Risati

Melbourne Smith's Sea Witch PlansPlate I Lines Offsets Plate II Construction Plate III Spars & Sails Plate V Detailed Reconstruction

A large-scale, possibly builder's model of the Sea Witch is on display at the Museum of the City of New York. Another fine 1:48 scale model, built by C. G. Davis in 1936, and at Mystic, CT A third notable model of the Sea Witch, was I believe a Scientific model, that resided in the Oval Office during John F. Kennedy's administration.

Contemporary painting of the Sea Witch in Whampoa, China, by an anonymous Chinese artist. Peabody Essex Museum Another contemporary painting of the Sea Witch at anchor in China, by an unkown artist. India House, Manhattan, NY

First, a little history: Like many of us in the ship modeling community, as a lad I enjoyed building models, usually from plastic kits. These were fun and okay, but I wanted to do something a little more interesting, so I embarked on building a 1:96 scale, full-rigged clipper ship. I had almost no knowledge of available resources or of the broad community of ship modelers. Among the resources I did not have were an adequate set of plans. My inspiration came from Björn Landström’s The Ship: an Illustrated History, published in 1961. This book is a treasure, in which there is a wonderful perspective line drawing of Cutty Sark, with all sails set. That picture was my primary resource. The model’s hull was carved from a redwood post, an enjoyable wood to work with, soft and having a fragrance of peaches, but probably not the best material for building a ship model. Fully-rigged, including sails, the project took nine years, but I completed it. During that time learned of existence of Model Shipways, where I obtained a copy of Ben Larkin’s first plans for the clipper Flying Fish, and discovered the ready availability of many fittings, which proved a godsend. The result is the work of a nautical enthusiast rather than of a skilled and knowledgeable craftsman, but it has some charm and still rests proudly on my mantle. Sadly, I had used a very fine steel wire to strop the blocks and in the fullness of time, these have rusted through resulting in a cascade of “Irish pennants”. And having never been in a case, the model has become among the world’s most sneeze-inducing dust bunnies.

Twenty years after obtaining plans for the Sea Witch from Melbourne Smith* and then turning them into 3-D computer aided design components, I have actually cut wood and embarked on construction of the model. Smith had concluded, that due to missing plans, there had never been built a truly accurate model of the Sea Witch. He did research and found Griffith’s original set of offsets and drew up plans accordingly. I hope my efforts may result in a more accurate representation of the ship than had here-to-fore been built. * Melbourne Smith, died March 9, 2018, was a renowned for building replicas on historic sailing ships including the Baltimore clipper Pride of Baltimore, the topsail schooner, Californian, the brig, Niagara and the 1812 privateer, Lynx. He had planned to build a replica of the Sea Witch for sesquicentennial of the California 1849 gold rush. Sadly, that project failed to materialize. Reference: Smith, Melbourne “To See Which Sea Witch,” Nautical Research Journal, Vol.26, Num. 1, March 1980 55-62.