The Galiot Stadt Elbing. This model has been in the collection Peter Tamm since the late 1980s. It was built by master Joachim Trabant in a scale of 1:50 and is displayed on deck 2 of the museum.
The Galiot is a very interesting ship’s type that was used in different regional variants in most European seas and rivers between the 16th and the 19th century. The ships and boats going by this name are witness to how cultural transfer influenced shipbuilding.
These ships originated in the Eastern Mediterranean in the early 16th century. They were a smaller version of a galley – thus also called half-galleys. They combined oars and sails for propulsion. They were used as warships by the Barbary pirates (also known as Ottoman and north African corsairs). In the 17th century, the Galiot appears in Northern Europe. First the Dutch and then the Germans used these ships as coastal cargo vessels. The design of the North European galiot was heavily influenced by the Dutch fluyt. It had lost its oars and there were many regional variants and different types of rigging. During the 19th century some of these ships were built with a sharper bow and a rigging that made their design more and more like that of a Schooner.
From the 17th century on, the French used Galiots as smaller coastal ships, also for naval purposes. Eventually, they developed the Galiot à Bombes, a two masted galiot that carried a mortar to bomb coastal defenses and cities. The stability that the flat bottom gave to these ships made them ideal for this purpose. This also made them very able for fluvial transport. Over the centuries there were many varieties of galiots sailing the European rivers and canals. The very last galiots from the late 19th century were built with a steel hull. But the one you are looking at is a Baltic Galiot from the year 1738. Her name was „Stadt Elbing“, and she was built in the city of that name – today’s Elbląg, in Poland – for the businessman Heinrich Döring. She was the largest ship in the harbor of Elbing and she was successful due to her large cargo capacity (approximately 214 t) and her flexibility to sail both at sea and on inland waterways.
This model has been in the collection Peter Tamm since the late 1980s. It was built by master Joachim Trabant in a scale of 1:50 and is displayed on deck 2 of the museum.