Kenchington

Even if a spherical ball could leave the muzzle at supersonic speed (very improbable with black powder as propellant), it would very quickly decelerate. The aerodynamics of a sphere are poor indeed! Trevor

Without daring to comment on the potential for "near miss" injuries, I'll suggest that, in naval combat, it was the "splinters" (which could be multiple feet in length) sent flying by the impact of roundshot on the ship's structure that did most of the damage to human bodies. Trevor

They certainly look like very similar schooners, if not identical, while Steers' designs (with narrow bow and wide quarters) were a new departure at the time, unlikely to be encountered anywhere but New York. But now we have two versions of the Buttersworth painting, one with a possible signal flag at the fore (blue cross on white) and the other either a plain blue (which the pilot seems to carry too) or maybe a US Navy jack, with stars on the blue. And one last point: The claim that the painting shows Stag Hound with "partially furled sails" is a bit misleading. She has her skys'l yards set down, her t'gan'sl's and royals furled, along with her main course and her cro'jick too But the sense of action and movement (enough that I can almost hear the canvas thundering, just from looking at the image!) comes from her upper topsails being clewed down and her outer jib hauled down likewise -- presumably to slow the ship enough to take the pilot aboard. Those sails are not about to be furled, but will soon be set again, to power her final approach to (I think) Sandy Hook. They are remarkable paintings. Trevor

That's great, @ClipperFan! What's the chance that the painting shows her arrival at New York after her record-breaking maiden voyage that, if I'm reading your material right, was also a circumnavigation (Boston, round the Horn to 'Frisco, across the Pacific to China, then home across the Indian Ocean and westward round the Cape)? That would be something that the captain and owners would want to commemorate. If so, the painting would date from 1851 and pilot schooner No.5 would be Mary Taylor -- George Steers' precursor to his design of the yacht America and launched in 1848, hence a schooner famous in her own right and adding to the prestige of the event. I have only entered New York from seaward once and it was a long time ago (1977, after crossing from Southampton on QEII -- Not as extravagant as it sounds: Cunard had student-standby rates in those days). I do remember the fog clearing to give a view of Verrazano Narrows bridge, then Manhattan, but I don't recall anything of our landfall, so I can't say whether the headland in the image is plausible for somewhere along Long Island. Just possibly Montauk Point? Trevor

Not the Norwegian ensign (closer to the Finnish one, but that dates from after independence from Russia). Anyway, courtesy ensigns should go at the starboard fore crosstrees, not the fore truck. I suspect a signal flag. Blue cross on white is the modern International Code flag for "X", though that does not have the swallowtail shown in the painting. Besides, the various codes in use in the 1850s differed from the one familiar today. From the presence of a pilot schooner under the ship's bow, I'll take a guess that the flag signalled arrival in some way. Could be alerting the customs and quarantine officials (equivalent to the modern "Q"), a call for a pilot (modern "G") or a request for a tug (modern "Z"), any or all of which would mean the end of a voyage. (Perhaps a record-breaking one, which would justify the arrival being immortalized in oils?) Perhaps someone can recognize the headland in the background and so identify the port that the clipper has reached. I thought that the symbol on the pilot's mainsail might tell us something but, once magnified, that is just a "5". Trevor

Sure is! I got by without turning to Superglue but it needs a lot of care, first to only use the minimum required pressure and then to have the force bear on the stem or transom, not on the unsupported plank. I didn't do a build log for my dory but, looking back at the photos I took, I did the garboards with the kind of rachet clamp that allows you to only squeeze as tight as you choose. Later planks that couldn't be grippe that way got rubber bands, with a clamp to the baseboard to control both tension and the angle of the force applied. For me, and probably most others, the dory build is a lesson in creative clamping! Trevor

Welcome aboard! I'm only two steps ahead of you but enjoying the journey. Trevor

Bending the pram's planks shouldn't be difficult. Lay one in a baking pan (borrowed from the kitchen). Put a bit of weight on top to hold it down, when it tries to float. (Coffee mug works well for that.) Boil some water in a kettle (kitchen, again). Pour boiling water into pan. Wait a few minutes. (Set the cook's kitchen timer to ensure the wait isn't shortened.) Lift out the plank, blot it dry with paper towel, then bend it into place with fingers, clothes-pegs and large paperclips. Leave to dry, overnight if necessary. Yes, thin pieces of basswood do need delicate handling, but that's something that those of us with big hands and more muscle than finesse have to learn! Trevor

I suspect psychology or perhaps I should say the thought patterns of shipwrights, prolonged by tradition and conservatism. Back in the 15th and 16th Centuries, there were wales for strength and planking between to keep the water out -- though both planking and wales contributed to both functions. By the end of the 18th Century, rational analysis was impinging on the thinking of practical shipwrights, as a development of the more-general European Enlightenment. A band of heavy planks, rather than very thick wales with thinner planking around them, had probably always been more efficient but it took until nearly 1800 for that to be accepted by shipwrights. Then those who paid for ships to be built needed time for the new appearance to become fashionable, with prestige warships tending to hark back to older forms, as military services so often do. Trevor

I used to think that I understood pre-modern ship-design methods. And now you show me how wrong I was! Time to go back to the elementary class and start over. Trevor

Definitely Chesapeake, portrayed as she followed Shannon into Halifax with a White Ensign over Old Glory at her mizzen peak. That should sell well in Canada too 😎 Trevor

A question for those with a facility for languages: Google translates Wildmanden as "The Wild Man", which seems a curious name for a representative of established, centralized Royal power. Does Wildmanden carry some particular meaning in a Danish naval context? Or is this something like English "Savage", derived from French Sauvage (meaning "wild" and used of the native peoples encountered by expanding European empires) but having a range of meanings including ones akin to "violent" or "fierce" -- which would be good names for a warship? Trevor

Today, I decided to skip forward a bit and prepare the sloop's deck. Plank decks leak. There's really no way around that. Back when yachts were made of real wood, not popped out of moulds, amateur sailors didn't much like drips of water on their bunks and often covered their decks in canvas. I never got to do that job and I don't recall the details. I think waterproof canvas was stretched over the deck and bedded down into a mastic of some kind. Certainly, the canvas was then painted -- painted in whatever colour the owner wished. Thus, anyone building a Muscongus Bay boat to yacht standards can paint their model's deck any which way they choose. I will give the cuddy coachroof that treatment but I doubt that a working boat's deck would have been done like that. Maybe I am wrong but I doubt that the painted canvas would stand up to the wear and tear of commercial fishing. And, once water got under it, there would be potential for serious, hidden rot. So I am going for bare wood or, more exactly, the look of scrubbed white pine that clipper captains achieved by having their crews holystone the decks. The kit's deck, however, is composed of two sheets of basswood (meeting down the centreline) and, if simply given a clear finish, would look like marine ply (though, in contrast to the cockpit floorboards, at least the visible grain would run fore-and-aft). So I'm trying for a "planked" look by scribing the "joints" between planks and blackening them with a soft pencil -- definitely a job to be done while the deck pieces are flat, not after they are on the model. But that choice, naturally, raises the question of how wide the planks should be and how they should lie. I photocopied the sheet of basswood containing the two deck pieces and played around with a pencil for a while. Howard Chapelle did not record the details of the deck of his centreboard sloop but he did give essential information on later Friendships. Importantly, their decks had narrow planks only two inches wide. I did not welcome the thought of trying to joggle many narrow planks into margin planks that followed the continuous curve of the sloop's rail. So, I have divided the deck into four zones: From the cockpit to the cuddy bulkhead, I have scribed simple, straight, 2-inch planks, aside from at the centreline, where I went for 4-inch each side, to accommodate the centreboard control-rod's slot. That's 30 planks in all. From cockpit to transom, I have imagined 24 tapered planks, 2-inch at the cockpit and 1-inch at the transom. Outboard of cockpit coaming and cuddy, I went for a single strake of very wide margin plank, made up of three (relatively straight) planks on each side. However, I'm not very happy with that and I think I will scribe an extra seam, making it two strakes per side. (Maybe I will paint the outer one.) But that had better wait until I pop the pieces out of the sheet and have the edge of the cut-out as a guide for the scriber. Rather than have a few short planks forward of the cuddy, I have gone for one near-triangular piece on each side of the centreline. With an unstayed mast (as Chapelle described the centreboard sloops), beefy mast partners would be needed, so I think I can justify the simplification. The net result, so far, looks like: It's not as neat a job as I could wish but, I hope, will give the right general impression. I'll just have wait and see how it looks once all is done, with the surface sanded and finished! Trevor

Steps 1 to 6 completed: All bulkheads, transom and cockpit floorboards fastened to central spine I did take a photo to prove it but my computer won't admit that that image is on my phone and I'm not about to take another. The bulkheads all went on with little trouble and some with no problems at all, just a lot of careful checking for squareness, along with judicious use of Lego blocks. The only real difficulty was squaring up #9, which goes right by the break in the spine. (And I won't try fixing that break until I have finished the fiddly work in the cockpit.) The floorboards would have been easy if not for having to make a cut-out to fit around the pump. By sheer luck, that only involved one of the scribed "boards", though I initially cut two and had to make a repair. The one cut had to be much longer than I wanted before I could work the boards in around the bulkheads. Still, I'm sure all will look OK when everything is finished (with a jib sheet loose on the boards in that area and distracting the eye from the hole, quite likely). Next up is cockpit seats and trim, then attach the part abaft the rudder stock -- and then the great adventure of adding the deck! Trevor

Thank you for that, JC! Nice to see that practical experience supports my deduction. (Though the fate of the 1970s reproductions isn't exactly encouraging.) I'm not surprised that Chapelle put the pump further aft in his Friendship. With more drag to the keel and lines more suited to sail (and less those of a rowing boat), the Friendship has the deepest point in her bilges nearer to the sternpost than the centreboard boats did. The best place for the pump is not literally the deepest point in the hull but the deepest that gives enough width between keelson and outer planking to fit the bottom end of the pump into. Also, for a simple elm-tree pump, the lower end has to be almost vertically under the upper, while the upper has to be where a man can work it, without it being in the way when doing things other than pumping. I'm not pretending that my version is historically accurate, just one plausible solution to a definite need for some kind if bilge-pump arrangement. Trevor