1.
Trinidad
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Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies 11 km off the northeastern coast of Venezuela, though geographically part of the South American continent, from a socio-economic standpoint it is often referred to as the southernmost island in the Caribbean. With an area of 4,768 km2, it is also the sixth largest in the West Indies, many believe the original name for the island in the Arawaks language was Iëre which meant Land of the Hummingbird. Some believe that Iere was actually a mispronunciation or corruption by early colonists of the Arawak word Kairi which simply means Island, Christopher Columbus renamed it La Isla de la Trinidad, fulfilling a vow he had made before setting out on his third voyage of exploration. Caribs and Arawaks lived in Trinidad long before Christopher Columbus encountered the islands on his voyage in 1498. Tobago changed hands between the British, French, Dutch and Courlanders, but eventually ended up in British hands, Trinidad remained Spanish until 1797, but it was largely settled by French colonists from the French Caribbean, especially Martinique. In 1889 the two became a single British Crown colony. Trinidad and Tobago obtained self-governance in 1958 and independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, major landforms include the hills of the Northern, Central and Southern Ranges, the Caroni, Nariva and Oropouche Swamps, and the Caroni and Naparima Plains. Major river systems include the Caroni, North and South Oropouche, there are many other natural landforms such as beaches and waterfalls. Trinidad has two seasons per year, the rainy season and the dry season. El Cerro del Aripo, at 940 metres, is the highest point in Trinidad and it is part of the Aripo Massif and is located in the Northern Range on the island, northeast of the town of Arima. Diversity is the status quo in Trinidad and it is sometimes known as a rainbow island or more fondly a callaloo. There is a range of ethnicity, religion, and culture. As of the 2011 Trinidad and Tobago Census, the population was 34. 22% East Indian,35. 43% African,7. 66% Mixed - African and East Indian, and 15. 16% Mixed - Other. Venezuela has also had a impact on Trinidads culture, such as introducing the music style parang to the island. Many of these groups overlap heavily due to admixture, for example Dougla is a term used to describe a person who is of African and East Indian descent. Trinidad religion primarily centers round Roman Catholic, Anglican, other Christian denominations, Hindu, catholicism constitutes the largest religious denomination of the country. There are also multiple festivals featuring the music of the Caribbean and the steelpan and these festivals include the world-famous Carnival, Jouvert, and Panorama, the national steel pan competition
2.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
3.
Leith
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Leith /ˈliːθ/, Scottish Gaelic, Lìte, is a district to the north of the city of Edinburgh at the mouth of the Water of Leith. The earliest surviving references are in the royal charter authorising the construction of Holyrood Abbey in 1128. The medieval settlements of Leith had grown into a burgh by 1833, historically part of Midlothian, Leith is sited on the coast of the Firth of Forth and lies within the council area of the City of Edinburgh. The port remains one of its most valuable enterprises, handling over 1.5 million tonnes of cargo a year in 2003, previous to the bridge being built in the late 15th century, Leith had settlements on either side of the river, lacking an easy crossing. South Leith was larger and was controlled by the lairds of Restalrig and it was based on trade and had many merchants houses and warehouses. This was where ships offloaded their cargoes at The Shore where they were collected by Edinburgh merchants, leithers were explicitly forbidden by statute to participate directly in the trade at the port, to ensure that landed goods were not sold elsewhere. North Leith was smaller but proportionately richer, coming under the jurisdiction of Holyrood Abbey and it was effectively a fishing village consisting of one street, now Sandport Street and Quayside Lane. Burgage plots ran down to the river from each house and this has traditionally been the shipbuilding side of Leith with several wet and dry docks built over time. The first dry dock in Scotland was built here in 1720, a small peninsula of land on the east bank also came under the same jurisdiction on what is now Sheriff Brae/Sheriff Bank. The first bridge to both banks of the river was built in 1493 by Abbot Bellenden, who controlled the church at North Leith. The bridge was a bridge, the revenue supplementing the churchs income. Reputedly Leiths oldest building, it was demolished in 1780 to allow ships to sail further upstream, the earliest evidence of settlement in Leith comes from several archaeological digs undertaken in the Shore area in the late 20th century. Amongst the finds were medieval wharf edges from the 12th century and this date fits with the earliest documentary evidence of settlement in Leith - the foundation charter of Holyrood Abbey. Leith has played a long and prominent role in Scottish history, as the major port serving Edinburgh, it has been the stage on which many significant events in Scottish history have taken place. Mary of Guise ruled Scotland from Leith in 1560 as Regent while her daughter, Mary, Mary of Guise moved the Scottish Court to Leith, to a site that is now Parliament Street, off Coalhill. According to the 18th-century historian William Maitland, her palace was situated on Rotten Row, now Water Street. Artifacts from the residence are held by the National Museum of Scotland. In June 1560, Mary of Guise died, and the Siege of Leith ended with the departure of the French troops in accordance with the Treaty of Leith, also known as the Treaty of Edinburgh
4.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
5.
Museum ship
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A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the number of museum ships that are still operational. Many, if not most, museum ships are also associated with a maritime museum, only a few survive, sometimes because of historical significance, but more often due to luck and circumstance. The restoration and maintenance of museum ships presents problems for historians who are asked for advice, for instance, the rigging of sailing ships has almost never survived, and so the rigging plan must be reconstructed from various sources. Studying the ships also allows historians to analyze how life on and operation of the ships took place, numerous scientific papers have been written on ship restoration and maintenance, and international conferences are held discussing the latest developments. Another consideration is the distinction between a museum ship, and a ship replica. As repairs accumulate over time, less and less of the ship is of the materials. Visitors without historical background are often unable to distinguish between a historical museum ship and a ship replica, which may serve solely as a tourist attraction. Typically the visitor enters via gangplank, wanders around on the deck, then goes below, usually using the original stairways, giving a sense of how the crew got around. The interior features restored but inactivated equipment, enhanced with mementos including old photographs, explanatory displays, pages from the logs, menus. Some add recorded sound effects, audio tours or video displays to enhance the experience, in some cases, the ships radio room has been brought back into use, with volunteers operating amateur radio equipment. Often, the callsign assigned is a variation on the identification of the ship. For example, the submarine USS Cobia, which had the call NBQV, is now on the air as NB9QV. The World War II submarine USS Pampanito, berthed at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, had the wartime call NJVT and is now on the air as NJ6VT, in other cases, such as the USS Missouri, a distinctive call is used. This radio work not only helps restore part of the vessel, a number of the larger museum ships have begun to offer hosting for weddings, meetings, other events, and sleepovers, and on a few ships still seaworthy, cruises. In the United States, this includes the USS Constitutions annual turnaround, a place on the deck is by invitation or lottery only, and highly prized. Many consider the appeal of an interesting old vessel on the city waterfront strong enough that any port city should showcase one or more museum ships. This may even include building a ship at great expense
6.
Jib
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A jib is a triangular staysail that sets ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. Its tack is fixed to the bowsprit, to the bow, jibs and spinnakers are the two main types of headsails on a modern boat. Boats may be sailed using a jib alone, more commonly jib make a direct contribution to propulsion. Generally, a jibs most crucial function is as an airfoil, increasing performance, on boats with only one jib, it is common for the clew of the jib to be further aft than the mast, meaning the jib and mainsail overlap. An overlapping jib is called a genoa jib or simply a genoa and these are efficiently used when reaching more broadly than a close reach. Alternatively, a boat may carry smaller jibs, to compensate aerodynamics when the sail is reefed. On a boat with two staysails the inner sail is called the staysail, and the outer is called the jib and this combination of two staysails is called a cutter rig and a boat with one mast rigged with two staysails and a mainsail is called a cutter. On cruising yachts, and nearly all racing sailboats, the jib needs to be worked when tacking, on these yachts, there are two sheets attached to the clew of the jib. As the yacht comes head to wind during a tack, the sheet is released. This sheet becomes the new active sheet until the next tack, schooners typically have up to three jibs. The foremost one sets on the topmast forestay and is called the jib topsail, a second on the main forestay is called the jib. Actually, all three sails are both jibs and staysails in the generic sense, jibs, but not staysails, could also be set flying, i. e. not attached to the standing rigging. A large square-rigged ship typically has four jibs, but could have as many as six, from forward to aft, these sails are called, Jib of jibs Spindle jib Flying jib Outer jib Inner jib Fore staysail. The first two were used except by clipper ships in light winds and were usually set flying. A storm jib was a small jib of heavy canvas set to a stay to help to control the ship in bad weather
7.
Foresail
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A foresail is one of a few different types of sail set on the foremost mast of a sailing vessel, A fore and aft sail set on the foremast of a schooner or similar vessel. The lowest square-sail on the foremast of a full rigged ship or other vessel which is square-rigged, sails set forward of the mainmast, such as jibs and staysails, are sometimes referred to as foresails, although headsails is a more common term. A two-masted merchant vessel with a sizable foresail rigged on a slightly inclined foremast is depicted in an Etruscan tomb painting from 475–450 BC, the foresail became fairly common on Roman war galleys, where it seems to be used rather for steering than as a driver. Its size was reduced and the now strongly raked foremast made it appear like a bowsprit sail. While most of the evidence is iconographic, the existence of foresails can also archaeologically be deduced from slots in foremast-feets located too close to the prow for a mainsail. Artemon, along with mainsail and topsail, developed into the rig of seagoing vessels in imperial times. Throughout antiquity, both foresail and mizzen remained secondary in terms of size, but still large enough to require full running rigging. In late antiquity, the foremast lost most of its tilt, the dromon, the lateen-rigged and oared bireme of the Byzantine navy, almost certainly had two sails, a larger foresail and one midships. The length of its foremast has been estimated at about 12 m, multiple-masted sailing ships were reintroduced into the Mediterranean by the Late Middle Ages. Large vessels were coming more and more use and the need for additional sails to control these ships adequately grew with the increase in tonnage. Unlike in antiquity, the foresail was adopted on medieval two-masters after the mizzen, to balance out the sail plan the next obvious step was to add a mast fore of the main-mast, which first appears on an Catalonian vessel from 1409. Sail plan In-Arch. net, The Development of the Square-Rigged Ship from the Carrack to the Full-Rigger
8.
Staysail
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A staysail is a fore-and-aft rigged sail whose luff can be affixed to a stay running forward from a mast to the deck, the bowsprit, or to another mast. Most staysails are triangular, however some are four-cornered, notably some fishermans staysails, triangular staysails set forward of the foremost mast are called jibs, headsails, or foresails. The innermost such sail on a cutter, schooner, and many other rigs having two or more foresails is referred to simply as the staysail, while the others are referred to as jibs, flying jibs, etc. Types of staysail include the tallboy staysail, the staysail. Unlike the cutter staysail, none of these sails have their luff affixed to a stay, on large rigs, staysails other than headsails are named according to the mast and mast section on which they are hoisted. Thus, the staysail hoisted on a stay that runs forward, if two staysails are hoisted to different points on this mast, they would be the mizzen upper topgallant staysail and the mizzen lower topgallant staysail. In square rigged ships the staysails can help in tacking, overcoming the lumbering square sails tendency to prevent bearing up to windward, where a ship attempts to tack but fails and has to bear away again on the original tack, she is said to have missed her stays. In cutter rigged yachts the genoa will often need to be furled before changing tack due to the difficulty in passing the big sail between the two forestays, here the staysail can help bring the bow through the wind more effectively
9.
Spanker (sail)
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A spanker is either of two kinds of sail. On a square rigged ship, the spanker is a gaff rigged fore-and-aft sail set from, almost all square rigs with more than one mast have one or two spankers, which evolved from the driver sail. Some also carry a triangular topsail above the uppermost or only spanker, a spanker in this situation is often soft footed in that it has no boom to which it is attached at its foot. On a racing or cruising yacht, a spanker is an additional headsail set beside and it is often of bright colours to match the particular spinnaker with which it is designed to be used, is relatively narrow, and is sometimes called a tallboy or blooper. Death roll, an undesirable broach to windward, countered by rigging a blooper
10.
Topsail
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A topsail is a sail set above another sail, on square-rigged vessels further sails may be set above topsails. On a square rigged vessel, a topsail is a sail rigged above the course sail. A full rigged ship has either single or double topsails on all masts, the single or lower topsail being the second sail above the deck, the bottom edge of the topsail, like that of other square sails, is slightly concave. Although topsails of a kind were used at least as early as Roman times, they first came into use in Europe some time in the 15th century. It was quite common for a ship to sail with topsails and jibs alone, the larger topsails were difficult and dangerous to handle in strong winds. Sometime in the 1680s, reef-bands were introduced to tie up part of the sail, with topsails eventually getting four of these, and reefing the sails became a regular occupation of sailors. In the mid 19th century, topsails of merchant vessels were split into upper and lower topsails that could be managed separately. Competing versions of the double topsail were invented by Robert Bennet Forbes, although Forbes strove to defend his rig, the Howe rig dominated. In the Forbes rig, both topsail yards are fixed vertically, in the Howe rig, the upper topsail yard slides on the topmast so it can be lowered in a few seconds to close reef the upper topsail. Howe had the foot of the upper topsail closely attached to the lower topsail yard, in 1865 the British clipper Ariel introduced a gap there. Forbes first tried his rig in the topsail schooner Midas in 1844. The clipper Climax built in 1853 under the supervision of Howes was the first ship with Howe rig, gaff topsails, like gaff rigs in general, may still be seen at Tall Ships gatherings. The gaff rig has been superseded by the Bermuda rig. On a gaff-rigged sailing boat, topsails may take a few different forms, a gaff-rigged vessel might have a gaff topsail above any or all of its gaff sails. A yard topsail is similar, but set on a yard, early 19th-century topsail yards were set almost horizontally, but gradually increased in angle until they became almost vertical extension of the topmast. A jack-yard topsail instead has its lower edge extended out beyond the end of the gaff with a short yard, a jack-yard topsail may also have the aforementioned vertical yard, although this makes for a very large topsail. A cornish topsail is a triangular sail having its luff extended well above the masthead by being laced to a yard hoisted by a halyard rove through a sheave fitted diagonally in the mast. The heel of the yard fits immediately about the gaff and is kept in place by a called a timminoggy. A square topsail is a sail, carried above the foresail only
Belgium
