Christian Nielsen's drawings

CD

Book

Frederickssund Jolle

drawings courtesy
Handels- og Søfartsmuseets

Photos courtesy Vikingeskibsmuseet

Marcus Noer


photo courtesy Tom Jackson/Woodenboat Magazine



One of several Frederickssund Jolle built by the Vikingeskibs Museet in Roskilde, Denmark, this boat was featured in a piece by Tom Jackson which appeared in the 2009 issue of Small Boats, published by WoodenBoat.
Mr Jackson was rather taken with the boat and proclaimed: "This 17'8" double-ender can stand comparison to the finest of yacht design, and yet this hull comes down to us from an everyday craftsman for a common fisherman." Regarding her performance, Tom says: " She's an amazingly sprightly sailer and a joy to handle. She comes about like a dinghy, with alight touch on the tiller. The jibs have to be backed briefly, but the boat comes about cleanly and with little fuss. She picks up speed right away on the new tack. Her topsail sets and strikes easily, with no specialized gear."

Lokken Pram

I first found this beguiling and elegant pram in Thomas Gillmer's 'A History of Working Watercraft of the Western World'. The inspired lines of this little boat won me over to the possibility of prams and opened the door to the discovery of Christian Nielsen.
"The structure of this 18' pram is light and strong in the best Norse tradition. As a centerboarder she will perform well and efficiently to windward." She looks to me like good choice for a raid boat, though I might want to alter the sail plan to a lug yawl. Apparently Gillmer was taken with her as well, as he devoted a page to her drawing, above, along with several other Nielsen collections.

drawings courtesy
Handels- og Søfartsmuseets

Here's my gift to any readers who love traditional boats.
In the late 1930's, as motorized boats began to replace the traditional sailing vessels used for fishing in Denmark, the members of the Danish Maritime Museum recognized the need to preserve the heritage these older types of boats. Both financially and spatially unable to procure representative boats, they decided on the next best thing, to have boats measured and described. With help from the Tuborg Fund, the museum was able to hire a man to survey and comment on the threatened and vanishing types of working sail. That man was one Christian Nielsen, a young boatbuilder with a long lineage of boatbuilding. Typically, Nielsen would take a train to the coastal area in question and then proceed up or down the coast on bicycle to take his measurements and gather local knowledge of the type of boat used in that area. Upon returning to the museum he would use the measurements he'd taken to construct drawings of the boat, leaving us with a valuable legacy. He is, in his way, the Danish equivalent of Howard Chapelle in the US, Edgar March and others in the UK.
Nielsen's work culminated in an archive of traditional workboats from all round the Danish coast. The book of Nielsen's collected drawings along with commentary and other illustrations was published by the Danish Maritime Museum in 1977, and is available (in Danish) from them, as is the CD of the drawings, highly recommended. The English edition, published in 1980 with an introduction by Jon Wilson, founder of WoodenBoat Magazine, is out of print and only available second market. I was lucky to get a copy at a reasonable price. The CD is a little difficult to negotiate, but a source of recurring pleasure. If you are given cash at Christmas, or have a little extra and want to play Santa to yourself, or someone else, the CD is a great collection of drawings from which you can build a boat.
I must say that in ordering the CD, and in general asking questions about the Handels- og Søfartsmuseets I was treated to a rare and gracious experience, special thanks to Thorborn and Heidi. The Danes seem to be very generous people.
A Very Merry Christmas to you!

Matt Billey builds to a boat design collected by Christian Nielsen

Work in progress, two bow shots

Laying the deck

Forward hatch

Interior looking aft

Mast step, trunnels, and what looks to be a grown floor

Jette is certainly being well crafted

tree·nail or tre·nail also trun·nel

n.

A wooden peg that swells when wet and is used to fasten timbers, especially in shipbuilding.

all photos courtesy Matt Billey

scanned images courtesy the publisher's of Wooden Boat Designs by Christian Nielsen

The book 'Wooden Boat Designs Classic Danish Boats Measured and Described by Christian Nielsen', is a book that inspires.
Originally published in 1977 by Høst and Søns Forlag, Copenhagen, in cooperation with Handels og Søfartsmuseet. The English translation is from 1980 and inspired Jon Wilson, founder of WoodenBoat Magazine, enough that he wrote the forward to the English edition. Chuck Coles
found inspiration to build his Lynaes dinghy Moondancer. Add Matt Billey, underway (7 years worth) with the build of a replica Bornholm Boat, Haabat, to Nielsen's lines. I discovered Matt's project on Russ Manheimer's weblog about his beloved Sjogin, another Scandinavian double ended design. When I wrote Russ asking if he'd put me in touch with Matt, I had no idea the boat that Matt was so finely crafting was from the Neilsen book. In email conversation he said:

"I first discovered Christian Nielsen's book "Wooden Boat Designs: Classic Danish Boats Measured and Described" while up at the Apprenticeshop in Rockland, Maine. This is the same book that Chuck Cole got the design for the Lynaes Dinghy he built. Of all the boats in the book, I loved the Bornholm Island boat "Haabet" the most. I am especially interested in the hull shape and the construction method. For some reason, I seem to like ancient double-enders that have slightly wider shoulders than hips. I've built a Maine sailing peapod that has that same "cod head, mackerel tail" sheer. Joggled frames and trunnels have always fascinated me and I wanted to have some first hand experience with them.

There are a few sentences in the Nielsen book that really peaked my curiousity. ......

"Since the boats from Bornholm, even with their small size, were superior to the Belt and Sound boats as far as seaworthiness was concerned, the local fishermen in the Langeland Belt became interested in this type, and in the period down to 1920 a considerable number of Bornholm boats were sold to them. Thus, until World War I, once could see both Sound and Kattegat boats, Belt boats and Bornholm boats, such as Haabet of Listed, in the same area catching the same kind of fish. They were all sharp-sterned shoal-draft vessels; as far as their construction was concerned, they must be said to belong to the same group, but their local feaures indicated that they had been built in different places in Denmark."

I guess I want to find out what makes the Bornholm boats so seaworthy. So, it has always been my plan to build the hull using traditional materials and construction method, build the rig as drawn in the plans, but change the deck layout so as to be more comfortable for coastal cruising. As you can see from the pics, "Jette" will have wide side decks, a small cabin and a cockpit for passengers. The only thing I'm retaining from the original deck plan is the footwell aft for the helmsman."

He's well on his way, building slowly and meticulously, as you can see. He seems to know what he's doing. I will look forward to the launch, and hopefully manage to get aboard.

I originally found this book while researching a Nielsen drawing of a 'Norwegian' pram I'd found in Thomas Gillmer's A History of Working Watercraft Of The Western World. The boat in question is not in Neilsen's book, but an inquiry to the Danish museum turned up a CD which has all the Nielsen drawings along with his commentary (the comments are in Danish, but w/Google translator, that should pose no problems). They also have the book, in Danish. The English version is, I believe, out of print. I found a second market copy on line. To inquire about ordering the CD, write to : info@maritime-museum.dk or click my title bar for the museum store, the CD is just under the book. I have a copy on the way.