper canvas. But some US Navy ships were fitted with COCA canvas.
- [24:52]
Ross Aitken
It was very interesting, actually, because they learnt quite quickly. It was very useful, in fact, quicker than we did. And in the 1830s, there was a battle between the USS Constitution and a couple of English ships, and the USS Constitution out sailed the English ships. It was sailing with coca canvas and the English ships were sailing with Dutch canvas.
- [25:20]
Jo Andrews
And eventually even the British Navy gave in and COCA canvas became the pattern standard for all its ships. The Cocas thrived as a center for sailcloth, and their method of bleaching the yarn first and then weaving the cloth became adopted worldwide. And as long as there were sails, there was coca canvas. But all good things come to an end. And as the age of steam replaced the age of sail, the Cokers had mouths to feed and hands to busy. These small villages did not fail. Instead of making sailcloth, they turned to making twine, string and rope.
- [26:08]
Ross Aitken
First of all, you turn it into yarn and then twine, and the twine then is turned into rope. So in this village alone, there were six twineworks. And so it gives you an idea of the amount of energy that was going into it. So all that energy that had been for sailcloth was now to make twine that was turned into rope, mainly in Bridport, and Bridport still is at the top of the rope making worldwide. So the arresto cords for the space shuttle are made in Bridport. If you're keen on tennis Wimbledon, all the nets are made in Bridport. So the big industry in rope and twine is still there.
- [26:58]
Jo Andrews
Ross and I talked at the old Dawes twine works in West Coca Ross and a dedicated community of volunteers have spent many years restoring it to its former glory, including one of the only twine walks left in the country. A long covered space where you could wind twine into long lengths. The Dawes office is also a delight, full of string for every kind of packaging and wrapping, some of it deeply mysterious.
- [27:36]
Ross Aitken
That's, in a way, has been such a fascinating part of putting this twine works back together is learning the history of twine and sailcloth and suddenly learning how important these three villages were worldwide. I mean, this is not a small trade you can imagine, you know, that's how we moved around on the sea for centuries with sailcloth. And these villages were at the heart of, of that trade. So they were incredibly important. And, you know, there are three very nice, rather sleepy villages now, but they were the heart of international trade for 300 years.
- [28:22]
Jo Andrews
Today, sail making is an endangered heritage craft and there is a risk that these traditional skills could be lost. Mark Matthews is one of the few traditional sailmakers left in Britain. He has his own workshop and the use of a sail loft in Portland, not that far from the Cokers on the Dorset coast. The materials he is working with are completely different.
- [28:53]
Mark Matthews
Okay, so there's a huge range of different styles of fabric. So most cruising yachts will have a material which is polyester based, that's actually got a trade name of Dacron. Then after that we look into laminates, which are basically layers of material sandwiched together. And the fibres that are laid into those laminates are anything from carbon to Kevlar, sort of aramid fibres. So anything like Dyneema Spectra, quite modern style fibers used. So all those are sort of layered together. And then the other material that's used is a nylon which is used for downwind sails. So when you're sort of going in front of the wind and going off downwind and you quite often see these sails, they're quite brightly colored sails on the yachts. So yes, that's the other the material that's used.
- [29:53]
Jo Andrews
One of the advantages is that man made fibres do last Much, much longer.
- [30:01]
Mark Matthews
If the cells are well looked after, then the Dacrons can last up to 10 plus years. And because the polyester fibres in the Dacron, they actually have like a resin coating on them and that actually holds the fibers in place. So what tends to happen is that as the cells get older, this resin, although you don't see it break down or come off the sail, it actually sort of weakens and goes softer. So it makes the sail from being quite a firm sort of sail material, it goes quite soft and that's when the sail starts to lose its shape and the material starts stretching.
- [30:43]
Jo Andrews
But while you can still repair modern sails, there's a problem when the fabric itself degrades, often because of exposure to UV light.
- [30:56]
Professor Lies Bender Jorgensen
Yes.
- [30:56]
Mark Matthews
I mean, you can still repair the cells if the material gets to a stage where it's actually degraded through UV or just. Just general wear and tear, then actually putting a new piece of material to repair that cell, all it's going to do is actually create, like a hinge point. So where the edge of the new material finishes and it then meets the old, that acts like a hinge point and then the material will just tear along the edge of the repair. So while sails are in very good condition and the material is in good state, then. Yes, absolutely, they can be repaired. But once the material gets so damaged to the point where you can actually tear it by hand, that's usually quite a good test in sail loft, is if you can actually physically tear the material, then you know, it's beyond its point of repair.
- [31:50]
Jo Andrews
And, yes, when they are finished with generally modern sails get dumped.
- [31:56]
Mark Matthews
You know, sails generally have been going into landfill, unfortunately. But there's quite a lot of people now that are actually using the fabric and actually making sail bags out of them. And also there's a few people that are actually creating artwork from old sales and then they're actually sort of painting them or they're adding pieces of other threads to it. So some of it is being used for that. So there are a few ways that it, you know, now it is starting to get sort of recycled and reused.
- [32:33]
Jo Andrews
But the biggest change is that in the past, making a sail was the work of many hands, be it a community or a company. Think of the hours the Vikings put in for a single warship, or the numbers employed in the Cokers. Today, sail making is a much lonelier task.
- [32:57]
Mark Matthews
They would have had in a sailor, probably up to about 40 people working on the sail. And a lot of it would have been hand sewing. Obviously, the Fabric itself would have been quite heavy, especially for the sort of sailing ships at the time. So you would have had many hands working on those sails. So all the ropes, external rings and grommets would have all been hand finished. So actually worked by hand to, to finish the sail. So with now modern sails, the materials are actually probably a bit lighter now and stronger so they don't stretch as much. And so a lot of the, like the rope work is all internal and inside sleeves and pockets now and all the rings are hydraulically pressed in. So the whole process is a lot quicker. Now the other thing that, that traditional sails would have been is actually laid out on the floor. So when all the panels and all the sections of the sail are put together, they would have been laid out on a floor and then joined together. Whereas now in modern sail lofts, all the sails are now designed by computer on a sort of 3D design program. And then there's actually a cutting table, a bit like a CNC cutting table and you roll the fabric out on this table and then your designs basically of the panels get cut out on the table. So the whole process now is a lot quicker. So one person like myself, because I'm self employed and it's only me making the sail, I will make a sail from the start all the way through to the finish.
- [34:45]
Jo Andrews
And the sails are still sewn together.
- [34:49]
Mark Matthews
We actually use a really high tack, double sided tape. So we stick the panels together first so that holds the material in its shape and then you have to roll it up, sort of almost rolling up parallel to the, the join lines or the seam lines. And then. Yes, it's very much putting it manually putting it through the machine and, and sewing the sail up. Yes.
- [35:13]
Jo Andrews
So you're a good seamstress?
- [35:15]
Mark Matthews
Yes, yes, you could say that, yes. Yeah, I, I love getting behind a machine and, and sewing with sales. Yeah, absolutely love it.
- [35:25]
Jo Andrews
But apart from the sewing for Mark, there is still enormous skill in crafting a good sale.
- [35:35]
Mark Matthews
Yes, very much so. I think that there's doing all the finishing, what we call the finishing work, which is all the corner rings and all the edging of the sail and all the sort of hardware and components that go onto the sail. And then also I get the joy of when I've, especially if I've made a sail for a boat that's local, I'll actually go and fit the sail on the person's boat and if the weather conditions are okay, well I'll just hoist it up. See it all fits all. Okay. And Check the shape looks good. It's really nice to sort of see the project all the way through from right at the beginning of the design all the way through to actually fitting it on the boat.
- [36:17]
Jo Andrews
Mark also loves getting out on the water and spotting sails, both those that he has made and those made by others. Shortly, a sail in original style, Coca canvas may be among them. Ross and his team found, by chance, chance, an old sample of number one Coca canvas in the British Library. Ross has had it rewoven and Mark is making it into a sail. Mark says that the canvas needs developing into a heavier weight sailcloth, but he's happy to work with the first bolt of the Coca fabric.
- [36:58]
Mark Matthews
The aim is that we're going to try and get hold of a sailing dinghy, which hopefully we can keep at the twine works. And then I'm going to make a sail for that dinghy and I'll make it very much the traditional way, and although I'll still use a sewing machine to actually join the panels together and the sections together. But all the edges will be traditionally finished by hand. So have external ropes, external rings and grommets. And then hopefully, you know, once we've got that sail, we'll put it on the boat and see what it looks like. Then hopefully we'll be able to tow it down either possibly here to Portland or Lyme Regis. And, yeah, it would be great to have the finished sail on a boat that we can actually then launch and then see the sail in action.
- [37:51]
Jo Andrews
A sail that lands like every other will be the inheritor of a tradition that is thousands of years old, something that encapsulates the skill and knowledge of countless unknown hands that made this remarkable piece of technology possible. So the next time you see the wind fill a sail and it seems miraculous, remember the work of the nameless people stretching back into the darkness who made the age of sail and all that it meant possible. Thank you to Ross Aitken and all the volunteers at the door. Twine Roots. If you're anywhere near West Coca on one of their open days, go and visit. It's a great place for string and textile enthusiasts. And if you're a member of Friends of Haptic and Hue, keep an eye out for the next newsletter. Ross gave me a length of Coca canvas to give away to friends, but since sadly, not quite enough to make your own sail, thank you too to Mark Matthews and Professor Lise Bender Jorgensen, both of whose skill and wisdom adds a great deal to what we know about sails, how they were and are made. You can find out more about this episode, see a full script and pictures at w www.hapticandhue.com listen-series-6 Haptic&hu is hosted by me, Joe Andrews, and edited and produced by Bill Taylor. It's an independent production entirely supported by its listeners who bring us ideas and generously fund via Buy Me a Coffee or by becoming a friend of Haptic and Hu. This keeps the podcast free from advertising and sponsorship. It also brings you something extra every month with a separate podcast called Travels With Textiles, hosted by Bill Taylor and me, where we cover a whole range of different textile stories and news. This is the last episode in series six of Haptic and Hue. We will be back next year with, unbelievably, series seven. Meanwhile, the next episode of Friends of Haptic and Hue is in two weeks. Until then, have a lovely time and enjoy.