CDR_Ret

@druxey, would this statement have been true for all eras and applications? I understand that sailing warships had holystoned decks, but sailing merchants, particularly in the latter days of sail, had relatively small crews, which would have made routine deck maintenance difficult. I have some really good photos of the Galilee (1891 brigantine, crew of 11) taken in the early 1900s, and her deck definitely looks painted to me. Photo of a shark caught by the ship's crew of Galilee during her DTM Cruise II in the Pacific Ocean. (Courtesy Carnegie Science Library, c. 1906. All rights reserved.) Terry

Thanks @BANYAN. I've spent so much time immersed in developing the structure of the ship over the past seven years that I'm only now beginning to look at the rigging and related securements in any detail. And I'm not well versed in the jargon associated with masting and rigging, so what you quoted is mostly gibberish to me. A lot of catch-up will be required before drafting up the plans! Appreciate your efforts. Terry

Hi Srenner, You may want to DM the other Blender users in this forum such as @Kurtis and @3DShipWright with your question. I'm afraid that the answer to your question is well above most of our paygrades! Terry

Back in the days of "useta-fish" (US attack submarines were named after sea creatures until they started naming them after random congressmen, then cities. "Fish don't vote!"—Adm. Rickover), we typically stood one-in-three, six-hour watches underway. Generally, attack boats (SSNs) were able to keep their watchbills manned with qualified watchstanders because we did frequent local ops when not deployed. I don't ever recall a dog watch in an SSN because the watches rotated through the 24-hour cycle and everyone could get at least six hours of sleep per day. Boomer crews, on the other hand, arrived at the turnover site with a large portion of the crew either provisionally qualified on their watch stations—or not at all. This was because, for the Offcrew period, we had no boat, and personnel transfers occurred during Offcrew. For the first month or so on patrol, there were a lot of port-and-starboard (we called it "port-and-stupid") watches. After four months at sea on a Westpac in USS Hawkbill, nearly everyone was qualified to their most senior watch stations, so we were able to go to one-in-four watches for the crew and the officers were one-in-six. As Senior Watch Officer, I even let the Engineer off the watchbill completely because he had an ORSE (Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination) to prepare for on the way back to Hawaii after that deployment. I have no idea what modern submarines do. It's been more than 30 years since I've been on a boat...

Very nice job! Nice rendering of the skins, which took a lot of work. I feel your pain... Terry

Very nice, Pat! I built Revell's model of the Fire Fighter as a kid. I have no idea how accurate that was. Anyway, it seems that trying to export files out of DELFTship will be problematic. And after trying to export DXF 3D geometry into 3rd-party file converters this weekend, it almost looks like the function is broken in the Free version. I only get the crease edges. No surfaces at all.

Pat, I guess I must have worded my question wrong, or at least it was unclear. Sorry about that. Ultimately, do you want to create 2D lines plans or produce files that can be 3D printed? If the former, then DELFTship Free has everything you will need for lines plans. You can create stations, waterlines, buttocks, and diagonals at any spacing you wish, The Control Net can produce as smooth a surface as desired and the surface tools can identify surface irregularities, as you mentioned in an earlier post. The choice of dimensional precision permits you to create very tiny and precise objects as well. My brigantine model has objects that are accurately dimensioned down to small fractions of an inch, though one would never be able to model those in the real world at a reasonable scale. Here are several views of Galilee in DELFTship Free showing the details possible. Exported images here are rendered within DELFTship at originally 3000 px wide. The only details I omitted in the model were the beaded sheathing planks on the cabin sides simply because that would have been too tedious for what you would get out of the work. Forward deck area of the brigantine Galilee as she was in 1907 while under charter to the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. Modeled in DELFTship Free. Galilee aft view. Modeled in DELFTship Free. The outboard rods supporting the davits are 3/4-inch diameter by scale. Details of hardware in Galilee modeled in DELFTship Free. Belaying pins, eyebolts, ring bolts, all were created to scale. 2D lines plans can be produced right within the program, suitable for desktop or roll printers. To reduce the clutter, you have to select only the layers intended to be printed in the Lines Plans via the Edit menu of the Layers group in the Home Ribbon. The major downside to DELFTship is that you can't produce photorealistic images of the model which might be useful for a client. Also, DELFTship does not have a lot of tools for modeling small detailed objects that other programs like Fusion360, FreeCAD, Blender, or Sketchup may have. But with patience and ingenuity, you can create just about anything. I haven't tried anything organic yet, but others have. Is this what you are trying to achieve? Terry

Pat, What is driving your requirement to obtain an IGES file? To get around the need for the DELFTship Pro version, you might consider saving your model as a DXF 3D file, available in the DELFTship Free program. (Note that this operation saves all the geometry in the model, both visible and hidden, and on all the layers.) Then you can import the DXF into Fusion360, and then export to IGES. I don't have the ability to do that myself but, based on various websites, it sounds like it would be a doable path. There may be other paths available using browser-based file converters. However, there may be some file quality and security issues using those. Just remember that DELFTship uses a surface modeling technique called subdivision surfaces (a type of spline-surface). The control net creates the surface in 3D space using mathematical algorithms, which results in a surface curvature that is a function of edge density, type of edges, control point density, and the shape of the control net. The program references these surfaces (not the control net) when exporting them to other file formats. It seems like many 3D CAD software have tightened up their file import/export capabilities in recent years. DELFTship and Sketchup are no exceptions. Not sure that explanation helped, but it may adjust your expectations for this software! Enjoyed visiting your website.👍 Terry

HI Pat. I suggest checking out my "Galilee" topic. Spent nearly seven years reconstructing the historic brigantine's hull and deck furniture in DELFTship. The DELFTship forum is alive but grossly underused. The company itself favors the professional and serious ship/boatbuilders, and only throws a bone occasionally to we modelers and maritime historians. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to PM me as well. Terry

And as you have discovered, we are more than willing to misread a post if it garners a laugh! 😁

This news item is being covered on several websites. The UK Daily Mail seems to have one of the more complete write-ups, though it doesn't provide much detail. Several videos on various sites include interviews with the divers. This piece claims that the wreck's contents upend the idea that after the Islamic conquest of the Middle East, basically all trade with Western Europe shut down. Not sure why that was the case. Traders always seem to ignore geopolitical differences. We see that even today. Terry

Well, for the most part, that aspect of the job was actually one of the more meaningful roles I had to fill in off-crew, and I was glad to assist the families experiencing problems when their husbands/fathers weren't around. And it wasn't like I was alone. I had the assistance of the on-crew's ombudsman, and the CO, XO, and COB's wives, who were indispensible for handling on-crew family problems. I was more like the traffic cop, directing issues to the best-qualified to help. It was getting phone calls in the office from 16-year-old girls crying because they had spent all their husband's money that irked. And that happened more than once! My wife had more issues dealing with our own crew's wives... Sorry, didn't intend to hijack the welcome aboard.

Well, I'll answer your question by describing what I liked about SSNs, first. When not on deployments, attack boats conducted what we called weekly ops. Routinely, underway on Monday, back in port on Friday, more or less. If you were lucky, you didn't have the duty over the weekend. Great for family life. SSNs were often tasked with interesting things like weapons evaluations, supporting fleet exercises, providing ASW services to the skimmers and VP assets, under-ice training, preparing for type-commander inspections, etc., etc. Occasionally, a boat would be scrambled to investigate a SOSUS contact or whatever. A very interesting and busy life. US boomers had a set schedule. 60 days in home port/90 days deployed--over and over again. "49 days and a wake-up." The time at home port was spent training, getting required schools, a little leave if possible. As XO, I also had to deal with the family issues of the deployed crew. You wouldn't believe how many teenaged sailors married even younger girls who had no clue how to budget. Spent all their husband's advanced pay after only a few weeks! When deployed, everyone got sick during the month-long refit due to long work hours, then we went to sea. We literally drilled holes through the ocean trying to avoid detection, which was our primary peacetime mission. Of course the crew kept busy with qualifications and drills, but after 14 years in tactical and intelligence work with SSNs, it was pretty boring. The two-crew concept also tended to lead to leaving problems to the other crew, which resulted in some acrimony between crews. Boomer crews also tended to be made up of mostly long-term boomer sailors, who often had a starkly different views of navy life and even worldviews compared to SSN sailors. Just some thoughts.

And make sure you provide clear attribution in your text, and even a link to the original source. Terry

Hey Glenn, Over my career, I served in a 637-class long-hull, a 637 short-hull, built a 688, and served as XO in several boomers during a decommissioning of one. Didn't like the boomers...

In the FWIW category, research suggests that the average male height in the 1600s and 1700s was about 66 inches. So assuming chest height is about 2/3 of that, or 44 inches, that would give a target value for the swivel gun mount height. 🤔 Terry

Hey Glenn. Welcome aboard! Retired (US) submariner here. Looking forward to viewing your construction of your father's ship. Scratch would be definitely doable. Terry

I also received a "The connection to modelshipworld.com is not secure You are seeing this warning because this site does not support HTTPS." message in my Chrome browser when I just logged onto the site (1524 MST 7/26/2022). So there are still some issues to take care of.

@BANYAN, yes sir, any information will be appreciated. I'll PM you with my email address, if that would be more convenient. None of the DTM (Carnegie Institution Department of Terrestrial Magnetism) photos from their charter period are clear enough to discern the details of such devices. I am having trouble even figuring out from the photos what were the cat stoppers, cat falls (if used), and the other components involved in catting and letting go an anchor in this period. There appears to be only a single sheave in the cathead and no cat blocks. Just a bight of chain through the anchor shank ring. I found this image at a Pinterest account online—no attribution—showing a detail of the mechanism @Jim Lad provided earlier: This arrangement was supposedly representative of ground tackle gear around 1850. None of my photos reveal any cleats or eyebolts near either end of the cathead like this diagram shows. Terry

As it turns out, one photo of the ship I have in my collection provides a suggestion that Galilee indeed had some sort of anchor release mechanism similar to that provided by @Jim Lad. This photo is the only one that shows the aft side of the cathead with sufficient resolution to make it out. The arrow points to the probable anchor release gear installed in the brigantine Galilee. (Photo courtesy of Carnegie Science Library, c. 1906–7) Another interesting detail to include in the plans. Thanks Jim! Terry

Hey @Jim Lad. Thanks for this information. This will be something else to look for in the ship photos, since I'm sure releasing a 600-pound anchor was not a trivial task! I was mainly trying to nail down how the anchor was secured for sea, since I am finishing up modeling the various deck gear and fittings in the forecastle of my ship plan reconstruction. But the release mechanism is certainly something to ascertain as well. The USNA textbook had some diagrams of similar gear to consider, though I'm not sure how applicable the type would be to a merchant ship. Terry

This topic pertains to the proper securing of bower anchors in latter 19th-century merchant ships. I have several poor-quality photos of the foredeck of a brigantine merchant ship (the Galilee) taken sometime during 1905–1908, showing how her anchors were secured when underway. This is probably the best of the lot. Photo showing the brigantine Galilee being fitted out as a geomagnetic research vessel in 1905, probably somewhere in the vicinity of San Francisco Bay, California. The circled area is where the chains/lines securing the lower end of the anchor were tied off. (This and following photos Courtesy of the Carnegie Science Library.) Closeup of the area circled in the above photo. I am in the process of adding the remaining deck furniture and fittings to my digital model of Galilee. My questions pertain to the size, shape, and orientation of the cleats evidently used to secure the lower end of the anchors. What would be the size of the cleat? I've seen the rule of 1 inch of cleat length per 1/16 inch of line diameter. However, in many diagrams showing stowed anchors, it is small chain that was used for this purpose. So, what is the rule if chain is used? Galilee's anchors would have been a minimum of 600 lb. each, about half of which would have been borne by the anchor cleat. Would this have been a factor in selecting the cleat size? Determining the likely shape of the cleat is important for a historically-accurate model. I have found a source of so-called "antique" cleats here. The shapes are quite varied as one can see. Would the type most likely be just a basic cleat such as this one? I have read about—and also experienced—the proper orientation of lines taken to mooring cleats. Typically, the line secured to a cleat should run horizontally perpendicular (or tangentially) to the cleat. Cleats are weakest when the tension pulls upward. So would a cleat securing an anchor likely be bolted to side of a rail or to the deck adjacent to the rail? The latter configuration would result in a more upward tension. However, Figure 430 in Plate 94 of the USNA's Text-book of Seamanship (Luce, 1884) suggests this could have been the case. Diagram of the method for securing a bower anchor in a mid-19th-century warship from the cited USNA reference. The circled cleat appears to be fastened to the deck or a waterway. (The image is found in Plate 94 located between pages 246 and 247.) Any comment or directions to other sources to resolve these questions would be very much appreciated. Terry

Thanks @wefalck and @popeye2sea. I had already begun leaning toward blocks shackled to eyebolts on the deck under and inside of the fife rails. One belaying plan even showed the eyebolts. in that location. Most of the iron/steel rigging elements aloft were all but eliminated by the second survey cruise (1907) to reduce the vessel's magnetic constants to the smallest magnitude possible. However, some items simply couldn't be removed because they were irreplaceable. Terry

Thanks for these inputs, everyone. And thank you Alan for the files you sent today. I wasn't planning on getting into rigging at this point in the plans reconstruction process, but figuring out the fife rails sort of dragged me in. Even with this information, I'm afraid, as the good doctor said, it will be a coin toss as to what was actually the case. The DTM photos show a lot of lines belayed to the bulwark pin rails; fewer lines leading to the foremast fife rail. So I will try to do my best and find a logical place for every line of running rigging when the time comes. To make things even more difficult, this ship was originally rigged with wire standing rigging, and chains for a lot of the sheet and halyard pendants. All that was removed for the magnetic expeditions to reduce the magnetic constants of the ship. The crew even cobbled together some additional foremast back stays because the channels weren't positioned properly for rope stays. Terry

Actually, I think you were correct in the first place. Halyards lift spars and sails, while sheets are attached to the sails and booms to control the angle of the sails. I haven't rigged a ship model since I was a teenager when I built Revell's USF Constitution back in the 1960s. And I was briefly certified to sail boats loaned out by the Navy Rec Facilities over 30 years ago. And submarines don't have running or standing rigging! I have forgotten more sailing terminology than I remember these days. I've been so involved over the past six or seven years trying to simply sort out the structure of the Galilee that I haven't been too concerned about the ship's rig.. Terry