Kenchington

For the heavy hemp cable of a naval brig of 1806, some form of anchor clinch would be used. I've seen various alternatives illustrated but you could use the one you show. I think that is the one that Steele illustrated (though I haven't checked). What you are calling an "anchor bend", I know as a "fishermen's bend" -- a more-secure alternative to a round-turn-and-two-half-hitches. That's great for fastening a light hawser to an anchor ring (and is widely used in modern small craft) but not much of an option with a warship's cable. Trevor

I have the 1999 Dover facsimile edition and that text in the last full paragraph on a page headed "67" then "Anchors etc." Trevor

You may finish with the most authentic model of a hemp anchor cable ever! One final thought before I bow out and leave you to it: Lever wrote about contemporary (to him) seamanship for aspiring would-be sea officers. I think we can trust him to have known what he was writing about and to have attempted to communicate it accurately, though his presentation falls short of expectations for modern technical manuals. Ashley was writing about knots, as an enthusiast and for other enthusiasts of arcane ropework. Where he stepped away from the details of twisted cordage and described the practices of former times, I think we should be a bit cautious in accepting what he set down at face value. His claim that his #3351, the form of worming that he terms "keckling", was used at the anchor ring and the hawse strikes me as unlikely. At the anchor ring and along as much of the cable as might drag on the seabed, as Lever hinted, seems altogether more probable. Nautical terminology has not been as stable and standardized as we might wish, while the meanings of words in New England (e.g. Ashley) and (Old) England (e.g. Lever) could differ. So I'll not say that Ashley was wrong to call his #3351 "keckling" but neither would I be too sure that it was what Lever meant when he used the same term. As to later authors: John Harland's and Jean Boudriot's books are superb -- something I would not say of the output of many of their (and our) contemporaries. However, they necessarily drew on much the same original material that we now have access to. While I deeply respect their competence at interpreting that evidence, and must not be ignored, we should still make our own examination of the contemporary sources, where possible. Trevor

Served in way of the hawse holes, to prevent local wear there. In deep-sea ships, anchoring rarely and then in varied water depths, the service would be applied where and when required, then stripped off. By Lever's account, coasting vessels had three pre-set lengths of cable to veer, with a permanent service at each length. (Not that they couldn't apply a temporary one when some other length of cable was essential.) I think (though his words are open to interpretation) what he meant of the length of cable nearest the anchor was wormed (all the way to the first service in coasters, with the worming projecting to take the wear on the seabed), with keckling over that, "rounding" on top and "plait" on top again -- warships only having the first four fathoms from the anchor covered in rounding and plait, with those and the next three covered with keckling. Ashley illustrates three forms of "keckling". His #3605 is a type of ringbolt hitching and his #3117 is similar but used to hold two ropes together, while his #3351 is worming much as we are discussing, with a single length of 3-inch rope in one of the contlines of the cable "to protect it at the anchor ring and at the hawse pipe". Quite what Lever meant by the term is beyond me, unless he intended something like serving but applied with hitches, like Ashley's #3117 and #3605, hence less likely to fall away when one turn around the cable gets worn through. Maybe it was easier to apply tightly, with the hitches, when the cable was too big and awkward for a serving mallet to be used. (That's just my speculation.) Ashley has "rounding" as his #3350 : a "service of old rope" formerly used on cables at the hawse hole. "Plait" presumably meant some sort of sennit or turkshead. At first, I thought Lever meant lengths of sennit wrapped around the cable but I rather suspect that the plait was worked directly on the cable, forming a tight, tubular net over the whole mass of chafing gear. It all amounted to far more untidy complexity than I have ever seen in a model. And far more work for the crew. But if we'd ever hung onto an anchor, with the seas breaking on a lee shore close under the stern, while fretting over what might be happening to the cable where it was being dragged across a rocky bottom, maybe we would not mind the extra labour! Trevor

Y.T. proved the point while I was typing!

Good question! Treenails were/are sometimes but not always the same wood type as the pieces being fastened. However, their heads show the end grain and hence contrast with the material around, so they don't exactly disappear. Run your hands over a treenail-fastened hull and, unless there is a thick coat of paint, you'll have no trouble at all seeing them. But take a look at photos of the decks of museum ships and you will often have to peer closely to see any fastenings at all. They don't form a noticeable aspect of the overall impression. (Granted, many surviving ships have deck planking bolted to steel, with wooden plugs over the bolt heads, but the end effect isn't so different from a treenail.) That's just an effect of a more-distant viewpoint. At typical model scales, it would likely be more realistic to display smooth planking, without visible fastenings. But all ship models are stylized and if someone likes a visible treenail pattern, that's just a personal preference. Trevor

Very wise of you! I was working more from logic and the purpose of worming the cable -- which is no substitute for contemporary evidence. However, a search of my shelves led to one entry in Darcy Lever's "Sheet Anchor" (p. 67 and referring initially to practices in coasting vessels, which needed to anchor frequently, of course): "The working Cable has always the Services kept on, of which there are three, viz. the short or windward Service at about forty-five Fathoms [...] From the anchor to the short Service, the Cable is wormed with twice-laid Stuff, sufficiently large to project above it, which is a great Preservative against its being damaged by foul Ground. It is then keckled, and rounded with Plait. [...] Men of War and East Indiamen have about seven Fathoms of Keckling, four of Rounding, and four of Plait." I haven't checked secondary sources, though I expect Boudriot, Lavery and others have given their interpretations of warship practices. Trevor

Might want to go a bit larger than that image shows. The idea when worming shrouds (before parcelling and serving) was to get a smoother surface, so a ruler placed along the wormed rope ought to touch both the worming and the strands. Worming a cable was a bit different. I think the idea was that the worming should take the abrasion on the seabed, leaving the cable itself less damaged. If so, that imaginary ruler should touch the worming but not the hawser-laid parts that make up the cable-lay. Then again, the length of cable nearest the anchor could have extra chaffing gear applied (though that is rarely, if ever, shown in models). The image does give a lovely example of the way the anchor ring was prepared! Trevor

But only a little

"LOA" should mean the overall length of the hull, so excluding all spars. Unfortunately, the term gets misused (perhaps most often by the museum-ship community) as what has alternately come to be called the "sparred length", hence including the bowsprit (and jibboom, if one is carried -- which is not the case with Bluenose) plus the overhang beyond the stern of any boom (main boom for Bluenose, mizzen boom for a three-master, spanker boom for a square-rigger). I don't think there is any way to be sure which meaning someone else intended without knowing the actual length of the hull of the vessel concerned. For Bluenose LOA, properly so called, was (and for Bluenose II is) 143 ft. Bowsprit and overhang of main boom would be additional to that. Trevor

Six months gone since I last made any progress on my pram. Like others, I have been caught up in a whole mess of tasks (some rewarding, others less so) that have drawn me away from ship models -- from model building, though they have not stopped me being an annoying know-it-all on MSW! Back in April, I had come to accept the forward rake of my pram's mast and finally stuck when my attempts to produce the sort of tiller that I think the boat deserves proved more demanding than I had expected. However, staring at the model all through the summer, I decided that the rake had to be adjusted and that that would be an easier route back to re-starting work on the pram. So ... I still think it is best to get both shrouds the same length, hence the mast upright when seen from ahead or astern, then worry over tension in the rigging while finalizing the forestay. But it is clear that the rake has to be set approximately before starting on the shrouds. So I began by unhooking the existing forestay and rigged a length of thread in its place, adjusting that until I got the rake I wanted: Next, I cut away one shroud where it passed around its hook, at the chainplate in the rail. I cut away the "serving" (which I had faked with a length of Westcountry whipping) and "spliced" on a length of thread by gluing it to the cut end of the shroud with CA. Passed the thread through the eye in the hook, pulled until the mast was upright (port to starboard) and glued the other end of the thread back to the shroud: (Phone camera decided to focus that one on the mast, not the nearer shroud, but you can see the repair.) Next up, repeated that with the second shroud -- judging the mast upright by eye, though it proved to be as close as made no difference when I later checked with a small square laid across the rails. I have hidden the mess of glued ("spliced") ends with a lengthened "serving", though that's awaiting a touch of CA before I clip the ends of the serving thread: Again, the focus is off and the "serving" is lumpy where it passes over cut ends. Still, I now have the mast in a far preferable position: Still have to "serve" the port shroud, then make a similar adjustment to the length of the forestay. The mainsheet and the rope sheet horse will need adjustment ti suit the lower position of the boom end, but that shouldn't pose problems. Then it will be back to making an acceptable tiller, followed by onward progress to model completion! Trevor

It will be primarily an issue of placing the centre of effort of the rig in relation to the centre of lateral resistance of the hull. Neither can be exactly determined from the paper plans and both move as the wind changes and/or the hull heels, so some "tuning" (mostly a matter of adjusting the rake of the mast) will be needed. You can start by finding the geometric centre of the (lateral) plane of the underwater body. Then sketch in possible sail shapes (by length of boom and gaff, height of the hounds, number of headsails etc.), find the geometric centre of each sail then that of their combination. Then adjust until the centre of the sailplane lies roughly over the centre of lateral resistance. I hope that's some help but it's about as far as I am competent to advise. You will need to know more, so look for textbooks on yacht design. Trevor

Nice outcome from a small-scale, inadequate kit. Well done! Trevor

Hi @Redondo113. Welcome to Model Ship World! I rather doubt that any definite answers to your questions exist. Even the boats of major warships, of the era that concerns you, are poorly documented. The boats of small merchantmen may be almost unknown -- unless you are willing to undertake a study of contemporary imagery for yourself. However, I will try a first stab at answers to your questions: A 48ft sloop would not carry either a longboat or a barge -- not as I understand those terms anyway. My best guess would be that she only carried one boat, as space would be very limited and there would not be any pressing need for more than one. As to size, I would guess "big enough but no bigger than necessary". Big enough would mean sufficient to carry two men at the oars and maybe a third steering, while operating in harbours where the sloop might anchor (including operating in a chop when the wind breezed up). I would doubt a need for anything more. Based on the capabilities of the lapstrake dinghies of my childhood, I'd guess that a 10ft boat would be too small, 12ft about right and 15ft unnecessarily large. Beam would be about 6 or maybe 7 feet, dictated by the geometry of the oars more than capacity or seaworthiness. On deck, on the centreline, abaft the mast. That might be on top of a deck cargo, on chocks spanning the main hatch or however else the boat could be fitted in. I'd not be surprised if the boat was inverted for an ocean crossing. That's not impossible for a sloop of the era you are interested in but I think (not certain) that the notion of a yawlboat carried under stern davits was more a post-1800 development. And a final thought: When I first learnt to sail, inflatable dinghies were coming in but most yachts still had lapstrake tenders. In that context, the advice in one of my textbooks was something to the effect of: "It is worth any sacrifice to carry your dinghy on board". That advice notwithstanding, most people towed theirs astern while sailing along the coast, with the unsurprising result that boats were not infrequently lost. I suspect that much the same was true of similarly-sized sailing vessels two centuries earlier. So I'll guess that your sloop towed her boat until it was time to set out for an ocean voyage (down to the Caribbean, as much as across to Europe). Then, the final preparation before setting sail and weighing anchor would be to get the boat aboard and lashed down -- the last step because, once the boat was aboard, there was no chance for anyone to go ashore for any last-minute chores. Hope this helps, Trevor

I'd not be so worried over water pooling above the wale when at sea and close hauled. That would be salt water (which discourages rot) and soon washed off by more salt water. The problem would be rainwater when at anchor or moored, with the hull (almost) perfectly upright for long periods. Chamfering was a better solution to that than the textbook one of shaping the upper and lower exposed (outside the planking) surfaces of the wales so that they were horizontal, though it necessarily removed more of the wood from the (expensive) "thick stuff" that was there for its strength -- the removal negating part of the purpose of the wale. Looking at the development of ships through the 18th Century, I see a slowly growing understanding of things we take for granted today, like cause-and-effect relationships. The savants in London and Paris had begun the move away from the Age of Faith into The Enlightenment long before but that fundamental shift in human thought seems to have only slowly percolated through to more practical men -- even master shipwrights in royal dockyards, let alone village carpenters and the like. So I am not surprised that prominent, squared-off wales were still being used until after 1800 but were replaced with chamfered ones later, then with broad bands of thicker planking that had no visible, external steps. Trevor