02/01/10 - 03/31/10 - Online Workshop: The Age of Sail: Ships and Trade with Cindy Vallar

Class: The Age of Sail: Ships and Trade
Instructor: Cindy Vallar

Dates: February 1 - March 31, 2010
Registration Deadline: January 30, 2010

Fee: $10/HHRW members, $20/others
For Registration Form: http://heartsthroughhistory.com/sail.htm
FMI: HHRW Campus Coordinator: classes@heartsthroughhistory.com

Class Description:
The sight of tall masts with billowing sails paints a romantic image that
brings to mind times when wooden ships scudded across the waves, traveling
to distant ports. The purpose of this workshop is to provide participants
with a basic knowledge of the Age of Sail from the Middle Ages through the
nineteenth century when steam replaced wind as the principal power for
moving a vessel from one port to the next. The topics covered include:

.. Types of boats and ships
.. Their parts
.. The language of mariners
.. Who's who aboard a merchant ship and what do they do
.. Major ports of call
.. Navigation
.. Clothing
.. Life at sea
.. How sailors entertained themselves
.. Women at sea and in port
.. Trade
.. Marine insurance, risks, and naval escorts
.. Flags
.. Passengers
.. Ship building

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss the types of
ships they'd use in their stories, character profiles, and how to bring the
flair of the sea into a story without making it incomprehensible to the
reader. There will also be a variety of activities to reinforce what's
covered in the class to make certain everyone understands what's covered,
for the maritime world is akin to entering a foreign country where English
isn't the native language. At the end of the workshop, Cindy offers to
provide a free edit of a chapter from participants' manuscripts.

Bio:
A retired librarian, Cindy Vallar began researching maritime history while
working on The Rebel and the Spy, a historical novel about Jean Laffite and
the Battle of New Orleans. She is the Editor of Pirates and Privateers, a
monthly column on the history of maritime piracy. She also reviews maritime
fiction and non-fiction, maintains an annotated list of the best piracy and
maritime sites on the web, and compiles specialized maritime resource lists.
She is the Associate Editor of Industry for Solander, the magazine of the
Historical Novel Society, and writes the "Red Pencil" column where she
profiles authors and compares a selection from their published novels with
an early draft of that work. She also reviews for their journal, Historical
Novels Review. She is a freelance editor, a content editor of Pyrates Way
magazine, and a workshop presenter at conferences and organizations'
meetings. She belongs to the Historical Novel Society, the Laffite Society,
the Louisiana Historical Society, the National Maritime Historical Society,
and the Red River Branch of Clan Cameron. She is the author of The Scottish
Thistle, her debut historical novel about Scotland's Rising of 1745, and
Odin's Stone, a romantic short story of how the Lord of the Isles settled
the medieval feud between the MacKinnons and MacLeans on the Isle of Skye.
She invites you to visit her award-winning web site, Thistles & Pirates
(http://www.cindyvallar.com/), to learn more.

Format: Course is conducted via Yahoo Groups email with lessons and Q&A. You
will receive an invitation to join the group a few days before. If you
don't receive this invitation, please contact the Campus Coordinator.
classes@heartsthroughhistory.com.

For additional information, contact the Campus Coordinator at
classes@heartsthroughhistory.com.

To register: http://heartsthroughhistory.com/sail.htm

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