Buy tickets Plan your visit

Hemp for Shipping

Hemp was used for a ship’s sails, rigging and other ropes. After wood, hemp was the material most used in ship-building.

Hemp was treated with tar and used to fill the seams between the planks of a wooden hull in order to make ships watertight. No other natural fibre can withstand the forces of the open ocean and the ravages of salt water as well as hemp is able to.

Herman Saftleven, Rhine landscape with many boats, 1649.

Herman Saftleven, Rhine landscape with many boats, 1649.

Willem van de Velde

Hemp for Shipping

Hemp made ships watertight

Hemp was used for a ship’s sails, rigging and other ropes. Hemp was also treated with tar and used to fill the seams between the planks of a wooden hull in order to make ships watertight. This process is called caulking. Sailors’ clothes were often made of hemp, and captains kept the ship’s log on hemp paper. Lamps used hemp oil, allowing the crew to read the Bible (which was printed on hemp paper) below decks. In order to make sure there was food on board, tonnes of hemp seed were an essential part of the cargo; this also enabled the crew to survive in the event of shipwrecks.

An economic superpower

The Netherlands was an economic superpower in the 17th century as a result of shipping, and without hemp, there would have been no Dutch Golden Age!

Collection Items

Check out these collection items

Chocolat Poulain
Willem van de Velde
Herman Saftleven, Rhine landscape with many boats, 1649.
Columbus

Columbus and cannabis

Columbus and cannabis In Barcelona, at the end of Las Ramblas and just a stone’s throw away from our museum in the Catalan capital, there is a monument honouring Christopher Columbus. Although hundreds of tourists visit it every day and the neighbourhood’s residents have looked at it for more than 120 years, it was only recently […]

icon Read more

Stay in touch

Museum Newsletter

Sign up to get the latest news about the museum, upcoming exhibitions and events.