Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to share a cool experience we got to have recently visiting Portsmouth New Hampshire!

Tall Ships Portsmouth New Hampshire

One of the things that we really love is finding some type of activity that we wouldn't be looking to do necessarily but stumble upon it randomly while doing something else.

We went to the beach, one of our every weekend activities but the tide was coming in and we didn't plan it properly so we decided that we were going to end up doing something different. That something different turned out to be something really cool that I haven't gotten to do in a while: see some old wooden ships!

There were 2 ships here, one of them was a new one and one of them was a replica of an old ship, one of the best ships to cross the Atlantic ocean back in the day! The first ship you can see here is one that is from Bermuda and it's got some cool history to it. It's a ship that is built by students of Bermuda in high school with the help of some master crafters of course, but as a way to teach the children skills and give them good real-world knowledge. I think that's awesome!

The second ship though was way cooler lol. This was a replica ship of the Nyckel (had some other name to it but I forget). The Nyckel was a Belgian ship I think it was, back in the 1600's when the Europeans started to settle America. It was the most successful ship that operated at the time! The information they told was that the more famous ships like the Mayflower only had one voyage from Europe to America but they ended up sinking. The Nyckel here successfully made the crossing FOUR times! That's insane for a wooden ship of the day. Most of the ships sank at sea and stranded people or everyone died. But this ship here had some incredible luck and managed to stay afloat and alive for four crossings back and forth! That's 8 voyages!

The ship, although remodeled, was not the original one. We have an original ship I think it is, the USS Constitution from way back in the day but the Nyckel here was a ship that was rebuilt from drawings and paintings of the ship and some knowledge of the way they built and modeled ships at the time. Still had some really cool stuff to it!

One of the cool things is they put some replica cannons on board! The ship certainly needed to carry cannons so that it could defend itself from pirates at the time. On the voyages back to Europe, one of the things that the ship was carrying was beaver pelts. Beaver pelts were apparently hot fashion in Europe at the time so they were harvesting a lot of them in America and sending them overseas.

The little man was certainly having fun with the cannons!

The ropes on the ship were insane! They had so many ropes, which is understandable considering that it was a sailing ship and all lol. They were talking about how they would use some mechanical levers on the ship to move the ropes since they were so heavy and to unfurl the sail or pull it back together. The ingenuity of people is quite amazing when you think about it. The ships had to do a lot of things and people invented all kinds of unique ways to rise to the challenges!

This was the beauty of the ship seen from the exterior. Apologies to the woman there that looks like I mainly got her ass in the photo hahaha sorry!

The ropes and all kinds of things on the outside of the ship were wild to think about people climbing them and stuff. What's really cool as well is the city of Portsmouth offers highschool kids an opportunity to spend a week on the ship in the summer to learn all about sailing and doing the maritime stuff! I would love to sign the little man up one day, but I don't think we will be living in the area here by the time that comes around.

Underneath the ship, they did retrofit it to have modern amenities like normal food and sleeping quarters and all that. It's even got diesel engines for when it can't use the sails to navigate around. Cheating if you ask me! :D

Seeing all of the different ropes, pulleys and connections everywhere was incredible! I would love to spend time on the ship just to mess around with all of that stuff honestly lol

Finally what was super cool was there was a real barrel of aging Makers Mark whiskey on board! The barrel makes the trip as a way to naturally age and mature the whiskey which was something I had no idea but that seems awesome. I'm sure there is a premium charge for it lol but maybe I would pay it! Lol. There was a rich dude on board asking if he could buy the barrel as it was. I don't think they sold it to him but probably referred him back to the company to figure it out.

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