[Tallguy]

Don't be too hard on your ancestors. You are comparing a much older "clinker-built" galley to an early "Ship of the Line". Viking longboats were shallow draft vessels that could be sailed or rowed up narrow waterways & beached. Henry VIII was building a robust sailing vessel that was designed primarily to serve as a gun platform. 2 different animals and probably 400 years separate them.

[franksolich]

Actually, the Norwegian boat is about 700 years older, than that ship of Henry VIII.

<<just woke up; even messed up the headline to this posting.

What stymies me are two things--how would vaccuuming do any sort of discernible damage to such a thing, and why would a wooden boat be more likely to rot on dry land, than in the water (as one poster suggested)?

"Science" was never my strong suit.

[truth_seeker]

"Viking longboats were shallow draft vessels that could be sailed or rowed up narrow waterways & beached."

A couple of those rivers would be the "Seine" and the "Volga."

The words "Rus" and "Slav" are nordic in origin, given by the Swedish Vikings that invaded and dominated Russia, for a long time.

[norton]

"Henry VIII was building a robust sailing vessel that was designed primarily to serve as a gun platform. 2 different animals and probably 400 years separate them."

If we are talking of the Mary Rose, I seem to remember she sank about an hour after being launched.

Along same line: is this "Norwegan ship" the one I remember as the Vasa?