Crank ships

Crank, is a condition in which a ship becomes when it heels abnormally, and recovers slowly under the action of the wind. If a ship makes long slow rolls and takes itʼs time to resume a vertical position, it is called: crank, cranky, crank- sided, tender, or tender-sided. If the ship snaps back to its vertical position when heeled, it is called ʻstiff.ʼ Stiffness refers to a ships power to stand up to her canvas, and will offer great resistance to inclination from the upright, when under sail. Although stiff is considered good in the case of many ships, there are extreme cases in which the vessel will be too stiff and resist the tendency to heel under wind pressure, and may cause damage to masts, rigging, and structure. According to Arthur Nelson, “most new Tudor ships were affected slightly on completion, one way or the other

The reason why a ship may be crank cannot be summarized into one precise underlying cause, but rather anything that may affect the centre of buoyancy and the centre of gravity to each other – essentially anything that affects the ships stability.

The Stability of a ship will at any moment depend:

The summation of all the weights is an important aspect of the stability of a ship. Fixtures, fittings, masts, rigging, crew, ballast, etc., will have affect on a ships stability based on their individual moments about the centreline of the ship. These weights will act as a downward force on the vertical centreline (imagining a line drawn through the centre of the ship and the metacentre is the point in the middle). The centre of the submerged part of the hull, acts as an upward force on the vertical centreline, and so these two forces have to be balanced with the sea at the waterline of the ship when it is at rest.

By looking at the various weights, distributions and contributing factors that may effect itʼs buoyancy, remedies can be attempted to solve what has affected the ships stability. In the case of the Gresham Ship (1574), furring was the chosen method to solve its crankness.

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Wikipedia