The impossible bottle

It is not that difficult to place a ship in a bottle. Rigging the masts, attach strings to them, lay them flat on the deck, and slide them into the bottle, ship and all. You can then pull them back up using the strings. Of course, the hull of the ship must be able to fit through the bottle opening. It is also possible to build the entire ship inside the bottle using special, extra-long, and fine tools. In 1994, Yugoslavia released a stamp booklet titled: 'Ship in a Bottle'. The stamps all tell their own story.

The Revenge was an English galleon built in 1577 and used in the Anglo-Spanish Wars. As Vice-Admiral of the English Fleet, Francis Drake won the Battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588 with the Revenge, also known as the Battle of Gravelines. As captain of the Golden Hind (seal), he sailed around the world. This ship was also a galleon from the latter half of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Most large ships of that time were of this type, including the Dutch Leeuwin and Mauritius. Characteristic of a galleon was a low, narrow bow projecting far forward, behind which a vertical front of the actual hull rose. This made it easier to install heavy cannons at the front. The aft section remained high: 'the castle', intended partly as accommodation for the nobles and officers.

The Grote Jacht was built in 1678/79 at a shipyard in Kolberg, Germany, for Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, modeled after the yacht of the Dutch Stadtholder Prince William III of Orange. The ship is of the 'Hollands Statenyacht' type: a single-masted sailing ship armed with eight wooden cannons. Stationed on the Baltic coast, it sailed from 1693 to Amsterdam, on the Lower Rhine, Emden, and later to London.

The Santa Maria , the flagship of Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa, was a carraca (Dutch: kraak, Spanish: carraca , Portuguese: nau). This was a seaworthy sailing ship with three or four masts, developed in the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe, primarily in Portugal. Columbus made his first voyage of discovery to America with it in 1492, together with the smaller caravels the Niña and the Pinta.

The ships with which Ferdinand Magellan (Portuguese in Spanish service) departed from Andalusia in 1519 were also of this type. His nautical voyage Victoria was the first ship in history to circumnavigate the globe (1519 to 1522). Of the entire fleet, only the Victoria returned. Later, this type of ship was further developed into the galleon, which served as the model for the 17th-century return ships that brought the prosperity of our Golden Age.

Vasco da Gama (circa 1460–1524) was a Portuguese explorer who was the first to reach India by sea via the Cape of Good Hope, thus establishing a connection between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. He thereby enabled Portugal to establish colonies in both Africa and Asia. Bottom right: the route to India.

  Vasco da Gama and his men were not welcomed with open arms by the local population everywhere, and fierce unrest usually broke out. His 'spice route' caused the Portuguese economy to flourish. In 1503, his navy Esmeralda sank off the coast of Oman, en route to India. The wreck was found in 1998 and salvaged by David Mearns in 2013–2015.

The 'Torre de Belém', the 'Tower of Belém', is a 16th-century fortress located in Lisbon that served as a departure and arrival point for Portuguese explorers. On the far right, you can see the monument to the explorers in the shape of a ship with billowing sails. Standing on the foredeck are 33 prominent figures from Portuguese history. At the front is the statesman Henry the Navigator, holding a model of a navy in his hand. A Nava is a ship that was used during the Crusades in the Middle Ages. The hull was round, almost bulbous, and the ship usually had three masts with lateen sails. A lateen sail is a triangular sail that is hoisted up the mast with the top pointing upwards. They can still be seen in the Mediterranean Sea today. The Nava is built according to the same principle as the caravel and the carvel, although naturally, adaptations and improvements have been made over time.

The Mayflower is an example of a Dutch fluyt. Pieter Jansz. Liorne (Hoorn, 1561–1620) is said to have played a major role in its development. The fluyt was an armed three-masted ship intended as a cargo vessel. The Dutch Republic needed a very fast ship with maximum space and the smallest possible crew. It was deployed for international trade by the VOC. The English ship Mayflower carried a group of English families, the 'Pilgrims', who wanted to go to America in 1620 due to religious oppression. They had not enjoyed their short stay in Leiden either. They decided to leave, along with the rest of the group in England, for America, the new 'promised land'.

There they would found the 'Plymouth Colony', a colony based on religion and an austere lifestyle. Only half of the group survived the first harsh winter there, but with the help of the local indigenous population, they celebrated their first autumn harvest festival a year later: Thanksgiving. Since then, this holiday has become an integral part of life in the United States and Canada. Many US residents are very proud if they can point to an ancestor who came to America on the Mayflower.

The Derfflinger , depicted on the cover of the stamp booklet below, is also of the fluyt type (German: Fleute). It was built in 1675 for Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg and was initially called 'Wolkensäule'. Later named after General Georg von Derfflinger (1606-1695).

I have been unable to find any information about the ship Harun el-Rashid , but all the more about the name. Harun al-Rashid (763-809) was the Caliph of the Abbasid Dynasty in the Middle East between 786 and 809. His life and reign served as inspiration for the tales of One Thousand and One Nights. He was anything but fairytale-like. He was a controversial tyrant, both worshipped and reviled. He also maintained contacts with the Western world, such as with Charlemagne, to whom he sent many valuable gifts, including an elephant. I found unexpected information with the writer Karl May (1842-1912), the man who is unfortunately always mentioned in the same breath as Winnetou and The White Feather. He wrote so infinitely more! In his 1892 novel 'From Baghdad to Istanbul', the third part of a novel set in the Ottoman Empire, he reveals quite a bit about this Harun al-Rashid.

And then there was a link to Sinbad the Sailor. His adventures also followed the path to One Thousand and One Nights. He knew Harun al-Rashid personally and mentions him several times in his 'Seven Journeys'. Bottom left: Harun al-Rashid, right: Sinbad the Sailor.