July 24 Is The 120th Anniversary Of The Birth Of Nikolai Kuznetsov - Admiral Of The Fleet, Hero Of The

Bear Stars by Galina Egorenkova

An 1879 Pattern Midshipman’s Dirk, 45.5cm blade by Henry Wilkinson, Pall Mall, London

The white ship, by Montague Dawson (1890-1973)

The Taffrail

A taffrail is a railing at the stern of the ship or the handrail around the open deck area at the stern of a ship or boat. The term is a shortening of taffarel, the original name for this ornament.

The stern of the Prins Willem with a wooden carved taffrail and a Captain on the Poop deck taffrail, by William Heysmann Overend (1851-1898) (x) (x)

Sometimes the railing refers only to the curved wooden top of the stern of a sailing ship or an East Indian ship.  It could also be a complete handrail along the poop deck. The rail of these wooden sailing ships usually had hand-carved wooden mouldings, which were often highly ornamented.

Janissary's sword (Janitscharenschwert) mod. 1729. Saxony. Introduced by Augustus the Strong, who had a select unit of "Janissaries" modeled after the Ottomans.

Clippership Cutty Sark running before the Wind, by John Stobart (1929-2023)

Schooner THOMAS W. LAWSON, 1902. The only 7 masted schooner ever built. Could sail 16-18 nots, faster than steamships of the time at ~ 9 knots. She carried primarily coal and oil in barrels. She sank off the Isles of Scilly, in a storm on Friday, 13th of December, 1907, killing all but two of her crew of eighteen and a harbor pilot. Her cargo of 58,000 barrels of light paraffin oil caused one of the first large marine oil spills. Thomas William Lawson (February 26, 1857 – February 7, 1925)[1] was an American businessman and writer. Lawson, who was intensely superstitious, wrote the novel "Friday the Thirteenth".