FriedClams

Hi Keith,
acc. to the techn. data of the Elbe 1 there was a 12 head crew, but i also unfortunately do`nt have any information for their individual tasks. Probably in duty-shift operation at a time there were 6 on duty and the other 6 had free time, (or on stand by).
The Elbe 1 is (was) the largest German lightship ever.
 
Nils

I looked it up, but what were they all doing? Presumably some were oarsmen to make up for the lack of an engine!😀
 
By the start of the 20th century, Trinity House lightvessels had a crew of 11, of whom seven (a master and six ratings) would be on active duty at any one time. It was an extremely demanding and dangerous profession, and it would take 15 to 20 years of service to be promoted to master.[10]
 
 

Additionally I wonder what size of crew she carried. Trinity House lighthouses (before automation) were typically manned by a team of 3. While I don't know the crewing arrangements for Trinity House lightships, as they have no propulsion, they presumably also had a crew of 3. 
Presumably this vessel didn't carry the "steaming crew" unless she was being moved.

Thank you Phil,
for your input, I took a look at the Columbia WLV604 lightship per WW-web. A nice Vessel, perhaps we shall see a model of her here at MSW someday.
 
Nils

Light ships are interesting vessels, but you don't see many models of them. Nice choice for modelling, and nice work!
 
There is a lightship (Columbia WLV604) museum ship near me at Astoria, Oregon. I enjoy visiting it occasionally. It was positioned at the mouth of the Columbia River from 1951 to 1979.
 
I wonder about duty on one of these vessels. A plus would be that you were near "home" all the time, but it seems that it would be monotonous duty. In the Navy we visited many ports - we really did see the world. On the Columbia they would have seen the fog.

many thanks for your words Andy,
 
you`re right, I also sometimes make a decision on a certain build sequence and start preparing to the intended  thing, but after thinking it over twice I recognize that if I would do so, there is no more access to an item that lays behind or under the section I`m planing to do. So foot on the brake before continuing. For example, before the boatsdeck is placed, I have to make sure that the ship`s bollards are near to the appropriate fairleads and the footpoint-fastening positions of the  lighttower stays are placed so that they do`nt interfere with other items, and that the stairs to the boats deck are clear form what is to be mounted items above later on.
 
For mounting the boatsdeck to the long deckhouse and to install a number of supports along the length, I decided to make a bunsh of wooden supports which have slight overhight so that the can be tuned to precise fit when mounting. In this case I refraigned from making a brass framework to mount on.
 
Nils

these are the  20 wooden supports for the boatsdeck. 2mm pine squarebars with ply-knees

a template for the boatsdeck, for evaluating positions etc.

the boatsdeck has a shere and a longitudinal curving. The standovers (port and starboard side ) need to be supported and fastened to bulwarks below and deck above. Before that the 0,8 mm ply deck needs to be planked, like the main deck below. All must be in accordance in what I wrote in the  beginning of this post
 
 
 
 

Brilliant. Love this approach. The speed of your build is astonishing. I seem to spend hours staring at my plans and workbench and bits of wood for little output. I must learn to make these pragmatic decisions and move on!

Thank you John,
 
I`m evaluating the boats deck and how it can be mounted with all those side supports to be fitted in ....
 
Nils

I agree with Rick - very nice, Nils!
 
John

Very nice!
Rick

Hi Hermann,
 
I found 8 line fairleads, like the silver one shown in the last pics. They are brass pessed and nickel plated. So I merely had to determin the length and cut off the surplus materil. Painting in hull color.
 
The two aft brass roller fairleads were more tricky due to the small dimensions, but it worked out OK. They are full workable and can handle a at maximum) a 2mm polyester mooring rope.
They were mounted in square cut outs in the bulwark
 
Nils

made from 8 mm brass squaretube, each with 4 rollers working on soldered in 0,8mm axiles in two separated layers behind each other

 

 

 
 
 
 

Jacques, very nice find on all of these details!

No further progress at the moment due to work and illness, but I was very happy to find a new source of photos of Canoas. Memórica (https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/ ) is relatively new online digital repository containing digitized documents from a number of Mexican archives. Early on, I didn't find it very useful as its collections were limited, they were very random in terms of what documents had and had not been digitized, and the search function didn't seem to work very well. However, on a whim I recently thought I'd see if they had anything on Lake Chapala, and found that they have a large number of photos of Canoas. Finding all of them took some time as they required a number of search terms (canoa, bote, lancha, embarcación, etc). Some are photos I've seen before, but they've mostly been digitized to a much higher quality than the blurry versions on the INAH Mediateca site. Although they don't answer all of my questions about Canoas--notably, I still don't have any good photos of the floorboards)--they're very useful, and I thought I would share a few of the more interesting one. (These are just screenshots, and higher-quality images are available at the link).
 
Although I'd seen this photo, from 1909, before, it was in a really blurry version. With the higher quality image here, it's possible to make out a few things. The Canoa closest to the camera is named "La Fama" (best translated as "The Renown"). You can see how it uses thin poles running lengthwise along the rancho to help hold the thatching in place. Also, it interestingly has a thole pin located forward of the rancho (and a raised bit of wood on the rail that to me looks like a seat for a second thole pin nearby). This is a detail that I'd like to model, as a few of these smaller Canoas de Rancho seem to have had thole pins for rowing.

( https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/swb/memorica/Cedula?oId=0r6c_YsBTon6gu63zcYu  )
 
I'd also seen this 1905 photo before (this is just a detail from the bigger photo). What's most interesting about it to me is that it shows not just the gudgeons for the rudder wrapped around the stern post, but it also shows metal brackets around the edge of the transom. It would not be too difficult to model this detail, so I might add it to my build.

(Source: https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/swb/memorica/Cedula?oId=mPts2osBVs6S4R6nmckF  )
 
This 1905 image was entirely new to me. It shows a small Canoa (without a rancho), named "La Bayena"--"The Whale," a perhaps ironic name for such a small vessel. The anchor at the bow is quite prominent. Notably, this is one of the few images clearly showing how they used the half-ring anchor support, which other photos show to be a common feature on these vessels. While it was clear that it was used to guide the anchor chain, it wasn't clear to me how they used it to hold up the anchor. As this image shows, they could simply place the anchor chain or the ring of the anchor onto the support in order to hold the anchor up when not in use.

( Source: https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/swb/memorica/Cedula?oId=mvts2osBVs6S4R6nmckQ  )
 
This photo from 1908 of vessels docked at Ocotlan is also new to me. What's most interesting is what it shows about rancho construction. The vessel at the far right clearly is missing a substantial portion of the thatching--likely undergoing repairs or renovations--and for this reason part of the peak of the rancho is covered by cloth.

(Source: https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/swb/memorica/Cedula?oId=ir6c_YsBTon6gu638cxb )
This is clearer in the detail below:

This suggests to me that cloth coverings like this were likely only temporary measures. It also suggests that, if I decide to build my model in this way, I'd have to use several wider pieces of cloth overlapping along the top, instead of a single long, thin strip.
 
On the topic of the rancho: earlier, I had noted that I wasn't positive whether the poles running lengthwise along its exterior were structural and used to hold the thatching in place, or if that was just a handy place to hold the poles used for poling the Canoa. This photo, titled "La Colonia" ("The Colony")--which may be the name of the vessel, which is written across the transom but is not totally clear in the photo--definitively shows that the rancho poles were just used to hold the thatching in place. The actual poling pole is, in this photo, balanced across the boat just in front of the helmsman, and others are located forward. The photo also shows that the rancho itself seems to have been used as a tie-down point for the sheets.

(Source: https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/swb/memorica/Cedula?oId=g_ts2osBVs6S4R6nsc0d  )
 
One final photo, from 1905. It's highly unusual in that it shows a rancho that has been propped up on some kind of balustrade. I'd be surprised if this was made specifically for the boat, it looks more like something from a house. The rancho may have been propped up to give more space for the clearly bulky cargo load. Other interesting details include the crew member climbing the mast--the only such photo I've seen--and the anchor resting in the half-ring at the bow. Although I'm not planning on borrowing elements from this photo for my build, it was too interesting not to share.

(Source: https://memoricamexico.gob.mx/swb/memorica/Cedula?oId=mfts2osBVs6S4R6nmckK  )
 

I think I would view these canopies like roofs on dwellings in shanty-towns: the people put over them what they had to hand and what did the job. I don't think that a strip of cloth would be terribly wrong. It's the sort of thing ethnographers worry about, when they want to find out, what was 'authentic', while the objects of their research in most cases are much more pragmatic.

A bit of progress and yet another roadblock with the thatched rancho.
 
First, the good news. I had bought some Falkonet belaying pins through Crafty Sailor in their going-out-of-business sale, and I decided to add them a couple to the stern of the canoa, where they serve as tie-down points for the backstays. I could have easily made simpler ones by sanding down a toothpick, but I thought these looked very nice and, based on photos, seemed to be appropriately scaled.

 

 
Next, the thatched rancho. As I've mentioned earlier, my plan had been to cover the seam at the top of the rancho with a bit of cloth. Here we can see it so far, I dyed it with the woodstain (which worked quite well) and punched some holes to thread a line through the edge so as to tie it down at the ends.
 

 

 
But now that I've started and have taken a closer look at photos, I'm not entirely sure that that's the most accurate way to do it.
 
When I was planning this, there seemed to be a number of ways to handle the peak of the rancho roof. Many examples simply seemed to have the thatching running continuously up to the top, with it difficult to see how they actually covered the seam. See, for instance, this photo:

(Source: https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A139789 )
 
Other photos showed some kind of added layer of thatching or something, apparently folded over the peak of the roof and held down on both sides by either a rope or a wooden pole running lengthwise along the rancho. This is clearly visible in this photo, where, by the ragged edge of the top layer, it seems clear that it's some kind of thatching (although the much more uniform texture compared to the lower thatching layers makes me wonder if it's actually a very ragged-edged woven petate mat, which were used as roofs for ranchos in some parts of the lake):

(Source: https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A140947  )
 
You can see something similar here on both canoas. The rightmost one is definitely thatching. Interestingly, it has much more prominent poles running lengthwise to hold the thatching in place than the vessel to the left. Although I suppose there's some possibility that these are actually the poles used for poling the canoa in shallow water, they look to me in the two photos above like they're strategically placed to keep the upper layer of thatching in place.

(Source: https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A431254  )
 
That said, as I've repeatedly noted, I've found the thatching extremely tedious to do. I was instead inspired by this other image of thatched rancho roofs, which seemed to indicate that a strip of cloth might also be used to cover the peak seam.

(Source: https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/fotografia%3A140957  )
 
In particular, the leftmost rancho, and the one in the middle (second from right, with the two men and two children in the stern). The one on the left appears to have a squared bit of cloth covering the peak of the roof. Interestingly, it seems from the aft end that there is little if any thatching right at the top of the rancho roof, with the cloth apparently covering the gap. The rancho in the middle, meanwhile, clearly has some sort of cloth draped across at least the fore section of the rancho, with what appears to be a thick rope running along it aft. It's unclear whether there's a gap at the peak, but it is unusual that there appears to be a definite color change at the very peak, as you can see that the thatching is much darker there. In any case, this appeared to be a much easier option for covering the seam on the rancho roof than doing more thatching, so I planned on it for my build.
 
As I've been building, though, I began to wonder whether this photo actually shows cloth being used to cover the rancho peak, or if the cloth is just the sail set out to dry. I increasingly think that the cloth on the peak of the middle rancho is just the dangling edge of the sail (which otherwise is lashed vertically along the mast and yard) placed there to keep it out of the way. The leftmost rancho looks more to me like the cloth is being used to cover some gap in the thatching, but perhaps I'm misreading the image or perhaps they were simply in the middle of re-thatching the rancho and temporarily used the cloth to cover it.
 
All of which is to say, I'm not sure if I can use the cloth cover anymore. I'm now debating whether to make a new, thin top layer of thatching curving around the peak. Doing so will be very slow, as I will need to proceed one straw at a time. Moreover, given that the current layer of thatching is a bit lumpy due to being made of bunches of straw, it will be difficult to get a top layer to sit right, and difficult to glue it in place when it will definitely want to spring straight. I'm therefore considering whether to use the cloth I cut as a base, glue the straw to it (and completely cover it), and then bend it in place by gluing first one side down, and then the other.
 
Definitely a bit frustrating, at this point I'm wishing that I had just gone with a wooden rancho all those months ago.

I slowly continue on the masts..🔥
 





 

Hello Albert.
I have been very happy to see that your Victory is still under construction. He is a great inspiration for many people. It is a reference of the highest quality for all of us.
Thank you very much Albert.

Thank you very much Gary. 

Great beautiful work Siggi your model is fantastic. 

Beautiful work and photo

That's a great photo -- like a Norman Rockwell composition.

Keith, the end is in sight, but I think it takes a lot of time to get there. There are at least a lot of things to do left.
Ian, no with these sticks and ropes I would't play. 
 
Today the Tiger came up from the basement to see some daylight. It's quite a large model. 

Gee, I was looking forward to the masting and rigging on this magnificent model.......

Siggi, you've done such beautiful work on the Tiger. I'm somewhat sad the end is in sight,  I wish this journey would never end. 

Hello,
when I look at the last likes, some like the picture of Victory's wheels more then that what I have build! It would be interesting why? I had asked before I built it so. But I say thank you to all, for the likes you gave my work.
 
The carpenters have installed the last two deck beams and also the knees for them. The inspector from the navy board was pleased. So I think, we could go all into the summer vacations.
 
Except the shipwright. He must look how to build in the taffrail, before the deck could be planked. And may be the carvers, who could start carving the quarter pieces. Steady and slowly we come to the end of this build.