...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

Object number: NG-MC-1330

Sounding lead with a strap. The upper part is made of iron with a slit for the register.

Sounding leads are used to determine the depth of the water below a ship. This type of a deep-sea hand lead was already in use as early as the seventeenth century.¹¹On the engraving De Stat Olinda de Pharnambuco, verovert bij den Generael Hendrick C. Lonck, anno 1630 by Claes Jansz Visscher (1586-1652), c. 1630, a sailor can be seen using a similar, but smaller, hand lead for charting the depths of the Olinda roadstead: inv. no. RP-P-OB-78.197. The lead was connected to a long rope with markings to measure the number of fathoms of water. In the bottom a hollow is positioned, which, when coated with some tallow, can be used to take samples of the seabed.

J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1330

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Sounding Lead, Netherlands, c. 1810', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20054232