Flink och Färdig

Posted by Albert Parker on Tuesday 7th of November 2017 02:07

It seems that 1 aln = 2 fötter (sing. fot). Karlsson says his measurements are in fötter, not alnar. (Dictionaries give "cubit" or "ell," not "foot," as the translation for "aln.") 1 aln = 59.38 cm or .5938 m, so your metric equivalents would be correct—IF KARLSSON'S DIMENSIONS WERE IN ALNAR. But they are double the equivalents of Swedish fötter that equaled 29.69 cm or .2969 m = .974 British (or American) feet = 11.69 in.

Posted by Albert Parker on Tuesday 7th of November 2017 01:53

I was just collecting galley data from Jan-Erik Karlsson's web site. He gives the same 70 × 14 × 5 dimensions in Swedish feet that you have here—reasonably enough if he is your source–but gives the metric equivalents as a much shorter 20.78m × 4.16m × 1.48m. He reports lengths of up to 140 feet or 41.57m for galleys Gref Sparre, De la Gardie, Adlerfelt, and Nordenstråle. By your conversion that would be 272'8" or 83.132m, much longer than British and French three-deckers of ~120 guns of the first decade of the 19th century, which were much more heavily built than galleys.