trippwj

Feels a bit like a chicken and egg discussion. Is the drawing a representation of a ship that was built, or is the ship built based on the drawing. I am still not convinced that the drawings in Witsen's book demonstrate that ships were built based on design drawings. They could be a graphical representation of the tools used to build a ship, providing insight in how that results in a shape. Is a couple of frame drawings proof that the ship was built in accordance with a design? Where do we have examples of drawings based on a contract, which presumably was the starting point of ordering a ship? Have these all been lost?
 
I am not saying that your point of view is wrong. It just seems strange to demonstrate a point of view, largely by undermining the credibility of someone else's point of view.
 
 
 
 

Ok folks, this is now up to Volume 50.
 
That's some heavy work. Go grab yourself an article and have something to read with that beer tonight! 
 
https://thenrgstore.org/collections/articles
 
 

A sales pitch:  I continue to be astonished by the number of questions posed on MSW that can be answered by referring to past issues of the Journal.  Members who joined recently may not realize that back in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s  were loaded with real ground breaking research not included in today’s issues.  With the NRG’s online index these should be the “first stop” for ship model research.
 
Roger

Jules: this is all very interesting, and to some, controversial. Have you submitted this thesis for publication in either the Netherlands or the U.K?

I recently went to a local book sale and picked up these 10 books for 2 dollars each. Just to add to my collection, admiral approved of course.

Hi Jules, 
 
Thank you for continuing your lesson on Dutch shipbuilding techniques, it is very much appreciated! Also, while I can't really add anything on the subject as all period sources are written in Dutch, and even 17th century one, which I can't read,  just a few thoughts on the general topic of "building without plans". I have seen various kinds of professionals at work, from carpenters to blacksmiths, to furniture restorers, scissormakers or jewellers. I believe any good blacksmith with good experience on it would do a horseshoe without any plan, based on his own experience. Also it takes only one master plus an apprentice to do it, so virtually everything comes of a single mind. It may also be true for cartwheel makers, who generally speaking work in a team, or even the makers of the carts themselves, when all the details are traditional and known to all workers in the shop.
 
This may also be true even for small traditional boats. I lived part of my life in a city by the Black Sea shore here in Romania, which also used to have a small fleet of fishermen boats. I never saw one of these fishermen boats being actually built, only repaired (this is sadly a dying art) yet it is obvious they only follow a known pattern. Even more, some time  ago while being in a small city in neigbouring Bulgaria I saw the structure of a traditional boat half finished and thrown away to rot in a backyard. It was absolutely the same "blueprint" so to say, despite the fact that it was some hundred kilometers south and in a different country. So these traditional makers are completely able to do a traditional thing in their own way without any plan, following only a standard procedure. The old people a talked with, which did still remember the old days when you could visit a boat shop and order a traditional boat told me the first question a boat builder would pose to the customer would have been "how many (frames) the boat you want to be?"- this is just another way to say the length of the boat, considering the distance between frames is already known and "traditional". Now, the problem is in a boat shop would probably work up to four to five people, all led by the master boat builder, which would take them a reasonable amount of time in building one boat - several weeks for instance.
 
But this would have been not possible for larger ships, which would need much bigger teams to build them, not only because a small number of people would take a completely unrealistic time horizon to do all the tasks, but also because bigger ships would need bigger pieces of wood which are simply not possible to move and to put in the right place just by a handful of people. So, when a master builder has to lead a bigger team, he can divide the tasks and give pieces of the ship to different builders, which may then be brought together. But to make sure the pieces fit, they have to be DESIGNED in some way, otherwise they would NOT fit. This is where design becomes compulsory. You can make a perfect horseshoe with no plan, if you have already done five to ten horseshoes a day for several years. It may also be true for traditional boats or cartwheels.
 
But all blacksmiths I have seen make a small plan, even if it's only scribbled in chalk on their table, if they want to make something different, which they have not done before. This is also true for jewellers, which usually do a small sketch just for themselves before starting to cut gold or silver. This also applies for our modeller fellows which would do a careful planning, which would often include a small sketch, before starting to cut an expensive piece of exotic wood. So making a plan is a natural thing - it comes probably of our way of thinking. Also, if a plan may not be necessary when working alone, it becomes crucial if you have to work in a team with someone else. Otherwise, how could a team member understand the piece you need? 
 
So I come here to some conclusions:
 
Firstly, doing a plan is a natural way of our brain to imagine something new. This plan doesn't necessarily need to be done with a pencil on a piece of paper. It can be done in various ways. Remember that paper was not always as available as it is today, nor were pencils, quills, ink, rulers, compasses and various other drafting tools. It may have been that shipbuilders traditionally used wax tablets for their draft, or a flat piece of plank on which you do your lines in chalk or a piece of coal. Moreover, having a plan done on paper or even in parchment would NOT help too much if brought on the shipyard, which is usually outside in the rain and aside some water.  You can imagine how difficult would be to deploy a big sheet of paper if it rains or the wind is blowing. So if the shipwright had a plan, he would jealously keep it to himself safely home and refer to it when he will need it. I don't believe there may have been a guild's rule to destroy the design after the ship was made. Yet, I believe the were rules which said the plans were private property of the shipwright and he would keep to himself.
 
It is not different today with architects, which have to provide copies of their plans to their customers for the building permit to be issued and then for the house to be built But the originals of these plans are private property of the architect and there may be a legal bound that both the customer and the architect will not give the plans to any third party. 
 
So I believe each shipwright may have had an archive (of sorts) regarding his builds, which would jealously keep to himself as it encompassed his tricks of the trade. It doesn't have to be a large archive with carefully drawn plans of ships, it may have been just a stack of leaflets with calculations regarding the ship's dimensions. 
 
Secondly, it has been said that the shipwright was able to do the shape of the hull just by pinching the floor boards and then do some tricks with the leeboard and such. Yes, it may have been like that for the first build, but then if the ship shape went right, why wouldn't the shipwright note just for himself the shape of each frame, to easier reproduce a successful design? Moreover, how would a shipwright ensure the ship he is doing would be symmetrical on both sides, except if he has a way to "measure" the shape and replicate on the other side?    
 
Thirdly, how would you convey your design to another member of the team if you can't draft it in some way, to tell the EXACT shape of the wooden member you need for your build?
 
So these are just some things to ponder while claiming "shipbuilders did their tricks without any plans". Also, the plan doesn't necessarily have to be done in paper.
 
It has been also claimed that Greek temples from the classic period were built without plans, because, obviously, no plan of this survived. Yet lately in an unfinished Greek temple, a scribbling have been found on a marble wall, which proved to be exactly the plan of the said temple. After the temple would have been finished, the wall would have been polished flat and the scribbling erased, but since it was left unfinished, the "plan" survived!
 
 

The Nautical Research Guild is proud to offer this reprinting of Steel’s Tables – Compiled and arranged by Yuri Miroshnikov for Model Ship World and the Nautical Research Guild.
 
This is a great version of Steel’s Tables neatly and clearly arranged to be very useful in the shop.  This downloadable version can be printed out page by page so you can print out the pages you need for your current project. 
 
Want larger pages to tape to the wall by your work area?  Download to a flash drive and take it to a print shop and have the needed pages printed out in any size you want.
This book is provided as a PDF download.  Go to the NRG web store to obtain your copy.   https://thenrgstore.org/collections/books-and-practicums
 
NRG members - don't forget to take your member discount!

I don't know if you guys are aware that there is a free and very simple focus stacking program online.   Focus stacking online - free online focus stacking software   Only two steps required.
 

Nikon’s Focus Shift Shooting (with mirrorless electronic shutters) and LightRoom /Photoshop functions have improved and are now quicker and easier to do since this thread started. Still a bit of work to get a single image, but short of complex lab equipment it’s the best way to get that one image. That one being one, I can’t image taking the time to create a gallery of them.

And with that, google sees a small spike of "doddle definition" searches from the USA
 
dod·dle noun informal•British noun: doddle a very easy task. "this printer is a doddle to set up and use"    

Focus stacking is a doddle.......if you use Photoshop!

I have some questions/thoughts, Jules.
 
1) Given all the wars that went through Europe over the centuries, is likely that many (most?) records were destroyed?
 
2_ Guilds in many ways were secret societies so if build plans were made, would be realistic to think they were destroyed when the ship was launched?  I do believe that much knowledge in the past was word of mouth and not recorded in an archival form.
 
I'm just curious....  thanks for any thoughts.
 
 

Interesting discussion and a lot of good points. For once in this post there aren't a bunch of so called experts trying to out-expert one another but instead shared ideas and perspectives based on experience and background and nature of photographic work.
 
I shoot creatively, nothing like Justin describes is a part of my detailed, and creative or not, technical process in capturing an image. Digital photography eliminates the need for gray and Color X-rite cards (I had both back in the day) unless you're held to the rules Justin must comply with. I shoot only RAW, with that White Balance is what I want it to be to create a pleasing landscape scene (www.glennbarlow.com if your interested) in post processing. I spend as much time in Lightroom and Photoshop as I do taking the image. Of course all the post processing work and camera white balance setting done won't help if you can't technically take a proper image, you have to know how to manage the camera first and the creative composition second. My only point here is photography is a broad ranging field. Landscape isn't portraits, portraits aren't forensic, forensic isn't scientific, even if the same camera and lens (All Nikon for me) is used. I just converted from DSLRs to Mirrorless, Nikon's Z7ii, Sony, and Canon mirrorless are opening new technical and subsequently creative possibilities for photographers. I did it mostly because it reduced the weight of my backpack by 12 pounds including the lenses I carry, but still.  Bottom line, everyone's opinion and perspective of technical and creative photography stems from the perspective of their photographic experience and work purpose and everyone is right.
 
Back to the topic of White Balance; shooting RAW I can change white balance to whatever works for me in post, including that of a 18% gray card should I choose. I can't be random about it when photographing my grandchildren, those images must be technically correct, more of that is done in camera based and driven by the Profoto B10 flash I normally use or skin tone if no flash is involved. Even with the sophistication and processing power of today's camera it's worth noting that Auto White Balance (my camera has multiple Auto options) is turning over the color decision over to the camera. Since I shoot in RAW it doesn't matter, I can adjust it in post, however if shooting .jpegs there are less capability to correct it.  Auto can result in different white balance results shooting the same image minutes apart or by moving the camera a few degrees since the processor in the camera is judging different things to determine what it deems to be an optimal white balance. And while you can set your own white balance (e.g. 5500) the Daylight, Flash, and Cloudy settings are also fixed settings that don't allow the camera to decide and generally all you need. I used to leave my camera on Cloudy for landscape work on my old cameras (its warmer) but Auto 1 on my newer Nikons is right more than its wrong, so that's what I use now.
 
One last point, inside fluorescent lighting messes with white balance more than anything nature can do, that's where shooting RAW can really come in handy if you're not subjected to rigorous rules for image capture, or you want to be technically correct to capture a creative image of your model.
 
Last, last point. Color is color, it's what our eyes and brain interpret it to be. Arguing over who's method for achieving the best color is like arguing over who has the best looking grandchild, what's the point. Clearly mine are. (again Justin's record rules notwithstanding).

I used to do forensic photography back in the days of film.  Correct color balance was vital and you didn't dial it into the camera.  We used filters to correct for the lighting and it was tricky.  I used to start every roll of film with a shot of an 18% gray card with color chips (of a known value) and the lab used the settings they got when printing the gray card/color chips (standard tools of the trade) to print the rest of the prints so they all matched.  It was so critical that I used only Canon lenses - no Vivitars or other brands - and the guys who shot with Nikons only used Nikon lenses - no other brands.  Just like light meters are hardly used today ask anybody today about a color meter and they will look at you like you are from Mars.
 
Setting a white balance today is a walk in the park in comparison.
 
When digital first appeared on the scene there were all sorts of articles in the pro publications about how the images could be manipulated and the courts would never allow digital to be used in court.  They were wrong, but when the first digital images were finally allowed it was a real challenge to provide everything they might require the photographer to provide to make them certain the image(s) were accurate.  It got to the point where I was happy to get out of the business because of the hassle.  I had to give up a very lucrative business I did on my days off from the FD when I got promoted and put on a 40 hour M-F work week.  It came at the right time for me (getting the gold Chief's badges and pay raise mostly made up for the loss from the business) because it was getting to be a grind. 

Hi Jules,
 
very interesting stuff to read. Thank you for taking the time to write and post.
 
what I was wondering: those drawings did not make it into the archived building contracts (as far as I am told bybothers, never checked myself). Where in the proces between ‘ordering a ship’ and ‘launch’ did they play a role. Was it in the translation of design into a specified contract, or in the proces of building a ship from the measures as stated in the contract? 
 
Jan

There are models, yes.  I do not believe that I said that models could not be built. 
But like every kit of a ship with a famous name and no complete plans from its time ,  that the result actually matches the original is wishful thinking at best.
In the circumstance it is honest to make the label reflect the fact that it is one man's guess and thus a decorator model and not an actual historical representation.
"The ship name if model makers name had built it."
He made those two  models - and as excellent as they may be - he essentially gave them any old name from an historical perspective.

Jules,
 
I am coming at this from a particular bias as far as my attachment of relative values.
That is POF model building.  The English plans are often detailed enough for me to develop frame timber patterns with almost no traditional lofting (i.e.  using XZ and YZ points to get the XY data that I need.)
 
The Dutch plans would essentially be following the directions for a design that are in Deane's Doctrine.   That is a lot of hands on lofting and the result is a best guess because of the number of choices that need to be made along the way.  One minor advantage with the Dutch hull is that there seems to be s long section on either side of the deadflat that are a replication - sort of barge-like.  The English started a slope change almost immediately on either side. 
Because Deane used arcs - a compass - something that I have taken as the core of whole moulding - there is a sameness with any design that follows the method. 
You are describing something similar. 
What Deane did using 5 data points per WL and a flexible batten on paper,  the Dutch appeared to do in the yard using the actual planking. 
 
I think that the Dutch used too much "you just gotta know" in their decisions for me to even think about building a hull using what data that they have left us.
I do concede that my long ago ambition to build Deane's Royal Charles 1672 - the one that came after the one that the Dutch stole - would be a fantasy rather than what the ship actually looked like.  There are no plans, jut the data that Deane started with. 
 

... those found so far. The condition of some of these ships is just amazing.
 
 
 

Best quote of the day!!

I hope you do not mind a disagreement on this as I think  it is good to have a discussion like this. 😁.  I have no idea what you mean by "normal" ship model drawings.  Many of us use contemporary drawings, contracts when available and scantlings from the Establishments and elsewhere when appropriate.   There are many small boat drawings showing the thwarts and tholes properly located including several below.   

Cheers
 
Allan

 
 
 

I just popped into the Hanthorn Cannery Museum (Astoria Oregon's other Maritime Museum), and found this title in their gift shop.  The gift shop is unstaffed with an honor system of payment, but for once someone was actually working there that day, so I had to pay actual money for it. The book is extensively illustrated, and not with the usual images one sees of these ships-- Marsh had access to the Oregonian's maritime columnist's personal images from his work during the war years, and the photos are outstanding and reproduced in the highest quality.  Despite the title, the book also covers Victory Ships, Casablanca Class flat-tops, and T-2 Tankers, also built by Kaiser yards in the area; a large section even includes other local companies supporting the effort such as Gunderson (Landing craft, etc.), Albina Engine and Machine Works (PCs, etc.), Commercial Iron Works (outfitting C-2s, etc.), Willamette Iron & Steel Co. (steam locomotives for Russia and misc. maritime work/outfitting), and Astoria Marine Construction Co. (YMSs [minesweepers]).   Hardbound at 256 pages; $50.00USD.      
 
Having just scratch built a variety of ships from this era with Portland connections (C-1, C-2, C-3, T-2, EC-2, VC-2), this book is a delight to have, though I might have to build a YMS and PC now . . .    It may not be the handiest resource for the modeler, but there are gems in the photographs, and the history is rich and compelling-- particularly for any interested in Pacific Northwest Maritime history.
 
Oh. . . the chap actually manning the gift shop that day?  The Author himself.   If you're local, pop by for the chance of a signed copy.

Chariot of Fame was a sister ship to the Star of Empire.  Lot's of description about the Chariot of Fame in Howe, Octavius T. & F. T. Matthews, but no description of the figurehead.  A little bit about some of the features (stanchions, knees, bottom color) in William l. Crothers The American Built Clipper Ship but no good drawings.  David MacGregor doees have a picture of Chariot of Fame and copy of part of the plans for both in his British & American Clippers (pages 122-124).
 
I do not have the book, but a snippet on Google Books of Donald McKay and His Famous Sailing Ships (page 103) states that as a figurehead, the Star of Empire had as a figurehead
 
"...the Goddess of Fame with outspread wings.  A trumpet was raised in the right hand, and her left hand, which was also raised, held a garland.  her girdle was emblazoned with miniatures of our distinguished statesmen.  The figure wasa robed in vestments of white, fringed with gold, its pedestal was ornamented with carved floral work."

That, unfortunately, is not in the narrative! 
 
I did stumble across a painting of the ship which can be viewed at http://blueworldwebmuseum.org/item.php?category=Maritime_Portraits&title=Captain_Oliver_Lane_With_Neptune%27s_Favorite&id=351&catid=76
 
From http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/News/BDA/BDA%281854-06-21%29.html we have the following:
 
Her bow rakes gently as it rises, and it is ornamented with a full female figure, blended with the cutwater, for the ship has neither head nor trail-boards, but is finished like a clipper.
 
 

Carl - I love the challenge of finding stuff!  Helps that I have a lot of good books to refer to...

According to the description in Howe & Matthews, the Santa Claus did, indeed, have the old elf as the figure head.  They also include a couple of pages about Neptune's Favorite, mainly about her various trips.  She seems to have been a fairly fast medium clipper. 
 
Howe, Octavius T. & F. T. Matthews American Clipper Ships 1833-1858 Vol 2.