Dr PR

Christopher, Lennarth Petersson's Rigging Period Fore-and-Aft Craft (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2007, 121 pages) is an excellent reference for topsail schooners. It has many drawings showing the masts, spars, sails, standing rigging and running rigging, including deck plans for where all of the lines are fastened. I highly recommend this book! The first part describes rigging for British Naval Cutter (pages 10 - 65). The second part (pages 66 - 111) is for the American Schooner. The drawings and plans are excellent. There were a lot of variations in topsail schooner rigs, but most were very close to what is depicted in the book, with minor differences.

I have been doing more research into sail plans for topsail schooners. Right now this is what I am planning to rig on my model. The sails are: 1. Flying jib 2. Jib 3. Fore stay sail 4. Fore sail or gore gaff sail 5. Main sail or main gaff sail 6. Fore gaff topsail 7. Main gaff topsail 8. Ringtail or driver 9. Fore course 10. Fore top sail 11. Fore top studding sails The fore course, fore gaff topsail, main gaff topsail, ringtail and studding sails were not always raised, but were added to take advantage of winds and to put on speed. There were a lot of variations in topsail schooner rigs. I have created another thread to discuss the other rigs: Topsail schooner sail plans

Brewerpaul, I have a PhD in Microbiology. When I was a kid an aunt called me "Phil" when I was nice, "PR" when I was a bit naughty, and "Pill" when I was a real terror. When I got my PhD I became "Dr. PR." Some of my friends call me "Dr. Phil" but apparently that name is already in use. The sterns of these ships has been a bit confusing. Texts talk about "square tuck" and "round tuck," but like so many functionally illiterate writers they seen to think everyone understands what they mean and give no clear illustration or description of what they are talking about. Then there is the very different stern treatment that was common in the late 1800s and early 1900s, more like what I have done on my model, where the hull planking extends to the transom all around. And the later yachts and fishing schooners had yet another "modern" design with no actual transom.

Alan, There are other videos of the firing of this gun. In the video posted above you can see a vertical piece to the right of the hull siding. In other videos from a different angle this part was a flat sheet parallel to the hull siding. The splinters from the shot ripped the sheet to pieces, showing the effect of the splinters on anything inside the ship. The cannon ball was unlikely to strike a crewman because it was relatively small, but the spray of splinters was much larger and caused the most damage to the crew. One thing to consider - and was briefly mentioned - is that whether or not the gun was fixed or recoiled on wheels, the energy of the recoil was transferred to the ship in both cases. It was transferred directly from the gun to the hull when the gun was solidly attached to the hull. When the gun was on wheels and recoiled the force of the recoil was transferred to the ship through the breeching. But much of the recoiling gun's momentum was lost through friction (heat) so the momentum transferred to the ship was smaller. You can see this in the video - the gun had slowed considerably before it was stopped by the breeching. In later ships the gun tackle absorbed much of the recoil energy.

I have a Paasch double action airbrush and it has worked very nicely. I really like the double action - you can control the air volume and paint flow separately. This allows me to cut off the paint flow and still use the air flow to spread any runs that develop and to dry the paint. With single action brushes the air flow controls the amount of paint. I have a small diaphragm type compressor and it works fine.

At sea the last thing you want is loose ropes. Those pretty coils would slide all over the place as a ship rolls and soon would be a useless tangled mess and tripping hazard. Coiled ropes were used only for showing the ship in port, and not for everyday use. Also, I never heard the word "flake" used with lines. Lines were "faked down" on the deck in coils (rare) or figure eights to prepare them for running out, as when the ship pulls up to a berth and the mooring lines have to be run out swiftly without tangling. This is 19th and 20th century US Navy and Royal Navy terminology. Gunnery books from the 19th century describe laying out the gun tackle in straight bights so it will run through the blocks freely upon recoil. It was not coiled! There are other threads on the Forum describing gun handling and tackle in detail. Here are two very authoritative sources: The Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor, Darcy Lever, RN, 1808, reprinted by George Blunt, USN, 1858. Fake: one circle of a coil of rope. Flake is not used in the book. The Art of Rigging, CAPT George Biddlecombe, RN, 1925. Fake: one of the turns of a rope when stowed away, or coiled. The word "flake" does not appear in the book. If anyone can find any authoritative source that uses the term "flake" I would like to see the reference. I have always thought "flaking" was a lubbers misnomer, like "three sheets to the wind." Sailors know the term is "fore sheets to the wind," as when a sailing vessel is tacking on a zig-zag course with the bow (fore sheets) into the wind, or when a drunken sailor is staggering back to the ship "fore sheets to the wind." Phil LT USNR Retired

Thanks for the comments guys. I haven't been doing much building this summer - too many other things are distracting me. But I am thinking about future work and a few minor changes to what has already been built. Please keep in mind that I am learning as I go along, and there are a few things in the existing build that I think are not historically correct. Here is a list of things I would do differently: 1. The stern and transom are a more modern design than the early to mid 1800s revenue cutters (more like the "V" transom of the 1840s and later). When I first started this build I was thinking of building a modern topsail schooner, but I became interested in the revenue cutters. I have thought about cutting it back but that might make a real mess. So just think of it as a daring ahead of it's time build. But I have a few small changes to make it more of the style used in the early 1800s. 2. The deck house may be too wide. It is based upon dimensions in Chapelle's books for the Doughty 80 ton revenue cutter. It might be OK for a smaller ship, but a schooner of the size I am building might have had a slightly narrower cabin. Who knows? There are very few reliable plans for deck fittings on these ships. The skylight is possibly too fancy for a revenue cutter. It may also be a more modern design. 3. I am pretty sure the gun port lids are totally wrong! More likely these ships didn't have lids/covers for the gun ports, or the covers were two part with one half at the bottom, possibly hinged to drop down, and the upper half a portable (removable) piece that was latched in place when the port was covered. In some cases the lower half of the cover was also just latched in place when the gun was stowed, and removed for action. Most examples I have seen have holes for the cannons to protrude through when the port covers were in place. After getting the port lids to operate and raise on hinges set into the cap rail, I am thinking of removing them and starting over with two piece covers. I would use putty to fill in the holes in the cap rail instead of removing the existing cap rail and starting over. 4. I will fix the rudder! Getting the pintles and gudgeons bass ackwards is just embarrassing! Done! 5. Pin rails. As I was resuming this build I read in a post on the forum that belaying pins weren't used on ships earlier than the 1820s to 1830s. I was planning to attach all the running rigging to cleats. But further discussion on that thread revealed plenty of evidence that belaying pins were used as early as the 1600s on some larger ships. So I plan to add the appropriate (whatever that is) pin rails. 6. I am still trying to figure out the lower mast dimensions. I have the formulas for large square rigged ships, but several authors say the masts on schooners were smaller because the load of spars and canvas was less. But I have no good information about how much smaller. This is important because all of the rigging sizes were based upon the diameter of the lower masts. 7. I may name the model "No Name" or something equivalent so no one will think it is an accurate representation of an actual revenue cutter.

Paul, One problem with single planked kits (just about all older kits were single plank) is that a few years down the line, as the wood responds to changes in temperature and humidity, cracks can appear between planks and they can warp so some edges are higher than the neighboring planks. I solved this problem by painting the inside of the planked hull with a thin epoxy paint used by aircraft modelers to fuel-proof balsa engine mounts. It soaked into the wood of the planks and bulkheads and the whole thing becomes rock solid. This is much better than trying to glue the edges of planks, and a lot easier. AFter the epoxy sets (24-48 hours) you can sand the hull without individual planks flexing. Here is a link to a build I am working on - started about 35 years ago and not a crack between planks. Post #2.

Hi Bruce. Welcome from not quite as far south as Mark. I have seen a few live steam model boats - like the African Queen (Google "African Queen live steam model"). I think you may have to pick an engine and look around for a kit it can be fitted into. You might get information about suitable kits on the engine manufacturer's web site. Look around for live steam web sites. Or you can scratch build. There is a fellow who occasionally shows up at the Toledo, Oregon, boat show with a really cute 1:1 scale live steam boat that would be easy to model.

If you do not have the correct number of blank lines between the text and the image some of the text may appear beside the image. The text may be shoved off screen to the right, or some text may appear to the left of the picture and shove the picture off screen to the right. You can click on a photo after you have placed it in line with the text and change the size of the picture (be sure to maintain the horizontal/vertical ratio) and the position left/right. With a little patience you can get text to flow around the image. You can also place two images side by side, one justified left and the other unjustified - it will fit beside the first image. But it can be a little tricky getting the images to line up perfectly. After the image has been placed you can drag it up/down to reposition it. This takes some practice to get the hang of it. If an image disappears after you try to drag it, USE THE UNDO ARROW at the left of the tool bar to put it back where it started so you can try again. However, don't try to get too fancy. It takes some trial and error to get what you want. But don't forget that different machines have different screen widths (pixels) and what you see on your screen may not be what others see. Formatting text and images can be very frustrating! The markup languages used to generate screen images on the Internet are extremely primitive, only slightly more advanced than Cro-Magnons scratching images on rock walls with stones.

Very nice.

To keep you in the mood for working on your fishing schooner model I highly recommend the 1937 movie Captains Courageous. It is based upon Rudyard Kipling's novel, starring Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore. Much of it was filmed on a Grand Banks fishing schooner, and there are excellent scenes of schooners racing.

For topsail schooners (Baltimore clippers) a good reference is Rigging Period Fore-And-Aft Craft by Lennarth Petersson, Naval Institute Press, 2007. It has very clear diagrams of rigging, showing where each line goes on pinrails. The drawings are based upon a model of a topsail schooner from the early 1800, but the rigging was probably the same in the late 1700s. However, not every topsail schooner carried all of the rigging shown in the book! Most books on rigging just say lines attach to fife rails or pin rails, but give no specific position. Harold Underhill's Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship & Ocean Carrier (Brown, Son and Ferguson, Ltd., Glasgow, 1972) gives very a detailed description of the lines and their positions on fife rails and pinrails for late 19th century clipper ships. Like Bob said, the actual positions probably depended upon the specific ship, bosun or captain. There were very many different variations on rigging, so possibly no two ships would be exactly alike. Some schooners didn't have fife rails or pin rails, but the lines fastened to ring bolts on deck and to cleats on the bulwarks. And fife rails and pin rails differed a great deal from ship to ship. On some ships some lines even attached to cleats on the shrouds instead of to pin rails. With all the variations there couldn't be one "standard" way to rig all ships. Basically, it seems that the lines from lower on the masts and spars go to the more forward position on the pin rails/fife rails/cleats/ring bolts, and lines from higher up are more aft. Inboard lines ran to inboard fastenings, and outboard lines to fastening points farther outboard. Of course the lines lead to the same side of the ship as their attachments on the spars and masts to avoid crossing lines. This is the same rule as for shrouds and stays. Lower forward, higher aft. Probably the only rule was that lines should not foul other lines.

Smaller ships, and especially merchant ships, operating in cooler seas and fresh water usually used something like tar and sulfur on the bottoms. Ships operating in warmer waters used tallow and lime or white lead. Naval vessels often had much more expensive coppered bottoms. Howard Chapelle (The Search For Speed Under Sail, W. W. Norton & Company, New York & London, second printing 1983, pp207-208) says copper plating was introduced by the British in 1761 and it worked well to prevent fouling and attack by wood boring toredo worms. In 1783 they extended it to all Royal Navy ships. However, the high cost of copper plating caused it to be adopted slowly by British merchant vessels. Some American Navy ships had coppered bottoms. It wasn't until the 1790s that copper plating came into use on American merchant vessels, and then only on larger ships. As late as 1822 the lime-and-tallow "white bottom" was still being used extensively in the United States. Because clean bottoms improved speed, many fast sailing American schooners were copper-bottomed after 1795. Privateers were privately built, and often cheaply. The idea was to use a cheaply built ship to bring in prize money during a relatively short period of hostilities. The privateer was somewhat expendable. It was just a matter of profit. And some privateers brought in many times their cost of construction and operation. Unless you know for certain what type of bottom the ship you are modeling had, at the period you are modelling, you can go either way. Modern reproductions like the Lynx use modern anti-fouling paints instead of expensive copper plating. Also, the Coast Guard has regulations about what you can put on the bottom of hulls to reduce pollution.

In 20th century US Navy ship design: "Camber" is the transverse (port to starboard) curvature of large weather decks, highest along the centerline and lower at deck edges. "Sheer" is the lengthwise curvature of the large weather decks, typically highest at bow and stern. Not all weather decks had camber or sheer. Some had camber but no sheer and smaller decks typically had neither. I'm sure the terminology has changed with time and coountry, and even different locations within a country. **** As far as the hatch gratings go, I suspect it was the larger, fancier ships that had the curved gratings. Smaller and less expensive vessels probably had flat gratings, especially merchant vessels. Flat gratings would be easier and cheaper to build.

JD, I found the definitions of "molded size" and "sided size" confusing. Your drawing shows it nicely. The following books use this terminology, but the descriptions are less than perfectly clear: Planking Techniques for Model Ship Building (Donald Dressel, TAB Books, 1988, page 26. The Elements of Wood Ship Construction, W. H. Curtis, McGraw Hill Book Company, 1918, page 27 (available as PDF on line). How Wooden Ships Are Built, H. Cole Estep, The Penton Publishing Company, 1918, page 44 (available as PDF on line). Wooden Ship Building, Charles Desmond, The Rudder Publishing Company, 1919 (available as PDF on line), page 53, Figure 41 has a drawing similar to yours, and page 52 has clear definitions. One of the things that confused me is that "molded dimensions" of the hull are to the outer surface of the frames, whereas the "molded size" is the transverse width of the frame at any place along the length of the frame, varying from widest at the keel and tapering to narrowest at the main deck. The outer outline (the molded dimension) of the frame was drawn on the mold loft floor. Then the line of the inner surface of the frame was created by passing through points at the desired "molded size" width along the frame. On steel hulled naval vessels the molded dimension is to the outside of the frame, or the inside of the hull plating (Ship Structure and Blueprint Reading, H. L. Heed, Cornell Maritime Press, 1942, page 166). I occasionally see erroneous statements saying the the molded dimension is to the outside of the planking or plating. But on all but the largest scale models the difference may be no more than the thickness of a layer of paint. I mention this in case other readers might find "molded dimensions" and "molded size" confusing. They aren't the same thing!

Mike, I have seen the double blocks idea used. But you want the sheet to come down from the upper block to a fastening on deck or on the bulwark. So just invert the blocks - the fixed end of the line would be on the upper block that is attached to the backstay. A similar rig was used for loading tackles (burtons). Some schooners used ordinary deadeyes for the backstays.

Bruce, Sounds like very good advice to me. Davy, Think of it this way - overcoming difficulties builds character. At least that's what they tell the Marines.

OK. I thought your doors looked pretty good.

German-English translation is also "tail blocks." Not much help. But your drawing Figure 10 shows gun port cill or rebate and a 1 x 3 mm strip could be used for these. The rebate is what the port lid/door closed against, and ports often had this framing on all sides for better water seals. It is similar to the molding in a door frame that the door shuts against. The guns were run out against the lower cill before firing. Sometimes there was an additional block or bumper that the gun carriage contacted to set the firing position (battery).

Richard, I am glad you are making progress! You aren't the only slow builder. I haven't posted anything on my revenue cutter build log for a long time either. But I have been doing a lot of research on masting, rigging and sails. I have been giving some thought to the anchor handling. I suspect merchant schooners may have used some form of windlass to raise the anchor because they had small crews and plenty of deck space. But naval vessels had larger crews, and a lot more clutter on deck (cannons, etc.) so there wasn't much room for a windlass. Larger naval schooners seem to have used a capstan mounted aft. A continuous loop messenger line ran from the windlass forward to the fore mast and back to the windlass. The messenger was tied to the anchor cable. Turning the windlass pulled the messenger and cable aft, where the cable was lowered into the cable tiers. The cable was lashed to the messenger forward again and the capstan continued to pull it back, hauling in more cable. On smaller schooners, with lighter anchors, a pair of block and tackle rigs attached to strong points on the deck aft served as messengers. One rig would be used to drag the anchor cable aft until it was two blocked. Then the second would be lashed to the cable to continue the pull, while the first tackle was run back out. Using these alternate tackles the anchor was hoisted. For small vessels this didn't require deck space for a capstan or windlass. The cathead tackle was used to raise the anchor, and tackle on a portable fishing boom was used to raise (fish) the flukes to the deck or rail. Then the cable could be released from the anchor and stowed below deck in the cable tier. I am planning on modeling the fishing boom raising the anchor on my model.

Pat, I was referring to all pivot/swivel guns in general, as used on ships in many navies. The larger guns definitely did have rollers that ran in tracks - there are numerous photos of these. They were mostly mid to late 1800s. Smaller guns may not have had rollers, but just slid on pads on the underside of the slide that ran on tracks on the deck.

It is interesting that it has wheels on both ends of the slide. It must have run in circular tracks, or at least in arcs, to allow rotation for aiming. Shipboard pivot guns were very similar. They either had a pivot at the center of the slide and wheels/rollers on the ends that ran in a circular track, or had a pivot at one end with wheels at the other running in an arc track. Smaller guns might not have had wheels or rollers, but just had pads that rotated on greased tracks.

On some late 1800s and early 1900s American schooners there were two heads, port and starboard, just aft of the bow. They were enclosed in boxes placed along the bulwarks. To use them the lid was raised, and closed when not in use. Some schooners had such boxes port and starboard at the fantail. In at least one case (three masted lumber schooner Wawona) the heads were beneath a fo'c'sle deck above the main deck, and had a bulkhead at the aft end of the raised deck for some privacy. The attached photo shows one on the port side - the ship was in bad repair (and was scrapped) and the raised fo'c'sle deck is missing. But you can see one of the deck beams and the short bulkhead.

Mike, Everything I have read says that the diameter of the standing rigging was determined by the forces it was expected to withstand. Because the lowest sails were the largest, and these generated the largest forces on the lower masts, shrouds and stays for the lower masts were larger diameter than those for higher masts with smaller sails. SO yes, I do think that there were many sizes of rigging on real ships. But, schooners carried lighter masts and rigging that the large square riggers, and everything I have seen applies to the larger ships. So we really are left to guess about the topsail schooners. I think your rigging plan is fine. I am not sure what you mean by "collars." Are you referring to are the places where lines are fastened to masts with multiple turns around the mast> I have seen used where the line pulls directly out from the mast. Where the force on ht eline pulls down at a sharp angle "shoulders" were often used. These were either wooden pieces set into the mast that prevented the line from slipping down, or places where the dianeter of the mast was reduced to create the shoulder.