Mark P

Good Evening Kevin; In the eighteenth century dry dock facilities for 1st rates existed at most dockyards. As they did in the 17th century, in fact. Many first rates were built in dry docks, and floated out to launch them, rather than launching then stern-first from a slipway, as was normal for smaller vessels. Nelson's 'Victory', completed in 1765, was built in a dry dock at Chatham, and floated out (after a bit of panic when it was realised only a few hours previously that the dock gate was a little too narrow for her. If you search the NMM website under ship models, there is a very nice model of her as built, but sitting on a slipway, so wrong in that respect, but it will give you some idea of what a dock looked like. The ship herself looks far more attractive than the 1805 version, also. Well worth a look. All the best, Mark P

Evening all: By a coincidence, I recently bought a copy of this through 'Bookfinder', a site recommended by another contributor on this forum. The book is very detailed, and will teach almost any reader a lot they did not know previously. The reconstruction is based on the Stockholm model and on an anonymous treatise on shipbuilding dated around 1620, which is again very detailed, and gives a step-by-step guide to constructing a draught of a ship (although it contains some errors in the mathematics used, corrected in this book) I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in ships of this period, or with a general interest in their history or construction. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening Steven; Until some time in the early 19th century, sails were bent to the yard, as outlined above, by robands, believed to be a shortened form of 'rope-bands'. These were certainly in use in the 16th century, and presumably earlier. In the 19th century, the robands were no longer wrapped around the yards, but instead were made fast to jack-stays, a metal rod running the full length of the yard, fixed to it at intervals by brackets driven into the timber. Another feature of a yard, rarely shown on rigged models, were gaskets. This was a longer length of rope, normally looped and tied into a hank, which was used when the sail was furled up to the yard. The gasket was passed around the gathered bundle of canvas, and the yard, and made fast. The gaskets are the narrow points on furled sails, which cause them to hang in a series of swags from the yard. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening All; I don't know the exact details without looking it up, but I remember that the American Navy fought several drawn-out campaigns against the Barbary pirates, as did the Royal Navy. But even if the corsairs were beaten, they always popped up again. If their ruler, the Bey or the Dey he was called, I think, agreed to make peace, he was never able to control his people for long, and they soon murdered him and replaced him with someone more willing to continue with the old ways. And yes, they did kidnap whole villages or small towns of people from the South coast of England, more frequently than most people nowadays would ever believe; and presumably from other countries also. Another lucrative line was ransoming the crews of merchant vessels captured in the Mediterranean. The Commonwealth Navy and Charles II's ships were frequently operating in the Med to protect shipping, and Parliament was often petitioned by merchants demanding better protection for their ships. Many Europeans were enslaved by the Barbary Pirates, and it is not pleasant to contemplate the fate of the women they caught. But as Blue Ensign points out above, there is never any mention of this when Western politicians, playing to a minority gallery, apologise for their country's involvement in the slave trade; or when some countries demand compensation for it. As if present generations are responsible for the sins of their country's citizens several centuries past. So slavery, undeniably an abomination to present generations, was very much a two-way street; something which deserves much greater publicity than it has ever received. I could say a lot more, but that would be getting off-topic, so I had better avoid it. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening JD; Boxwood is wonderful stuff! I love its tight grain and smooth surfaces. But it does have its limits, and I would suggest that your chosen method of construction exceeds them, unfortunately. Natural wood, even when kiln-dried, will distort over time if the moisture content in the atmosphere is different to that in which it was previously stored, or to the percentage to which it was dried. To be honest, cutting whole frames from a single sheet is inadvisable, as it is going to include a variety of short-length grain patterns which will have an inherent instability. The only way to counteract this tendency, and assuming the timber is dried/seasoned to start with, is to assemble the frames and keel quickly and use fairly stout stringers or filler blocks between each frame. Depending upon how much of your frames will be seen, you would probably do better to use plywood up to deck level, and rebate short lengths of boxwood frame into the top of these to form the bulwark timbers. All the best, Mark P

Good Afternoon Matrim; If you are thinking of bracing the yards round with sails furled, or sent down, then the following comment will not apply. However, if you are depicting them with any sails set, then note that the upper yards were braced around closer to the wind than the lower ones. Viewed from above, the yards would look like the plan of a spiral stair, although with the angle between each yard being much less than in an actual stair. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening Chuck; If you are copying from paper plans, there is also one very quick way of doing this, which is worth a try, if what you are trying to copy will fit on a photocopier. Make a photocopy of it, but use a sheet of tracing paper for the copy. Turn this over, and copy again. This will produce a mirror image of your original. Job done. That is assuming you have access to a decent copier, and that it does not distort the image. Some do, some don't. However, if you only need to do this once, you have already found a good solution on your own. All the best, Mark P

During a recent visit to Portsmouth, I walked through a gallery dedicated to the tools and equipment used by many of the traditional dockyard trades, and saw this board on the wall. I would believe from the style of lettering that it dates to the early 1800s, perhaps a little earlier or later. However, I would think that the information contained therein is unlikely to have changed very much at all from that of the times many decades previous to this. The photos are large files, and should expand considerably when clicked. There is a lot of useful information here! All the best, Mark P

Good Morning Druxey; Yes, it is not the same, although I think that the details shown are very similar to at least one of the draughts shown in earlier posts. The date is very specific, which is helpful. Shipaholic, I agreed that my visit to the Library was for personal research. I cannot therefore post more pictures here, as who knows what may then happen to them. The Library staff were extremely helpful, though, and would be willing to take a digital scan and send it. This would avoid the photographic distortion present in my pictures. However, very inconveniently, they are now in the process of moving to different premises, and are very unlikely to reply to any emails, for many months. Which is not helpful. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening All; This is part of the draught referred to. I won't post it all for copyright reasons. I checked, and it actually says 'taken off in the single dock', not the wet dock. Memory plays up a bit, sometimes! It is definitely dated as mentioned, though. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening Everyone; I recently visited the Naval Base at Portsmouth, with the kind assistance of the staff of the Library of the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the Librarians of the Admiralty Library, to view a variety of interesting documents. One of these was a draught of 'HM Bark Endeavour', described as 'taken off in the wet dock' and dated 25th April 1768. This lists her principal dimensions, and there is another word near the date, hard to read, of four letters, but it might say '?rey', which I would take to read 'Grey', as mentioned in previous posts, except that the 'r' looks more like a 'p', which would read '?pey' and I can't make much sense of that. Interestingly, this draught shows a tall, built up companion immediately afore the wheel, and a variety of dashed lines for the position of the rails and lengths of the mizzen channels. I will post a picture of part of her here, as it seems that it is not presently known widely, and it may be of use to modellers of the Endeavour. I don't have time right now to edit the picture, but I will do this tomorrow. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening Spike; I wish you all the best with completing your model. The tackle at the rear is called the train tackle. When the cannon was fired, its recoil pushed it back within board. It needed to stay in that position while it was swabbed and reloaded. This was where the train tackle came into use. During this operation, it was kept taut so that if the deck heeled down towards the gun-port, the cannon would not roll while the crew were working on it. Once reloaded, the train tackle was un-hooked, and the gun-tackles (the ones on each side) were used to run the gun out ready for firing. Train tackles were not always issued as part of the gunner's stores, and even when available, were not always issued at the rate of one per gun. Concerning the breeching, I know little of French practice, but it looks from the illustration as though the breeching passes through the sides of the gun-carriage, which, as you say, is very different to English methods. I remember some other contributors here posting pictures of a replica ship, Danish I think, which was breeched in the same manner. I believe it was Tadeusz. All the best, Mark P

Hi Mike; I know that La Renommee is a bit later in time, but a very common phrase in ship-building contracts from the late 17th century/early 18th, related to gratings, is that they are 'to vent the smoake (sic) of the ordnance'. The gratings, if this is their purpose, are therefore designed for something moving upwards, not downwards. Although the waist is open, I would suggest that a fully planked gangway over the cannon would hinder the escape of the smoke, so the above hypothesis is reasonable. In this case, the prime function of the gangways would be for sailors to walk along. with this in mind, flush gratings would seem most likely. All the best, Mark P

Hi YT; A cleat in this context is a metal or wood object which is used to make fast (belay) a rope from the running rigging, so that whatever is at the other end of the rope will not move. They come in all sorts of sizes. Think of something like the top of a longhorn steer's skull with the horns poking out to each side, both in a straight line. The rope is passed under the horns, and over the middle, around and around in a figure-of-eight pattern. They were fixed to the ships' sides, to the masts, or to the shrouds (this latter type are called shroud cleats) A cleat is also the name for a small timber batten, used to hold something in place. All the best, Mark P

Hi Kevin; Thanks for posting this. She is such a beautiful sight! Looks like she can sail very close to the wind, too. All the best, Mark P

Hi James; That is indeed an impressive array of models. I presume that you have seen the large model of King George V in the NMM. Wouldn't quite fit on a cupboard, though! All the best with your modelling. Mark P

Good Evening Mark; Thank you for taking the initial steps with photo-etching, so that those who come after can learn from your experiences, and most importantly, any mistakes! Keep up the great posts! All the best, Mark P

Good Evening Jason; Druxey is quite right. I will add a little bit as well. Models of ships were sometimes fitted with launching flags. A short plank is fixed over the hole in the mast partners, athwarthips, with a hole cut through it. The hole is much smaller than that for the mast. The plank does not cover the mast hole completely, not being wide enough to do so, so a portion of the mast hole is visible both afore and abaft of the plank. You may be right about the relative position of the flags, but remember that the ship was launched backwards! All the best, Mark P

Good Morning Siggi; The picture of Victory is interesting. If you look closely at the gunports, you can see that a narrow strip of wood has been nailed into the bottom of the port in the ship's side, to fill the space where the rebate would have been. As an example of proper practice in the 18th century, I would not refer to the present Victory, though. As you probably know, she has been repaired and patched so many times that there is very little original left, and I would doubt that the present gunport lids are faithful replicas of those she had at Trafalgar or earlier. All the best, Mark P

Greetings everyone; Having seen Steel's description, sent by Druxey, I can now present a solution which we both agree is the most likely one. Steel specifies that the port stops must be a minimum of 3 to 3 1/2 " depending upon the rate of the ship. The contracts I quoted in an earlier post state that the outer planking of the port lid is the same thickness as the outer planking of the ships side, and that this is backed up by an elm lining laid vertically and nailed to the outer planks of the port lid. By the way Mark (SJ Soane, see post above) I never envisioned a rebate in the frame timbers. A misunderstanding somewhere along the line. Siggi's left hand sketch in post 201 was as I interpreted the contract description. This has now been slightly refined, see attached sketch. The stop distance given by Steel is the distance by which the outer planking of the port lid overlaps onto the face of futtock or toptimber. He also states that the lining is to be 1" to 1 1/4" thick. This will be the thickness of the elm lining boards on the inner face of the gunport lid. No extra work required, no need to form rebates, no need for the stated dimensions of the gunport to be reduced by a separate lining, and no need to fit the separate lining. All the best, Mark P Gun port sections002.pdf

Hi Paul; The solid bar is a method of making the chains which was used before they were forged as a link, which was a later development. All the best, Mark P

Good Morning Druxey; Your point re the timbers being thicker for the ringbolts is a good one, I had not considered that; but it does not negate my proposition, it would be an additional reason to need a thicker timber, as well as leaving part of the timber exposed externally. My reasons for being certain that there was no lining of the timbers forming the sides of the ports are several: 1 - Firstly, I have both read and photographed many, many contracts for building Navy ships in merchant yards, over a hundred of them. I have transcribed over twenty of these. Whilst some of them detail the construction of the port lids as shown in the extract above, not one of them mentions separate linings being fitted around the ports. Whilst the very early contracts can be brief, the mid 18th century ones onward generally go into great detail, and I cannot believe that they would not specify a separate lining if such was expected. The builders would be justified in omitting it, thereby saving a considerable cost to themselves in time and materials, and the Navy Board would be unable to enforce them being fitted. 2 - Why would there be any need to add separate timbers, which would take time and money to do, when a stop can be formed as shown in Siggi's sketch, which is in complete accordance with the contract extracts in my previous post. This method of construction gives a good seal against water, and requires no additional work operations. The Navy Board was very strict about reducing costs wherever possible, and I cannot believe that they would have sanctioned an un-necessary process of fitting wood around all ports which had a lid. If it is believed that the ports were lined to prevent the gun-crews getting splinters in their hands from a sawn finish to the timbers, there is a counter to this in the contracts. These frequently state, and presumably this was universal, that all the beams, knees, standards and planking of the sides were to be planed, with the corners struck with a bead. The timber was also painted, normally with three coats of paint, periodically refreshed. A relevant point here would be what happened to the ports in the waist, which had no lids? 3 - The builders' contracts also frequently specify, when dealing with the ships' framing and fitting of the gun-port cills, that a certain amount of timber must be left beyond the birds-beaks cut into the timber for the port cills. They often then continue by saying that when the port is cut out to its bigness, no sap or wain can be left in the timbers. This can only really refer to any minor trimming or smoothing of timbers to leave the hole the exact correct size as specified (see also item 4 below) 4 - I have checked the sizes of the ports as shown on the framing plans of various vessels against the port sizes listed in the contracts. In all cases the dimensions matched. Any lining fitted would therefore reduce the size of the opening below that specified. To my interpretation, this is another good indication that no linings were fitted as separate pieces. 5 - There is no mention of stops as separate pieces of timber in any contemporary work of reference which I have seen. Can you post a copy of the section of Steel in which they are listed. How exact is Steel's description, is it clear to what he is referring. Falconer makes no mention of stops, neither are they listed in the copy of Steel's 'Vade Mecum', of both of which I have (pdf) copies. 6 - The excavation report of the 'Colossus', part of which dealt at some length with a gun-port on the wreck of that ship, includes colour photographs of the interior view of the port, with a curved, projecting piece of timber fastened inside the lower cill, against which the gun carriage's front end would have hit when the gun was run out. This is quite likely to be referred to as a stop, although this depends upon Steel's description of this, and the dimensions he gives for it. I would believe that items 1 to 4 above add up to a considerable set of reasons for separate linings to form stops being neither done nor necessary. All the best, Mark P

Good Evening Siggi; Your left hand sketch shows exactly how I always understood the ports to be formed, and agrees with the descriptions in both contracts. The size of the port is measured between the timbers of the frame. I have to respectfully disagree with Druxey's sketch above. It is much simpler to build the ports as in Siggi's sketch. No need to add a lining around the port. Other contracts stipulate that the top-timbers which make the sides of ports are to be sided 1" more than top-timbers which do not form ports. This would seem to be needed because part of the timber was to be left un-covered to form the stop for the port-lid, whilst still leaving a good width of timber to fix the ends of the planking to. That is full-size practice. There are more than enough precedents in contemporary models for Siggi to make his gun-port lids without a rebated edge. This was done, though, only for simplicity in the making of the model. The two pictures in post 201 above show the reality. All the best, Mark P

Greetings again Siggi; See below an extract from a contract for 'Newark', an 80 gun ship, dated 1693. This gives more detail of the gun-port lids and their eye-bolts etc. Port Lids To make all the Port Lidds on each Side for each Deck, & through the Bulkheads and for the Chases afore and abaft with Such Thickness of Oak Planck, and Prussia deals as the Planck is where they Respectively fall, to line them with Elme Board and Full Naile them. To Hang them with Substantiall Iron Hooks of Such Length as may Come within Two Inches of through the Ship’s side, and the Hinges to Reach within Three Inches of the Lower Edge on Each Port Lidd Bolted and Fore locked aloft. And to fit to each Port Lidd of the Lower deck Two Inside Substantiall Shackles and one neare the Lower Edge of the Port without Board, all the rest of the Port Lidds to have One only within and one without, and to well Belay all of them with good Rings, and Forelocks. All the best, Mark P

Greetings Siggi; You are making a very good job of building your model, very neat work, and a beautiful figurehead. Concerning the debate about port lids, see below an extract for a contract to build a 50 gun ship. This is dated 1692, but I have seen the same thing on later contracts. This clearly states that the ports are to be built with the same size planks as the outer layer, and then lined with a layer of Elm. A very important point here is that the sides of the ports were formed of substantial timbers, the verticals being either futtocks or toptimbers, and the cills of substantial oak pieces. By leaving the planking stopped short each side of the port, and below, a rebate is formed without any need for lining the ports. I have seen many, many listings of port sizes, and they are all the same, they never mention any slips or linings to form a rebate. As the extract below makes clear, the outer layer of planking is the same as the ship's side at that point. It is not possible to then have any other interpretation except that the elm lining (which would be vertical planks) being fixed behind this outer layer, must fit within the gap between the main frame timbers. forward to be Twelve Inches Square at the head. To make and hang all the Ports on each side upon Each Deck and in each Bulkhead with the same Size of Planck ye Side is wrought with. To lyne the same with Elm Boards well nailed. To build a fair head with a firm and Substantiall In the gallery, there are pictures of models which I have taken at the Science Museum and the NMM archives. All of these show a rebate for the port lids. All the port lids on models seem to be made of a single layer, though. This is presumably to keep it simple, as many are kept shut. All the best, and keep up the impressive work! Mark P