To Build A Ship: The VOC Replica Ship Duyfken - Hardcover

The scent of smoking oak clouds the salty air, while the sounds of sawyers and shipwrights at work mingle with the bustle of a busy port. The ship under construction is the Duyfken, a sturdy Dutch 'jacht' destined, in 1606, to become the first recorded European vessel to drop anchor in Australian waters.
Nearly four hundred years later, on the west coast of Australia, a team of experts and enthusiasts research and build a museum-standard replica, using the seventeenth-century 'plank first' technique, bending timbers over fires and pinning the hull together with wooden 'tree nails'. No plans exist for Dutch ships of the era - master shipwrights designed as they built; so their modern counterparts follow their lead and are guided by the twist of the timber, as well as historical data.
In To Build a Ship, Robert Garvey's vivid images transport the reader back to a by-gone era of wooden ship-building and exploratory voyages, invoking the sensation of tarred hemp rope in calloused hands and the thrill of discovery in an Age of Sail. Garvey documents not only the construction of the VOC replica ship Duyfken, but also her maiden voyage to the luscious spice islands of Banda, where the hillsides are dotted with crumbling Dutch ruins and nutmeg is still harvested by hand for the world's kitchens.