Ein Silberbecher und Stapellauf-Feiern der frühen Neuzeit

Abstract

"The German Maritime Museum is in possession of a silver beaker (Ill. 1) which, according to its inscription, was given by Jacob Tamssen, a merchant and shipowner of Kiel, to the master shipbuilder Hans Jürgen Hinrichsen in 1747 for the construction of the frigate DE JUNGFRAU HELENA LUCIA. More than a century earlier, the kings of England had presented the builders of the leading vessels of their war fleets with comparable silver cups as gifts of honour. In the eighteenth century, master shipbuilders received such rewards even for the completion of third-rate constructions. The cups were used for a form of launching ceremony no longer customary today, an event at which a party of selected guests stood on the vessel as it slipped from the stocks. The king's representative poured wine out of the cup onto the deck and then passed the cup around for all to take a sip. As this was going on, the master shipbuilder was on the stocks, seeing to the ship's smooth launching. When the ceremony was over, he received the cup. In the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, decisive changes began to take place in this ritual in England. Initially the bottle was thrown onto the deck in such a way that it broke and the wine flowed over the deck. Beginning in 1804, the bottle was thrown against the stem post from the outside. This custom spread rapidly and has remained the usual procedure for ship christenings to the present day. It can only be carried out, however, if the ship slips from the stocks stern first, a method introduced in England for larger-scale vessels as early as the seventeenth century. In contrast, at Dutch and German shipyards the new vessels were launched bow first until well into the nineteenth century (Ills. 2 and 3), and the ceremony, including the round of wine-sipping, was carried out by an exclusive party on board the ship throughout Early Modern Times. The article also discusses the different procedural variations that could take place within this fixed framework." (author's abstract)