‘Sea meter’ on a tobacco box, 1729
Peter Holm, Sweden, Netherlands and Germany
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Peter Holm, a Swede who ran a navigation school in Amsterdam called ‘Regt door Zee’, had these tobacco boxes manufactured in Iserlohn, Germany. The underside bears a ‘sea meter’: a table converting the run of the log chip into knots. The lid features a perpetual calendar decorated with the heads of Pope Gregory XIII, Julius Caesar, and Amerigo Vespucci.
Dutch seaman's tobacco box of Pieter Holm, also known as the Dutchman’s Log, with a perpetual calendar on the top of the lid and a ship’s speed table on the bottom. In a publication of 1748 Holm claims to have devised this table in 1729. The top of the lid is further adorned with simple vignettes portraying Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII, who respectively in 45 BC and AD 1582 introduced the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar. The bottom carries a simple vignette of a person with a globe and a pair of dividers with the year 1497 who is tentatively identified as Amerigo Vespucci.
Beneath this is a table for calculating the speed of a ship against the time taken by a chip of wood tossed over the side to pass the distance of 40 ft between two marks on the vessel’s side.
On the bottom a short Dutch text, ‘Den eeuwigh duerende almanack’ (“The ever-lasting almanac”).
And on the frontside, ‘Regt door Zee’. (“Sail a Straight Course”).
‘Recht door Zee’ is also the name of his school he started in Antwerp after he retired in 1750
This box is of 1729, see the lid bottom right, and one of the first Holm has made.