Hello, I am working on a project on my own and I would like to know if Ships were recycled and purposely dismantled to re-use parts of their materials? If so, on what scale were they dismantled (fully, partially, or barely?), and when was the first documented appearance of such practice?
Thanks in advance!
Ships were rebuilt in the Middle Ages, but we don't have good records of that (at least in English) due to some nice, and familiar to modern eyes, bureaucratic obfuscation about how this was done. In the period of say the 14th-16th centuries in England, we hear quite often about a "rebuild" or "great rebuild" of ships -- we could cite the 1570 example of the galleasses Bull and Tiger, which were likely not "rebuilt" but newly built using timber from older ships. On the other hand, some ships were probably "rebuilt" to keep in service using newer timber -- in modern times the Constitution and the great ark of the world, Victory, are obvious examples, but we can also look to the Mary Rose, Peter Pomegranate, Harry Grace a Dîeu from Tudor times as examples of ships that were often broken down and rebuilt from the keel up. So why did people do this? I have some older answers that speak to that: