Kenchington

Lovely! And an inspiration for me: The pram will be my next build.

Looks like the answer is "sometimes". Crothers ("The American-Built Clipper Ship 1850-1856", published 1996, p.484) said: "the belaying points --sometimes as belaying pins, sometimes as cleats-- followed a loosely similar pattern" He meant "similar" among the various ships. Crothers had done a vast amount of research but he was not as careful as he could have been about citing evidence, so I do not know where he got his information about the use of cleats for belaying lines. Also, his use of terminology was a bit off sometimes, which does not inspire confidence in his interpretations of documentary sources. For example, he mentioned what he called "cavils" (my "kevels", which I think is the English spelling, though I ought to check), which he describes as "large, wooden cleats" used for "mooring lines" (when "mooring" involved lying to two anchors, a quite different process from "tying up" alongside!). Functionally, a cavil/kevel does serve as a giant alternative to a horned cleat but it is only a "cleat" in the sense employed by ignorant yachtsmen, who use the term for any belaying point (including cam cleats, clam cleats and any number of later do-dads). American clippers had "cleats", so called, on every yardarm, to stop the rigging sliding inboard along the yard, but those were not horned cleats and they weren't belaying points. So it is easy to get confused and I can't be certain that Crothers wasn't. Still, if you use some cleats for belaying lines on a model clipper, you could cite good authority! Without detracting from that, I'd advise keeping horned cleats for the lighter lines. Ensign halliard, for sure, but not the topsail halliards! It is almost impossible to make a horned cleat without some part of the strain coming into line with the grain, where wood is weak. Belaying pins and cavils/kevels avoid that by employing two or more pieces of wood, with their grain perpendicular. Light lines bearing light loads are OK with wood cleats and they are fine for small boats. The large ropes and heavy strains on a sailing ship demand something tougher -- including the iron cleats on mast bands seen on later ships. And, as you started this thread asking about cleats around the deck, I'd say a definite "no" to any belaying point set at the feet of the crew. Nobody wants to be down on his hands and knees when belaying a line. Nor do you want the coil of surplus line where it would be walked on, kicked around and washed about by seas breaking aboard. Come to that, wet rope is a bad thing to have on deck planks, while water on deck is a worse thing to sit natural-fibre rope in. So a line may be rove through a turning block hooked to an eyebolt in the deck, and hauled from there, but the belaying point will be roughly at waist level for the crew. [Hardly a concern for models but I have known lines faked out on decks. The only ship with deep topsails I have ever sailed aboard, "Rose" (later of "Master & Commander" fame), had such long topsail halliards that they had to be coiled from the free end towards the belaying point, which meant figure-of-eight fakes (that looked like two coils side-by-side) if tangles were to be avoided. Also, the captain of "Stad Amsterdam" liked to have his mainsheet free to run in an emergency. It was faked along the deck, fore-and-aft by the lee bulwark. Got into bit of a mess when she dipped her scuppers under but nothing serious. Would have been impossible in a deep-laden cargo carrier, with her main deck awash much of the time.] Trevor

The Danish and English/Scotish Royals were playing out a friendly rivalry with prestige ships. Kristian IV of Denmark had Tre Kroner built in 1602–04 by (Anglo-Scottish) David Balfour. In 1606, Kristian sailed to London in her, to visit his brother-in-law, James I & VI. The English monarch decided that he wanted one too and had Prince built during 1608-10. Some have said that she was a direct copy of the Danish original, though she proved far less effective -- maybe through being overloaded with too great a weight of guns. Caught up in his war against Sweden, Kristian next went one-better with Stora Sophia, launched in 1627. James had died two years before, leaving the English and Scottish thrones to his son Charles, aged 24. His brother-in-law, Louis XIII of France, was a year younger still. The latter had La Couronne built, very slowly, during 1629–36. Sovereign of the Seas was, in part, a riposte in the on-going ego contest amongst the monarchs. Kristian did not immediately respond to being upstaged by the young kings but Stora Sophia was lost on active service in 1645. Kristian then ordered a replacement – and specifically one designed to surpass his nephew’s Sovereign. She was built in Christiana (now Oslo) under the direction of an English shipwright, James Robbins, who had been recruited by the Danish king in 1641. By the time that she was finished, Kristian had died and was succeeded by Frederick III, who named his new ship after his queen: Sophia Amalia. Above the waterline, she looks to have been a close copy of SotS, aside from stylistic differences in the artwork. However, the Danish ship saw war service in the Baltic, which SotS in her 1638 configuration could never have done. (On her one cruise, that year, she had barely more than 2 feet of freeboard when her lower-deck ports were open -- leaving her very vulnerable to the fate of Vasa!) Thus, the Danish ships seem to have had fuller underwater bodies than their English contemporaries, allowing them to float higher. Perhaps the shipwrights recruited by the Danish kings were men who had escaped the hidebound rules that constrained the Petts through the decades before the Civil Wars. Whether the Danish experience then fed back to the younger Pett and hence to the (successful) design of Speaker seems to be unknown.

Not quite. In running rigging, the static end of a line (to use a non-nautical term but one that perhaps avoids potential for confusion) typically has a hard eye (meaning that there is a metal thimble in the eye) spliced in. That is fastened (by hook, shackle, clevis pin or bolt) to either the thing being pulled (if the pull is direct, as with a buntline for example), to the becket on a block (if the line forms a three-part or more-powerful tackle) or else to an eye bolt -- typically one in the deck but sometimes elsewhere. I'd agree that, at full-size rather than scale, that end of a line is "never" tied to the eyebolt (jury rigging excepted) but it's the tying not the eyebolt that is never done. I'll also agree that the working end of the line is never tied to an eyebolt. But it's never exactly tied to anything. After being rove through a turning block, if necessary to allow a good pull, the working end is belayed to a belaying point -- pin, timber head, horn cleat, kevel or whatever. The important things are that the belaying point should allow for the line to be tightened as it is belayed, while not causing undue wear on the line, and that the belay should hold securely, yet be swiftly freed when needed. The classic figure-of-eight turns around a belaying pin meet those objectives, though they rely on a delicate balance of friction: Too much and the line will get worn, while you won't be able to sweat it up, too little (as with modern Kevlar and similar rope) and the line will slip. Not something we need be concerned about with models but, at full-size, there's a detail that the textbooks rarely bother to mention: Ten men haul on a line until mate or bo's'un calls "Belay!" Then they can rest their weight on the line, holding the tension. But how to transfer the line to its pin, without the line running back through the blocks? Turns out that (with the high friction of hemp or manilla rope), one man's hands can hold the parts of the tackle together firmly enough that they won't run across one another. The next command is something like: "Come up!", which tells the men on the line to take a step forward. If the friction fails and the line slips, they can throw their weight back onto the line. If not, most drop it while the man nearest to the block swiftly belays the line. I wondered about that for years, before seeing it done. Trevor

And by how often the (far more expensive) stay had to be replaced. On my one voyage aboard "Stad Amsterdam", the sailmaker moaned about how fast the (very expensive) bronze hanks wore out. But even frequent replacement of those was a lesser expense than the wear-and-tear of the steel stays that harder hanks would have caused.

You do very well indeed for someone who was not raised on English as their birth tongue! I'm sort of bilingual too but in my case it's Common English and Nautical English. They are more different than American English is from English English, in the received versions of both. Maybe more than South Asian English is from either of the others. One of the oddities of English when dealing with technicalities is that there are fewer terms available than there are things to be named, yet the few terms are not used efficiently, with multiple alternatives being applied to the same thing in different circumstances. (Look at all the kinds of fish called "cod", yet the original Atlantic cod becomes "scrod" in New England, when served on a seafood platter.) That's especially serious in Nautical English, because of the complexities of nautical technology. My favourite is "futtock" and the entirely unrelated "futtock shroud", while a futtock can be almost indistinguishable from a "top timber" or "naval timber" in some hulls. We could add a "bend", as in a shipwright's draught or its realization in timber, versus a "bend" as in a "sheet bend" or "carrick bend". There are endless opportunities for confusion until to are well immersed in the language. As for "hank": Yes, it can mean a rather loose coil of yarn or twine -- as in a coil of the material awaiting use somewhere. (When does a "hank" in that sense become a "skein"? When it is made of wool or other loose fibre, perhaps?) I don't think that the term would be used for such a coil of any cordage large enough to be called "rope". And after rope (a material) has been put to use on shipboard (thereby becoming a "line" -- not to be confused with the hull lines!) and the surplus length of that line coiled down, calling the resulting coil a "hank" would be a very lubberly mistake. Depending on how it is arranged, it would be a "coil" or a "fake" (and not "flake" -- a common misnomer). I wonder whether the early wood-hoop staysail hanks were so named because they were preceded by hanks of yarn, served over, in the manner of selvagee strops? Ain't English queer? Queer enough to drive ESL teachers to distraction! Trevor

Having boldly declared that contemporary paintings exist, I figured I should produce some. No problem if we were talking of a Brixham smack, as they continued under sail into the 1930s. It turns out that paintings of Hewett's "Short Blue" smacks are harder to find. There are some by Edwin Hayes, apparently from late in the 19th Century, such as: That gives a broad range of colour tones to choose among! While I was at it, I came across a fine painting showing a "trunking" operation by the Short Blue fleet and supposedly dating from 1860. The anonymous artist showed the sails as undressed canvas, which would certainly be wrong for 1890 but perhaps was the way in earlier decades. The immediate interest for this thread is that the cutter receiving fish just might be "Ranger" herself:

I don't think you are doing anything wrong. Far from it! I think your rigging looks very fine indeed. But you are right that a lot of half-hitches and overhand knots look too bulky. First off: I'd recommend starting your reading with Ashley's Book of Knots. The first chapter contains more wisdom about traditional cordage than you'll find anywhere else, while the rest of the tome presents (literally) thousands of knots used on shipboard. There are many other works, some more practical, others more historical. But Ashley's will give you the fundamentals to build on. Next: A sailing ship has many, many knots (though pedants like to fuss over when and where a complex twisting of fibres should be called a "knot" and where it should be something else, such as a "bend"). However, full-scale rigging also uses a lot of splices and seizings, which are much neater than a bunch of half-hitches. Neater but very, very challenging at 1:24, let alone smaller scales! For anything from rope represented at 1:10 up to seizing twine used aboard a (full-scale) sailing dinghy, I find that tuck spices can be useful: Pass the full thickness of the free end under a single stand and repeat, instead of opening out the strands and passing them in turn. At 1:24, eyes can be formed by a crude seizing actually formed like a whipping, without the frapping turns of a proper seizing. (It could even be finished to look like a spliced eye with a serving over the splice!) I find it best to use a West Country whipping: Pass very fine thread where you want to seize an end to make an eye, centre the work at the mid-length of the thread, tie half a reef knot around the parts forming the eye and pull tight, then pass the ends of the thread around the other side of the work and tie another half of a reef knot, bring the ends back to the front, tie again ... and keep going until you are satisfied. Finish with a reef knot, dab of white glue, then cut off the ends of the thread. The great thing with the West Country, rather than a common whipping, when working at scale is that the first couple of knots stabilize the work, after which it is a whole lot easier to proceed. Beyond that, I'd say get imaginative. I've just represented the Mathew Walker knots on my dory's stern becket by tucking each strand once as though starting a back splice, then bringing those strands back over the knot so formed, pulling them together and cutting off short. Crude, ugly and bulky – but much nicer than the overhand knots recommended in Model Shipway's instructions, while being far, far easier than an actual Mathew Walker!

Dressed sails could show any of a wide variety of colours, depending on the mixture used to dress them, which varied from place to place -- and depending on how much weather they had seen since last being dressed. However, if you seek historical accuracy, you need to approximate the colour used in the prototype of your model. The Scots went for a very dark shade, so a zulu or fifie should have almost black sails. In southern England, shades much closer to modern "tanbark" Dacron sailcloth were more normal, though I think the Norfolk wherries had near-black and that may have been used in other places besides. I don't know of any colour photos of trawling smacks from before the few survivors were given Dacron outfits (or maybe I should say "Terylene", as they likely all have the ICI version of DuPont's fibre) and my own experience aboard a smack was long after she had been decked out in artificial fibre. However, there are contemporary paintings that you could find with a Google image search, which would give you a fair idea of how the originals looked. I'd certainly not go for Vanguard's wine-like version. That looks way too purple to my eye. Also, while dying the fabric: Flax sailcloth should be almost opaque even before being dressed and certainly after. I doubt that, even in bright sunlight, you'd see the shadow of one sail through the fabric of another, when looking up-sun. I'm not suggesting that a model sail should be made that opaque but don't worry about the dye reducing translucency. The sails should not be translucent! Trevor

I get a weird feeling that I am quietly following in your tracks! I'm still building the fishing gear to fit out my version of the Model Shipways dory, then it will be the pram, followed by the lobster sloop. I've already wondered about the NRG half-hull planking exercise and cast my eye over Vanguard's range of fishing craft. Something about great minds being led up the same path ... As to Ranger: I suspect that the kit is based on the draught that March took off a model loaned him by Robert M. Hewitt. March gives the 1864 construction date but the current Robert Hewett (Robert G.) has a listing of the family's vessels on his website ( https://shortbluefleet.org.uk/vessels-test-page/ ) which shows only the one Ranger: Built at Wivenhoe in 1847 and gone from the fleet sometime after 1863. I have no way to guess which is correct but March was breaking much new ground and a few mistakes along the way would not be surprising. I was in touch with Robert a few years ago and I dare say that he would be willing to explain how he came to the particular details he has listed. March provides one set of spar dimensions and the corresponding sail plan. In his text, however, he wrote of the boom of the summer rig overhanging the taffrail by 14 feet! That would make for a dramatic model, though you would need corresponding dimensions for the gaff and topmast (maybe the bowsprit and topsail yard too). They might exist. The Essex county archives hold some Hewett material, including a notebook of trawl designs from the 1890s, when they were experimenting with new-fangled otter trawling. It's unlikely but not impossible that data on the family's cutters of the mid-19th Century have survived. I'll be looking in from time to time to see your model progress but, next up, will be your pram build log! Trevor

I'll echo Mark's approval of your bringing the Duchess back to life, for those lucky enough to see your restoration. What a remarkable ship she was! The second SCUBA dive I ever made was on her bones, in Starehole Bay, and I went back a few times after. It's hard to admit but that was closer to the date of her loss than from my visit to her until today. How a lifetime can slip away ... Trevor

I tend to agree on the "theoretical value" explanation. I have never heard of ships-of-the-line being rowed and it is hard to see how they could have been, with the decks encumbered by their guns. Conversely, it would not be out of character for an author of a technical treatise to want to fill a table with numbers, even irrelevant numbers. Perhaps there is another explanation, however: Using contemporary British terminology (and Steele was writing of British practices): When a ship was laid up In Ordinary, her guns were returned to the Ordnance Board's gunwharf. I think it was also normal to send them ashore whenever a ship was docked, so that the weight did not strain the hull, and docking was frequent in the era before coppering. I wonder whether the dockyards kept some very long sweeps on hand, to facilitate movement of ships under their care. The sweeps could have been taken out to a ship that had been stripped of her armament (perhaps with her rig stripped to a gantline too), the looms passed in through lower-deck gunports and men set to rowing. That would have given better control, when moving a bare hull to align with the entrance of a drydock, than a collection of boats filling the role later given to harbour tugs. I have never heard mention of such a practice, but the technical details of dockyard work got less attention from contemporary authors than did the operations of ships in commission and hence under the command of gentlemanly officers.

Fascinating! I knew of Steele's work on masting etc. but not his treatment of oars. I wonder whether anyone actually tried moving a First Rate with 52ft sweeps -- and where they might have been stowed when not in use! Trevor

I'm still working on ModelExpo's Lowell dory, so I'm some way from thinking about the Muscongus Bay sloop. However, for what it's worth: My (full-size) boat is not much shorter than a lobster sloop, though a good deal lighter. I have her rigged in clunky 19th-Century style, rather than anything sleek and yacht-like, yet the parrel beads on the jaws of her gunter spar are only about an inch in diameter -- call it 1mm at scale. Go for the smallest you can find or, like the instructions say, go without. Trevor

Thanks Andy! I was aboard Provident again in Portsmouth in 2002, when she looked much as she had when I crossed to Brittany and back with her, in 1976. Still as much yacht as trawling smack, though a lesson in working sail nevertheless, for anyone willing to look beyond the surface. In '02 she had just finished a Tall Ships "race", while I had sailed from Bremerhaven, via Rostock, on Kruzenshtern. So a purely chance meeting. Trevor

Andy, I've only started monitoring MSW in the last few weeks, so just come across your incredible model. Words fail me, so I'll only second all that has been said of your work throughout this log. A lifetime ago, "Provident" was my first love (I was 13 and at sailing school in Salcombe!) and Brixham trawling smacks have never been far from my heart since. They were (and are) very special vessels, so it is great to see some being brought back to life, both full-size and to scale. In a different corner of my labours, I have being working up the global history of trawling – as a vehicle for explaining to the academic world that fisheries are about far more than just fish, rather than a straightforward history. (That's just one of my unfinished book manuscripts, as the people who pay me will keep piling on demands for other research work, knocking back more interesting stuff.) Amongst the rest, I have got a long way towards understanding how and why trawling grew from Brixham, some 250 years ago. If you or the people working on the full-size "Vigilance" want a summary version of the early part of that tale, just let me know. Trevor

You have run up against a pet peeve of mine, Haiko. I can't answer your question but maybe some context will help: Warships built in the 1790s, Constitution as much as any other, were on an evolutionary stream that affected shipwrights' thinking, even though the men of the time were unaware of what had gone before (let alone what was to follow). It is not an easy trend to follow, because marine artists were concerned with what could be seen from outboard, not what seagulls saw while looking down, but there are bits and pieces of evidence. The very few deck plans from the 16th Century (all Iberian, so far as I know) show ships as being open from bow to stern, with beams spanning from side to side but planking only along the outer thirds or (more likely) outer two-fifths. The middle strip had mast partners etc. where needed and was likely covered by gratings most of the time (with tarpaulins over the gratings in wet weather) but nothing permanent. Fast forward to the early precursors of the Navy Board models, dating from the 1650s, and you can see that same notion of an open strip, covered by gratings wherever it was not occupied by mast or capstan partners, with select gratings set aside to provide for hatchways, ladder ways etc. By the 1670s, parts of that central strip were being planked, particularly on the forecastle and quarterdeck. The lower deck of two- and three-decked ships may have remained with nothing more than gratings, as it was protected from the weather. When Sutherland composed the first (almost) clear explanation of English ship structure, soon after 1700, he wrote of "long coaming carlings" running the length of the ship, either side of that open strip. They were heavy timbers, providing important strength in resisting hogging -- much as Marcus has mentioned from Humphrey's words. Yet, in Sutherland's day, the long carlings were also coamings, standing higher than the deck planking on either side, preventing any water on the deck from pouring through the gratings and down into the ship. Raised obstacles running the length of the deck must have been a confounded nuisance, especially when guns needed to be moved about. So, by the later 18th Century, the more detailed plans that were being prepared show the same idea of long, structural elements but ones set down into the deck beams, giving the deck an even upper surface. The space between was still something different from what was on either side. The side portions were planked in oak, with ledges and carlings beneath, to take the wear and tear of the guns. The centre section might have pine planking, though much of it still had hatchways, mast partners etc. That arrangement can still be seen in Victory. As the decades rolled on, shipwrights seem to have finally left the old idea of an open central strip with side decks and, by the mid-19th Century, decks were what we expect them to be today: Continuous areas of weathertight planking, with breaks for hatchways etc. But, when Constitution was built, the notion that the central strip was different was still there. How that concept was realized in the structure of a particular ship needs either evidence for that one vessel or close study of the progress of evolutionary change. Times, places, purposes of the ship in question, individual shipwrights' preferences ... all will have affected what was done at any one point in the steadily changing trends. One final thought though: When building a model, it is usually convenient to plank the deck and then cut the hatchways after. In full-size construction, however, the framework beneath the planking was necessarily constructed first. So the shipwrights knew where the hatchway would be, when they laid the planks around it, even though the coamings might not be added until later. A short run between, say, a main hatchway and the mainmast partners, would be planked as a short run, not matched to the shifted butts of the long lengths of planking to either side. Hope this helps you figure out the answer to your question! Trevor

When I wrote the above note, I had carefully read Captain Collins' details of the gear on a dory prepared for the halibut fishery (meaning a 15ft dory, as represented in the Model Shipways kit). Searching further for missing information, I see that he specified the stern becket of a dory used in saltbanking for cod as made of "3 feet of 2-inch rope". What he termed the "painter" (but which presumably included the loop forming a becket) as made from "5 fathoms of 2-inch manilla rope". I don't doubt that the same applied to the slightly larger halibut dories (though missed out during editing of what seems to have been a time-constrained report). Given the date (published 1887), my expectation was that rope size was specified as circumference (as in the UK still, when given in Imperial units) but 2-inch circumference would mean 16mm diameter. That might be enough for a dory becket if made of Dacron but not in manilla. Thus, Collins must have meant 2-inch diameter (as in the US and Canada today), meaning 2.1mm at 1:24 scale -- which is very close to the size of the line supplied with my dory kit. For anyone interested in following up, I've quoted those dimensions from: G.B.Goode (ed.) "The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States", Section V, Volume 1. The accompanying illustrations were bound as a separate volume. The whole multi-volume work by Goode and his co-authors is still (after 140 years) by far the best, most comprehensive account of any nation's fisheries ever produced -- with details right down to, for example, the number of draft horses kept in Gloucester for hauling boxes of iced halibut to the railroad station! Indeed, that work has very rarely, if ever, been equalled for any single fishery anywhere. It is well worth consulting when modelling a North American fishing boat of the mid- to late-19th Century. And, courtesy of the generosity of the US government, it is available on line for free. Trevor

Thanks! I doubt that I will post a build log. (Better men than I, and at least one lady, have posted already.) But I hope to have something to show in the finished-models section, one day. Meanwhile, you posted above: "The last item to truly finish this kit is the beckets. I tried to install these, but the provided scale rope is just too large for the holes in the transom/sheer plank, and none of the drill bits for my pin vise drill are large enough to properly widen the hole. Maybe I'll try using the smallest bit from my power drill. On the other hand, some of the thread for rigging included with the Norwegian Sailing Pram kit seems like it may be a good size so I'm thinking I may see if there's any leftover after I'm finished with that kit that I could use." I've been looking at the photos that Frederick William Wallace took aboard Nova Scotian schooners in the years before 1914. Some show the beckets quite clearly and they were made of surprisingly thick rope. It's hard to scale off the images but it looks like six lengths laid side by side would be about as wide as the top of the dory's transom -- which is pretty much as thick as the stuff that ModelExpo provided with my kit. (Maybe they do know what they are doing?) So the correct response for an accurate scale model seems to be drilling out the holes, rather than finding thinner cordage. It will look weird and clunky but, if that's how it was done back in the day ... I could only guess at why such heavy stuff was used. Lifting a loaded dory, with the shroud tackles simply hooked to the beckets (no iron thimbles seized in, not even twine serving on the beckets) would have been a brutal way to treat the rope. Maybe men had learnt to compensate by using something thick enough to take the wear and tear. However, if ModelExpo have got the rope thickness right, they are completely wrong on the rigging of the beckets. Every image I can find (Captain Collins' drawings from the 1880s, as well as later photos) shows the stern becket with its knots on the outside of the transom and its loop in the dory (or emerging in the dory, but often tossed casually over the transom, out of the way). That makes sense, as a vertical lift would lead cleanly to the inboard face of the sloping transom, not outboard. I've been trying to discern what knots were used but I can't. My guess is a wall-and-crown on each end of the length of rope. To my shame, I've never managed to tie one of those in full-scale and I'm not going to try in 1:24! At that scale, fudging the end of the rope into a vague blob might give a better appearance than an overhand knot. As for the bow becket: All the illustrations I can find show the loop emerging forward of the boat, with any knots inboard. (The reverse of ModelExpo's instructions.) That becket was not only used for lifting but also had the painter attached. My guess (and the one photo I can find seems consistent, though the detail is hard to discern) is that the becket was a continuous loop, made with a short splice that lay against the inboard face of the stem -- thus effectively transferring towing forces from the painter to the main structure of the dory, not to the planks and thence to the nails holding those to the stem. If you want to include a painter, as well as beckets, some photos suggest an eye splice in one end of it, then the painter tag-hitched to the foremost point on the becket by passing the free end through its eye splice. However, other images suggest more of a gouty mess where the two ropes were joined, so a sheet bend with the short end frayed out and then glued into a lump might look very realistic, while saving a lot of heartache ! Trevor

In the index, true, but if you check the footnote that it references the instruction is really about ensuring, while clearing for action, that hammocks are stowed (so both getting them out of the way and putting them where they serve their protective function) and that they are stowed without every man in the watch below tripping over everyone else as each rushes around with his own gear. What I find most interesting (or maybe most amusing?) is that, as early as 1852, someone who sat at a desk in Washington presumed to tell USN Captains how to organize their ships for combat. Back then, and for a long time after, Captains RN ran their own ships according to their (sometimes bizarre) personal preferences, subject only to loose control by nearby Admirals and looser still by King's Regulations or Admiralty dictat. Apparently, the notion of centralized command was more developed in the USA. Still, I'd not be so sure that USN officers took the "Instructions" terribly seriously. As just one example, nothing in the document anticipated Winslow's ruse of using Kearsarge's anchor chains as impromptu armour when he cornered Alabama off Cherbourg in 1864! Either way, when considering what was actually done aboard Constitution in 1798, I'd not place a set of rules prepared in the 1850s ahead of a Midshipman's contemporary eye-witness account. Trevor

I'm about to start on my own dory and, as a preliminary step, I'm working my way through all the wonderful build logs for the kit that are on this site. (50 scribbled notes taken for transfer to the instruction book!) Before I begin work at 1:24, perhaps a note on full-size practice won't be too out of place here, as Galkar's log is so recent: In a "normal" lapstrake ("clinker" in the UK) hull, with curved sections, the strakes are bevelled amidships (besides where they approach the stem) to accommodate the curve while providing enough faying surface, between one strake and the next, for the clenches to pass and to give a watertight seal. The lands (the flat surfaces where the stakes project beyond the ones below) end up being narrower than the thickness of the planks used, with the narrowing depending on the curvature of the hull section and hence the amount of bevelling required. Bank dories are different. With their slab sides, no bevelling is needed to achieve however wide an overlap might be desired. However, the original purpose of the design was to produce stackable boats that could be stowed in the limited space on a schooner's deck. In that role, wide lands would get beaten around and likely jam inside the next dory in the stack. The solution is the "dory lap", in which both strakes are bevelled through most of their width, leaving almost no land at all. In his reconstruction drawing, Chapelle shows an almost flush joint but real dories do have lands -- narrow ones, and far narrower than plank-thickness, but they are there. In 1:24, they might not be visible at all. However, reproducing a dory lap at that scale would be beyond challenging. (Scratch building, I'd rather go for a single piece, substituting for the three strakes, then scribe to hint at the laps.) Still, to anyone familiar with the full-size prototype, meaning pretty much anyone here in Nova Scotia, the broad lands of the Model Shipways model look off. Nothing wrong with that: Models cannot truly be full-scale reality shrunken down. But if anyone wants to bevel their strakes and reduce the prominence of the lands a bit, I'd say go right ahead. Trevor

If this was only something O'Brien put in one of his books, I wouldn't give it ten seconds' consideration. As an artist weaving words, he did a great job of inserting technicalities to provide background colour ... except that he was so loose with the details that his works swiftly degenerate into being unreadable. However, the thread started with a quotation from the journal of Midshipman James Pity -- an eye witness who can be expected to have known what a "top" was. (I don't know whether he was quoted correctly but I assume so.) And I'd not suggest that anyone fitted hammock stanchions and nettings in a top. Those would be semi-permanent fixtures and, as such, would appear somewhere in contemporary models, artworks or the documentary record. My interpretation of the Midshipman's words (without seeing more of their context) is that this was an expedient used when clearing for action. Thus, the rolled, lashed hammocks would have been laid like sandbags around a foxhole (ashore, and a century or more later), though the men who fired from that cover would perhaps have called the arrangement a "barricado".

Coming late to this discussion, I'll offer a few generalities. First, what was done when preparing a ship for action and what artists showed (or even textbooks described) could be very different things. Faced with the reality of combat, men did (and do) what they must to achieve their ends. Second, attitudes change through time. The concept that causes lead to effects, which underlies so much of the thought of our own era, was not exactly a product of the Enlightenment but was much enhanced through that transformation. The consequences of that shift in thinking can be seen well enough in warship design: The elegant, sweeping rails and carved hances of 17th Century ships were replaced, circa 1800, by blocky, built-up bulwarks that effectively protected the gun crews on quarterdeck and fo'c'sle. Soon after, lovely but fragile sterns were replaced by Seppings' far more robust (but ugly) round sterns. In short: By the 1790s, men were thinking of what we would now regard as practicalities -- like providing protection for sharpshooters stationed in the tops. Then there was technological change: A battalion of Foot, armed with muskets, could do much harm to a line of enemy by volley firing (if they did not miss entirely, which too many did). But one musketeer firing at a single individual was almost certain to miss, unless at the closest range. By the 1790s, however, slower-firing but far more accurate rifles were available and it was possible to pick off individuals at a distance. (Think Nelson at Trafalgar.) That gave value to stationing sharpshooters in the tops but also made them vulnerable to counter-fire. Whether a rifleman or the gunnery officer of a Dreadnought, nothing disturbs a man's careful aim so much as being on the receiving end of someone else's projectiles, so there was good reason to provide protection for your own sharpshooters, sufficient that they could remain calm and confident. USN officers would have been well aware of that: Who, in their time, could forget Bunker Hill, where the doomed Redcoats had advanced over their own dead but been repeatedly beaten back by a bunch of civilian marksmen, firing from cover? Put all that together and, if a Midshipman who was there reported that hammocks were sent aloft to the tops, I would take him at his word. I see no reason to doubt that that was done, at least at that one time and on that one ship. Trevor

Sadly, no. My years down-under were half a lifetime ago. Now, I'm half a world away.

Ah! The d'Entrecastaux Channel ... Beat up the length of that in "Eye of the Wind", nearly 40 years ago now, and learnt that short-tacking a square rigger (even a very small square rigger) is hard work for a fo'c's'le hand! Happy memories of Adventure Bay, on the outer side of Bruny Island too. A couple of times, we lay in the lee of King Island, waiting for a break in the weather, then down the west coast of Tasmania (fishing for data) and nipped around South East Cape just ahead of the next storm. Around the Cape and into Adventure Bay, where Cook had lain two centuries before, seeking the same shelter we did. But he had come across the Indian Ocean in a sailing vessel. We had only rounded Tasmania in a big steel research trawler, with its diesel thundering under our feet! Trevor