Question about the history of portholes.

by st_gulik

I'm working on a historical piece that references tall ships. In it there is a character who looks through a round glass porthole. The time period is around the mid to late 1600.

When did round glass portholes become a thing? I thought that they were mostly square then and used for cannons at the time.

jschooltiger

I'm not going to say it was impossible that there was a round porthole on a ship in the 1600s, but it's fairly unlikely. Ships of that period would have been fitted with gunports, that as you assume would be square or rectangular, and maybe occasionally round, but certainly not covered in glass. If you can get your hands on any of these works by Rif Winfeld, you can see contemporary drawings and illustrations that might help you with this. (n.b. I ripped the list off Wikipedia rather than trying to compile the ISBN's from Amazon.)

  • British Warships in the Age of Sail 1603–1714: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates (2009) ISBN 978-1-84832-040-6.
  • British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates (2007) ISBN 978-1-84415-700-6.
  • British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates (2005. Second edition in 2008) ISBN 978-1-84415-717-4.
  • British Warships in the Age of Sail 1817–1863: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates (2014) ISBN 978-1-84832-169-4.