Louie da fly

Chuck, the model I put up in post # 35 (with all those pictures of seals and manuscript illustrations) is of what I call a nef - there's really no accepted name for them - from the late 13th-early 14th century. (Nobody really knows what exactly a hulc/hulk was, and to be honest I think the currently accepted idea of its nature is based on such thin evidence that it should never have been entertained in the first place.) I wouldn't take too much notice of the configuration of the model's shrouds - it's a modern interpretation, after all. I'd be relying on the contemporary representations, though it has to be admitted they give very little detail. I've had a look at archaeological finds but as far as I can see no blocks etc have survived. Naturally enough these are usually the first things to disappear as the upper works get eroded away, unless they fall off and are buried under silt and are thus preserved. However, my understanding is that hearts go back a very long way - certainly prior to deadeyes, which don't seem to have come in until at least the middle of the 15th century. At the risk of derailing the thread (though I think this information is actually relevant not only to your question but to this and other threads for 13th-15th century ships) the above illustrations and the ones I've added below are all the evidence I've been able to find for rigging items for ships of this period. Note the last one is very clear (it's from the Luttrell Psalter of 1325-40) and perhaps this is the best option for shroud fixings. My reading of the picture is that the shroud passes through a hole in the planking and is wrapped around a toggle. The red seal might be done the same way, and the two seals nearest the end (which I believe to be different impressions of the same seal) seem to have a similar system, but all the toggles are attached to the same horizontal bar. The one with the two-headed eagle banner seems to have the shrouds ending in eye-splices passing through metal brackets, on the far right of the second line it looks like the shroud passes through a hole in the bulwark and then is spliced back onto itself. Some shrouds end in unidentified "blobs" on the outside of the hull. The first three in post #35 above and perhaps even the seal of Dover in post #34 seem to have them terminate in ringbolts or eyebolts, as does the third one in the third line below (though that one has them sticking up from the bulwark whereas in all the others the ringbolts are on the sides of the ship). BNF Francais 64 f. 271r Harley MS 1319 f. 18 (1401-2) Harley MS 1319 f. 14v (1401-2) Rylands MS English 1, fol. 9v. (1401-1420) BM 1978,U.2028 Richard II's campaign in Ireland BNF Valère Maxime, Dits et faits mémorables f. 59v (1450-75) Early 15th century Seal of Southampton unknown, early 15th century BNF Français 64 Folio 333r (1401-1500) Seal of Elbing, Germany Luttrell Psalter BL Add MS 42130 f. 161v. of 1325-40 These are all the contemporary representations I've been able to find that show the fixing of the shrouds, but it has to be kept in mind that many representations just show the shrouds vanishing behind the bulwarks, and thus presumably fixed somehow to the inside of the ship. I hope this is of help to you and to anyone else interested in this kind of thing (including, of course, you, PhilB).

Beautiful work. That's looking really good. I like your carpenter standing there ready to trim off the treenails with his axe . . . Maybe think about where your belaying points are going to be - where all the ropes get tied down to. I didn't think about it with my own build and now I'm having to get clever figuring out where to put cleats etc after all the main structure has been finalised. I love your planking, by the way.

That certainly looks better. I would go so far as to cut the stem and stern posts off just below the decks of the castles. It seems to me that firstly there's no structural reason to extend them past that, and secondly they'd get in the way of the people on the deck. What you might also like to do is have a forecastle which is rectangular but with a sharp end as in the pics below - this seems to have been a fairly common feature, and would give more room on the deck without interfering too much with the balance of the ship. Note also the supporting brackets below the castles and that the stem and sternposts don't protrude above deck level.

Oh, for a moment I thought you meant there were going to be twenty-two more boats. I really should read things more carefully . . .

Beautiful work, Anthony. A magnificent model. Sounds like a good idea - assuming you are prepared to put the extra work in . . .

Nice work. That pulley system is basially the same as I'm using on my dromon, though the details are a little different. Where did you get the sheaves (wheels)?

The Mighty Hood. What a classic ship. At 1:200 she's going to be pretty big, isn't she?

Yep, guesswork. I started out with a 90-45-45 degree triangle, with the long side running along the yard. Then I made the distance between the side that runs along the yard, and the vertex oposite it, half what it would otherwise have been. No idea if it's going to work, but if not I'll just have to cut some more off I suppose.

Welcome to MSW, Clark. You'll find there are several other MSW members have built or are building Amati's Coca - you can find them by typing Amati Coca in the search bar at the top. You might find that they'll help you with your own build. Problems you encounter in your build may already have been solved by these modellers. And there's a wealth of information and advice available from the friendly members here. Make sure you start a build log - instructions on doing that are here. As a mediaeval/renaissance freak myself, I'm looking forward to seeing your progress!

Welcome to MSW! With that number of builds under your belt, you must have amassed quite an impressive skill base. Make sure you start a build log so we can all enjoy following your progress (and offer help and encouragement as needed).

That's looking very good, Greg. Welcome to MSW. I'm another one looking forward to seeing the build log

Nice looking model, and the idea of giving it new yards and fabric sails is a good one - I think it would add significantly to the presentation. This model is almost certainly based on the ship which appears repeatedly (in different sizes) in the painting below - and that is generally thought to be the Santa Caterina do Monto Sinai (launched in 1520, and da Gama's flagship on his third voyage to India). If that's the case the kit seems to have taken a few liberties with the colour scheme - more appropriate to the end of the 16th century than the beginning (but much more colourful!). I've always loved this ship and it's been a long term goal of mine to build a model of it. I didn't know there was a plastic kit available and though I no longer build in plastic, I'm looking forward to following your build. Carracks are a particular interest of mine and I've amassed a whole lot of information on them. If there's any way I can help with references, contemporary pictures etc I'd be glad to do so. I've put together a Pinterest page on larger, later carracks (which I like to call Great Carracks) at https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/great-carracksnaos/ which you might find of use.

The wooldings for the after mast wedges in progress, and complete: Foremast - as mentioned above the halyard knight needed to be moved aft so the mast didn't foul its operation. Here is the deck with the knight removed, then with the slot in the deck extended aft and a new length of plank inserted to close up the gap, all the way to the mast. Then I trimmed the gap so the tenon of the knight fitted exactly into it and relocated the knight to allow enough room for its lanyards to run freely. I started making the lateen sails. As they are going to be furled I made them narrower than full size so they wouldn't be too bulky when furled. Unfortunately the first method I used didn't work - I cut the fabric out, then taped it down and glued the bolt rope to the top of the sail (the bit that goes against the yard). But as the fabric was cut on the bias - i.e. at 45 degrees to the weave - the sails mutated. You can see below that the straight line I'd cut along the horizontal had stretched downward, pulling the ends inward - I trimmed the cloth against the bolt rope, but when I measured the sails against the yards they were quite a bit too short. So I started again. This time I didn't cut the fabric until the bolt ropes were glued in place, which kept it from deforming. And when the glue was dry I cut the sails out. Now, because I'd allowed extra fabric in case they shrank the sails were too long, so I cut them to length and everything worked very nicely. Now I'm in the process of fixing the first sail to the yard with robands - a lot more fiddly and difficult than I'd expected - and very frustrating; I have great difficulty tying a reef knot in cotton thread - fingers too clumsy, tweezers keep on slipping at the last moment - I've finally taken to tying a thumb knot and adding a dab of glue, allowing it to dry and coming back to finish the knot. Very time consuming. I took the third photo from a funny angle, so it looks like the sail starts a fair way down the yard. In fact it comes all the way up to the blocks - the end part is just flipped on its edge so you can't see it. While I'm waiting for the glue to dry I've been getting the halyards themselves sorted out and attached to the yards: That's all for now. More to follow as I get more done.

Another question. The robands were tied up with reef (square) knots - what was done with the free ends? The diagrams above show the roband barely long enough to make the reef knot, but that seems impractical to me. Were they really that short, or were the free ends longer, and if so were they just left to flap around as in the picture below? Note that my question specifically relates to lateeners, but I'd assume the technique would be the same whatever the rig.

A very nice result. Hard to believe it's your first model. Plank length varied, presumably according to the length of timber availablel, but for example the Sutton Hoo ship'splanks were 18 feet long (see . By the way, I think the shifts in your planks are likely to become less obvious when you put the deck furniture on.

Hi Phil. Could you give a side view? That would help visualise better the way the castles fit with the hull. I think there should probably be a bit more inward taper on the castles, and maybe the forecastle (that's still its name, even today!) should be narrower to give it more balance, both visually and mechanically. Not sure about the sterncastle - there's a contemporary Danish picture of a ship with a similarly long castle at the stern, but it's lower than yours and fits into the hull better. It also goes all the way to the mast. By the way, you probably don't need the stempost and sternpost to stick right up above the castles - they seem to get cut off at the castle in most pics I've seen. And overhanging castles would normally be supported by brackets from the hull. I'm not sure of the right name for that mast fish thing - they seem to have only been used on Viking ships. The thing that usually carries out that function is called a mast step, and most of them aren't as pretty as the Viking ones - just rectangular. I make it Sigillum (seal of) Communo . . ronus de Dovoric[um](?). The flag is that of the Cinque Ports - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Ports - of which Dover was one.

Magnificent work, Hellmuht! That's a wonderful model.

Hi Christos, Are you asking this question about dromons? In other words was there a systematic way of naming Byzantine oared ships to show how many oars they had? There seems to be nothing of that sort relating to Byzantium. There are various names given to the war galleys of Byzantium - the single-banked scout ships were called galeai, and the larger ships went by several names - dromon, khelandion, pamphilion and others, but there was never any description of what each word actually meant, so the academics have been arguing about it for a long time now. Whether khelandion or pamphilion were just other names for a dromon is uncertain, and we'll probably never know. Apparently the word bireis was used, but more poetically than accurately, not necessarily to denote that the ship had two banks of oars. Anna Komnene refers to triremes, but there's no evidence the Byzantines had three-banked vessels - she's just showing off her classical knowledge (as was common at the time), not trying to accurately describe the ships. And regarding the number oars, there's unfortunately nothing in the names of the vessels to say how many they had but modern estimates of the number of oars for a dromon range from 100 to 150. Again academics can't agree, but I've taken Prof Pryor's figure of 100 as the basis for my model.

Good decision. I wouldn't get too worried about the model's fragility. In my experience ship models, no matter how frail they seem to be, are surprisingly robust. So long as you don't tread on it or run over it with a steamroller you should be ok. You can probably do well enough, at least to start out, with the tools supplied. But as you go along you'll probably discover the need for others. One thing you may not think of, but which is vital, is a wide range of different types and sizes of clamps. You can never have toomany clamps! But many modellers produce excellent results with a surprisingly small and basic collection of tools. And yes, a build log is a very good idea indeed. Let us know on this page when you start yours, with a link to the log. I for one will be following it. And have fun with it! That's what it's all about.

Liteflight, I'm sure you regret the digression to the full extent it deserves (seriously, it would get terribly boring if all we discussed was modelling). Not the Ionian Sea - the Sea of Marmara, which washes the southern coast of Constantinople. It's connected to the Aegean Sea in the south by the straits of Gallipoli and to the Black Sea in the north by the Bosphorus strait. Unfortunately the only information on the size of the wedges is pictorial, which immediately introduces uncertainty - were the artists portraying them accurately? And the only pictures that show them are from somewhere else and another time - hundreds of kilometres and hundreds of years. And thirdly, the great majority of mediaeval representations of ships don't show them at all. Is this because most of them were smaller than the ones in the pictures above, so don't show above the gunwale? Or have the artists just neglected to show them (which they certainly often do with other shipboard equipment which must have been there, such as blocks). There's a lot of 'best guess' involved in reconstructing something from that long ago, and often one simply has to go with what seems right. So yes, I'm increasing the size of the wedges to something I think looks sensible - about the size shown in the last picture in my previous post. Here they are under way - for the after mast, and for the fore mast. Wooldings are under way at the moment - photos later. Now that the wedges are in place I've discovered that the halyard knight for the fore yard is too close behind the mast - it gets fouled by the wedge assembly - so I'm going to have to move it back a bit. On another note, I've finished connecting the sets of blocks together with their tackle for all the shrouds (12 of them). A rather fiddly job, and I'm glad it's finished. Here's one set partially installed, just to see how it all works. I'm holding off doing any more on these till I finish another couple of things that have to be done first.

It's been a while since I visited this build. You've really powered ahead with it - it's looking amazingly good.

Looking good. Lots of fun. Yep, they're called (surprise, surprise!) ridge tiles because they go on the ridge of the roof. But your alternative solution looks good.

Happy birthday, Eric. Nice present. Those figures look very good, too. A bit hard to see detail, but from what I can see they look very historically accurate.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear - it juste keeps getting worse . . . Getting back on subject (remember the build log?) if the ship was under sail I would indeed have the lee shrouds slackened off. As she's only just hoisting the sails that won't be an issue. But the idea I have is that a favourable wind has just sprung up and they are going to take advantage of it . . . alternatively, she's just left the harbour of Theodosius on the southern coast of the City under oars (better manoeuvrability) and is now out in the Sea of Marmara in a nice breeze and is hoisting the sails to allow the oarsmen to husband their strength for when it's needed. If on the other hand they'd been leaving from the grand harbour of the Golden Horn they would have stayed under oars, as the currents in the Bosphorus Strait are fierce - the whole of the Black Sea to the north empties into the Sea of Marmara through a strait that is less than a kilometre wide. Before I install the shrouds I need to re-make the mast wedges which I now realise are far too small. Unfortunately there is no direct evidence of the form these took - the nearest pictorial representations are from Spain at the other end of the Mediterranean in the middle of the 13th century 100-200 years later than the model (the first two pics) or even later - the 1st quarter of the 14th century (the third) and from Italy from the 14th century (though the artistic style of this one looks very Byzantine we can't rely on the ship being anything other than Italian) Given that all the rest of the ship pictures I've been ableto get hold of don't show the mast wedges at all, perhaps they weren't as huge in most ships as shown in the first three pictures, and I'm more willing to base my representation on the last one, where the wedges come up a certain distance from the deck and then are tied down with wooldings. Which nonetheless means I have to re-make all my wedges. Still I think it's worth it to get the impression as accurate as I can manage under the circumstances. And the other thing I have to do is make some sails (furled) to put on the yards so these guys have something to hoist . . .

Yes, well . . . it's wonderful how people volunteer me for extra work . . .