Talos

This past spring, ussfrolic reached out to me about collaborating on a project with the US frigate John Adams. He got me access to a copy of a design draught for her and I duly reconstructed it from there. I’ve been sitting on it for a couple months since then and hadn’t started the proper thread for it. At frolic’s prompting I’m finally getting it started. He’ll fill in more of the background in following posts.
 
I intend to do more with the drawings, including an attempt to illustrate later versions of the ship, including the sloop and jackass frigate years. I also found spar dimensions for her as of the Barbary Wars, so I’ll be drawing a sail plan as well. The bare hull isn't entirely finished yet either, there’s still a few bits here and there missing, but it’s overall complete. I suppose “fitted out” would be a better term…
 
I reconstructed the steps, side lights from a deckplan that showed them, the bridle ports, and the head and waist rails. I’m going to fiddle with a couple different designs for the rails as far as waist and forecastle, but this is a start.

This past spring, ussfrolic reached out to me about collaborating on a project with the US frigate John Adams. He got me access to a copy of a design draught for her and I duly reconstructed it from there. I’ve been sitting on it for a couple months since then and hadn’t started the proper thread for it. At frolic’s prompting I’m finally getting it started. He’ll fill in more of the background in following posts.
 
I intend to do more with the drawings, including an attempt to illustrate later versions of the ship, including the sloop and jackass frigate years. I also found spar dimensions for her as of the Barbary Wars, so I’ll be drawing a sail plan as well. The bare hull isn't entirely finished yet either, there’s still a few bits here and there missing, but it’s overall complete. I suppose “fitted out” would be a better term…
 
I reconstructed the steps, side lights from a deckplan that showed them, the bridle ports, and the head and waist rails. I’m going to fiddle with a couple different designs for the rails as far as waist and forecastle, but this is a start.

While United States probably had single-story quartergalleries, Chapelle does attempt a reconstruction of two-level ones for it. They would just be an extension of the top of the gallery with false windows just like the lower level. HMS President, the replacement for the captured US frigate built on roughly the same lines, did have one though. While the rest of the stern is completely different, it can give a decent idea of what those kind of quartergalleries could look like. http://s017.radikal.ru/i428/1212/a2/78007cc6952c.jpg
 
Returning to Chapelle again, his as-built draught for the Constitution and her sisters have a strange stern. The galleries and stern itself are really high up compared to the deck. The as-captured USS President draught the British took off has a lower gallery, as does the Java-class and other related frigates. I dropped in a pair of ~6 foot tall figures, one on the gun deck and one on the spar deck to illustrate. The dashed lines are his attempt at reconstructing United States' poop deck and extended quartergalleries.
 

Agreed. Might not have had one as-built, but certainly had one at least when it became a brig, if not after the Venice refit. Pay attention to the difference between heads around 1800 and by the War of 1812, the shapes had really changed by then.

I imagine a large part of the head on small naval ships like that is fashion, essentially marking it as a "real" naval vessel. Chapelle has several examples of ships in the same class that have or don't have the naval heads, like the USS Alligator/Shark and USRC Morris/Hamilton. All of those are schooners though, I can't think of any brigs or larger that lack those heads.

To Secretary of the Navy from Master Commandant Thomas Robinson, Jr., U. S. Navy
VENICE Jan 27, 1805 (EXCERPT)
 
Pages 309-310 in Knox, Dudley, (editor). 1944. Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers. Volume V Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background from September 7, 1804 through April 1805. Vol. V. 6 vols. U.S. Government Printing Office.  http://www.ibiblio.org/anrs/barbary.html
 
When we came to rip the Schooner to pieces we found her in a most deplorable situation, it was the astonishment of every one, how she brot us here, Her Beams were all off at the ends, the floorings & futtocks perfect powder & in fact to sum up all its only necessary to inform you that in addition to building a new schooner we have to pull to pieces an old one - but there is this pleasing reflection, she will be more durable than her companions, for better Timber I never saw than we are puting in her. I have the pick from frames of Frigates that have been from twenty to five Years dress'd out numberd & piled away under cover for use, - There never was n pendant treated with more respect, or Officers with more attention than the Enterprizes has been both here and at Trieste, being the first of our Vessels of War in either of those Ports & her construction so different from any thing they had ever seen, she astonish'd & delighted, -
 
To Secretary of the Navy from Master Commandant Thomas Robinson, Jr., U. S. Navy
VENICE Feb. 18, 1805 (EXCERPT)
 
Pages 358-359 in Knox, Dudley, (editor). 1944. Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers. Volume V Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background from September 7, 1804 through April 1805. Vol. V. 6 vols. U.S. Government Printing Office.  http://www.ibiblio.org/anrs/barbary.html
 
SIR I had the pleasure of addressing you under date of 27th Jan to which I must refer you for particulars respecting the US Schooner Enterprize, but as we proceed in her repairs and you consequently must feel anxious to know our progress I feel a great pleasure in executing that part of my duty. -
 
I have this day got her Bends on and her ceiling compleated. - I was Obliged to put in a new Stem and Stern Post, in doing the latter I have taken out the Square tuck and have also altered in a small degree the fashion of her top sides, by not giving her so much tumble home aloft, which will afford a better Deck and more room to manage her Guns, but in every instance I have been particular in preserving her model below, that she may continue to possess her good qualities as a fast sailer and good sea Boat -
 
It astonishes me how her stern hung together, it was at first a miserable piece of work and when we broke it down perfectly rotten. -
 
The schooner is as full as I think necessary of the best Timber I ever saw, the Master Carpenter of the Arsenal says (and I think with great reason) that she will be a good Vessel after this repair forty years. -
 
Oh! how I wish I had got permission to give her a few feet more Keel and opened her a little what a sweet Brig I would have made her, and with no apparent expence, but Sir it is dangerous for Officers young in rank to take libertys. –

If I'm not mistaken, when a ship with square sails is taking the wing, it helps keep it heeled over steadily.
 
Amusingly, ship-sloops were far more capable of taking battle damage than a brig-sloop, since the loss of only one or two sails or a single mast can disable it, while the ship-sloop can handle the loss of any of the three masts.

Yeah, when they built the new, longer bow, the lines were sharper. It makes sense with both being built up from the same frame, the longer bow will be less bluff than the original ship. When I get around to doing Santee/Sabine drawings, I'm looking forward to modeling Sabine's different bow, stern, and mast placement.
 
Also, looking at Chapelle again, it was Tingley, the Commandant at the Washington Navy Yard, who had Enterprise, Vixen, Viper, and Nautilus converted to brigs (over the objection of Fox).

Option 1 makes much more sense, of course and is certainly what they did in the 1811/1812 refit in Washington too.
 
Chapelle states something differerent for Sabine and Santee though. He says that 15 feet was added by cutting the bow off and building a brand new, longer, bow and the  frames aft of frame 31 (before the mizzen, right around the aft end of the mainmast's channels)  taken down and changed, with Santee also getting much less rake in the bow and stern (Sabine kept the same as St Lawrence's).

I doubt any change was made to her keel then. They widened her deck (reducing tumblehome), but the officer referred to wanting to lengthen her more, as you'll recall. I imagine that any difference in length was smaller things like respacing frames, changing the rake of the stem and stern, etc. James was saying Enterprise was 88 ft 7in though. (97ft 1in gundeck length minus the 8ft 6in he added based on Nautilus) Close enough to be a difference in measuring.

Actually, no, he was referring to a refit at the Washington Naval Yard between October 1811 and the beginning of May 1812, where Enterprise was taken out of the water, given the length increase, and rerigged as a brig. (“Soon after the late war commenced”, as in right at the start of the War of 1812) So just once. Her keel length before that date was the same as when she was launched.
 
William James was a very pro-British lawyer and his work was focused on showing that the RN didn’t really “lose” any of the single-ship duels of the War of 1812, because the American ships always outclassed their opponents in size, crew, and firepower (Constitution, United States, Wasp, Hornet, etc). He easily would have gone with the American measurements if it made them look even bigger.
 
His numbers for Enterprise were very accurate though. As I mentioned in that post, they took a memorandum book from USS Chesapeake when she was captured. In it were full dimensions (including full spar and sail dimensions!) for at least Constitution, President, Chesapeake, and the Enterprise as a schooner (obviously wasn’t updated after her 1812 refit when she was turned into a brig). James mentions as proof of the book’s accuracy that President and Chesapeake’s numbers were checked against the captured warships. I think that this book, if it survives, could be invaluable. I did find reference to a signal book from Chesapeake in the British archives, which this could have come from, or it might be a different book that might be collecting dust somewhere.
 
The reason he brought up Nautilus is the brig was laid up in Deptford (as HMS Emulous) from 1816 to 1817, while he was writing this. He was using the exact gunport spacing between two of her ports, either measuring her himself or going from measurements taken off of her during that time laid up and added that to the known length of Enterprise from the memorandum book (knowing that a gunport was added to each side). It’s possible her lines were taken then too. She was probably closest to Enterprise as-built anyway, being a fellow Baltimore Clipper schooner from the same time period before 1800 as well as possibly being built by the same man (Henry Spencer).

If I'm not mistaken, when a ship with square sails is taking the wing, it helps keep it heeled over steadily.
 
Amusingly, ship-sloops were far more capable of taking battle damage than a brig-sloop, since the loss of only one or two sails or a single mast can disable it, while the ship-sloop can handle the loss of any of the three masts.

Taken from "A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America" by William James.
 
 
The MS Memorandum book is described earlier in the book. It was captured by the RN when they took the Chesapeake and had dimensions for multiple ships. It might still exist in the British archives.

If I'm not mistaken, when a ship with square sails is taking the wing, it helps keep it heeled over steadily.
 
Amusingly, ship-sloops were far more capable of taking battle damage than a brig-sloop, since the loss of only one or two sails or a single mast can disable it, while the ship-sloop can handle the loss of any of the three masts.

Yeah, when they built the new, longer bow, the lines were sharper. It makes sense with both being built up from the same frame, the longer bow will be less bluff than the original ship. When I get around to doing Santee/Sabine drawings, I'm looking forward to modeling Sabine's different bow, stern, and mast placement.
 
Also, looking at Chapelle again, it was Tingley, the Commandant at the Washington Navy Yard, who had Enterprise, Vixen, Viper, and Nautilus converted to brigs (over the objection of Fox).

That's interesting about the Santee's new stern frames too. It mean that they took a lesson from the Adams lengthening and made the new midship section not so far aft along in the hull. The Portsmouth (NH) papers noted only that in 1855 Santee "was remodeled and her prow was made sharper".

Option 1 makes much more sense, of course and is certainly what they did in the 1811/1812 refit in Washington too.
 
Chapelle states something differerent for Sabine and Santee though. He says that 15 feet was added by cutting the bow off and building a brand new, longer, bow and the  frames aft of frame 31 (before the mizzen, right around the aft end of the mainmast's channels)  taken down and changed, with Santee also getting much less rake in the bow and stern (Sabine kept the same as St Lawrence's).

Option One: Lengthening a ship can really only be done relatively EASILY amidships, where the task at hand is making a bunch of copies of the midship frame that would not interfere with the existing lines. This was done to the Adams frigate, in the extreme, but by creating such a long midships 'flat', it altered the ebb of the water around the hull so badly, that it created a 'chatter' at the rudder that it wore out the pintles and gudgeons after only a couple years.
 
Since the Enterprize had to be so completely rebuilt after only a half dozen years since her visit to the Mediterranean dockyard, I suspect that the midships keel splice was equally as rotten as the majority of the new frames that had to be replaced. I suspect that they pulled out the keel splice and replaced it with a longer splice. I don't think that they would have added a eight feet midship keel splice in 1804, and then added a second five foot splice in 1811 right next to it. That would have been structurally unsound in the dangerous extreme.
 
Option 2: However, in the 1850s, the navy lengthened the Frigates Santee and Sabine by replacing everything forward of the midships frame, including the keel, and re-lofting the lines to a new forward frame design. This was done in anticipation of a steam conversion which never came. If this was the method employed on the Enterprize, then it would have been more difficult, requiring a complete redrawing of her plans. But since the US Navy didn't even have plans in 1811 to 'redraw' (by their own admission) they would have had to take the lines off first, in order to have something in which to alter. So they might have just completely rebuilt her lines to a whole new set of plans, making use of the after keel and those floor timber which they could make fit.

Actually, no, he was referring to a refit at the Washington Naval Yard between October 1811 and the beginning of May 1812, where Enterprise was taken out of the water, given the length increase, and rerigged as a brig. (“Soon after the late war commenced”, as in right at the start of the War of 1812) So just once. Her keel length before that date was the same as when she was launched.
 
William James was a very pro-British lawyer and his work was focused on showing that the RN didn’t really “lose” any of the single-ship duels of the War of 1812, because the American ships always outclassed their opponents in size, crew, and firepower (Constitution, United States, Wasp, Hornet, etc). He easily would have gone with the American measurements if it made them look even bigger.
 
His numbers for Enterprise were very accurate though. As I mentioned in that post, they took a memorandum book from USS Chesapeake when she was captured. In it were full dimensions (including full spar and sail dimensions!) for at least Constitution, President, Chesapeake, and the Enterprise as a schooner (obviously wasn’t updated after her 1812 refit when she was turned into a brig). James mentions as proof of the book’s accuracy that President and Chesapeake’s numbers were checked against the captured warships. I think that this book, if it survives, could be invaluable. I did find reference to a signal book from Chesapeake in the British archives, which this could have come from, or it might be a different book that might be collecting dust somewhere.
 
The reason he brought up Nautilus is the brig was laid up in Deptford (as HMS Emulous) from 1816 to 1817, while he was writing this. He was using the exact gunport spacing between two of her ports, either measuring her himself or going from measurements taken off of her during that time laid up and added that to the known length of Enterprise from the memorandum book (knowing that a gunport was added to each side). It’s possible her lines were taken then too. She was probably closest to Enterprise as-built anyway, being a fellow Baltimore Clipper schooner from the same time period before 1800 as well as possibly being built by the same man (Henry Spencer).

Actually, no, he was referring to a refit at the Washington Naval Yard between October 1811 and the beginning of May 1812, where Enterprise was taken out of the water, given the length increase, and rerigged as a brig. (“Soon after the late war commenced”, as in right at the start of the War of 1812) So just once. Her keel length before that date was the same as when she was launched.
 
William James was a very pro-British lawyer and his work was focused on showing that the RN didn’t really “lose” any of the single-ship duels of the War of 1812, because the American ships always outclassed their opponents in size, crew, and firepower (Constitution, United States, Wasp, Hornet, etc). He easily would have gone with the American measurements if it made them look even bigger.
 
His numbers for Enterprise were very accurate though. As I mentioned in that post, they took a memorandum book from USS Chesapeake when she was captured. In it were full dimensions (including full spar and sail dimensions!) for at least Constitution, President, Chesapeake, and the Enterprise as a schooner (obviously wasn’t updated after her 1812 refit when she was turned into a brig). James mentions as proof of the book’s accuracy that President and Chesapeake’s numbers were checked against the captured warships. I think that this book, if it survives, could be invaluable. I did find reference to a signal book from Chesapeake in the British archives, which this could have come from, or it might be a different book that might be collecting dust somewhere.
 
The reason he brought up Nautilus is the brig was laid up in Deptford (as HMS Emulous) from 1816 to 1817, while he was writing this. He was using the exact gunport spacing between two of her ports, either measuring her himself or going from measurements taken off of her during that time laid up and added that to the known length of Enterprise from the memorandum book (knowing that a gunport was added to each side). It’s possible her lines were taken then too. She was probably closest to Enterprise as-built anyway, being a fellow Baltimore Clipper schooner from the same time period before 1800 as well as possibly being built by the same man (Henry Spencer).

Is this source insinuating that Enterprize was lengthened after the war?  Could she have been lengthened twice? At 97' that would make her larger than the Syren?? Am I correct in assuming that this was written by a British historian in 1817?  If that is so it is likely he didn't have the correct information and made an inference on size and date of alteration.  Very interesting stuff though I downloaded the book via an online source And I agree trippwj, these little warships were so very compact and cramp when you really think about it it's simply amazing and for me why I think I like them so much.  Sure a big ship like Vanguard or Victory are feats on engineering, but these small ships fascinate me in how the engineers managed to work with limited space in order to make such beautiful vessels which were essentially very practical works of art.

Taken from "A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America" by William James.
 
 
The MS Memorandum book is described earlier in the book. It was captured by the RN when they took the Chesapeake and had dimensions for multiple ships. It might still exist in the British archives.

Taken from "A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America" by William James.
 
 
The MS Memorandum book is described earlier in the book. It was captured by the RN when they took the Chesapeake and had dimensions for multiple ships. It might still exist in the British archives.

Taken from "A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America" by William James.
 
 
The MS Memorandum book is described earlier in the book. It was captured by the RN when they took the Chesapeake and had dimensions for multiple ships. It might still exist in the British archives.

While United States probably had single-story quartergalleries, Chapelle does attempt a reconstruction of two-level ones for it. They would just be an extension of the top of the gallery with false windows just like the lower level. HMS President, the replacement for the captured US frigate built on roughly the same lines, did have one though. While the rest of the stern is completely different, it can give a decent idea of what those kind of quartergalleries could look like. http://s017.radikal.ru/i428/1212/a2/78007cc6952c.jpg
 
Returning to Chapelle again, his as-built draught for the Constitution and her sisters have a strange stern. The galleries and stern itself are really high up compared to the deck. The as-captured USS President draught the British took off has a lower gallery, as does the Java-class and other related frigates. I dropped in a pair of ~6 foot tall figures, one on the gun deck and one on the spar deck to illustrate. The dashed lines are his attempt at reconstructing United States' poop deck and extended quartergalleries.