Doreltomin

Hello Steven, from my personal experience fruit woods, especially plum, work best for ship modelling. Personally I prefer plum because it can be either reddish, therefore suitable to depict scale oak, or yellowish, therefore suitable to depict scale deck woods. I was also curious of your experience with oak. Apart of larger texture, this wood has the tendency to harden up with time - have no idea how "old" your wood is. I have inherited some bits and pieces of oak from my father's workshop, the tree itself may have been cut some half a century ago so the pieces are now quite hardened and difficult to work for anything apart of putting them under the working piece to protect the table. Insofar I know the shipbuilders (as well as several traditional home builders in England which still build oak structures) usually worked/work with "green" oak which was felled and left to dry only several years, which is before hardening up. Of course, for the ship itself this oak hardening process is very useful as you got a stronger ship, but fortunately our ship models never encounter real tempests, only perhaps naughty cats to push them down from the shelf!

You bet it's an extremely sleek and elegant hull form! It may not seem evident today, but during the15th century the Basques were the most advanced in terms of hull design and navigation onto the unfamiliar (for other Europeans) waters of the Atlantic, and one of their most advanced boats was called a "txalupa" - that's precisely from where our name "shallop" comes in all languages! Also trying to answer your question about "a small carrack". I have been long been puzzled by this name, which sounds so distinct of any common European language, be it of Romance or Saxon origin. It was only later when I accidentally stumbled upon the name of a Crusaders' stronghold that I came to guess the origin of the word. The place was called "Krak des chevaliers" and was given in 1142 to the Knights Hospitaller by Raymond II, Count of Tripoli and it fell in 1271 to the Mamluk Sultanate after a 36-days long siege. The name "krak" itself comes from the Syriac language (Has nothing to do with today's Syria except of the geographic area; it comes straight from the language used by the old Phoenicians and, while called "Aramaic" it was precisely the language used by Jesus and all his disciples). So in this Syriac language the word "krak" means a fortress ready to withstand a siege therefore my own theory is that after the fall of the said fortress into the Muslim hands, which actually ended any dream of European domination in the area, instead of calling krak a fortified city, they slowly started to call krak a fortified ship, prepared for war. Remember at the time the distinction between warships and merchants was muddled and probably if need arose, they could have taken any merchant available and prepare her for battle. So in some respects, to my eyes a krak/carracca/carraque/carrack is what we would call today a warship and not specifically a type of ship, as the ships at the time were called nao/nau/nave/navire (all coming from the Latin navis) in the Mediterranean area. So what we have here, being a Basque whaler, I would daresay would not be properly called a carrack as it is not intended to go to war. Waldemar, sorry for my digression, but I felt it had to be told! Now bringing it back to our sheep, that is going to be another VERY interesting journey which I will follow with much interest!

Nice touch, @Ferrus Manus! Also @Steven: unfortunately, the hatches are the first to pop up when a ship sinks as air from inside the hold pushes them out, so all the wreck footage I have seen so far including the promising "Okänt Skepp" which is from the "right" century to this topic here have just an empty hole with no traces of cover!

Hi Ferrus Manus, are you sure about the cloth thing on the Mataro model? I agree with you that on the real thing there certainly would be a tarpaulin secured above some carefully trimmed planks, but on the model I would daresay there's no cloth there, only a piece of wood!

Hi Waldemar, thanks for your comment! Actually the author of the archaeological report gives two possible different versions of using fir instead of the more common oak planks for the ship's skin: one is the cheating thing, but also he calculates that the total weight of the lead sheating would be about 7,2 tonnes, which all go outside the ship so it would act like a kind of ballast while not affecting at all the place of the cargo, which is an important point for a merchant ship. Also taking into the account that the sheating would protect the wood from the dangerous Teredo Navalis, the ship worm, they may have balanced the overall cost of the sheating with a lesser cost of the planks. Yes indeed the pine may have been a good choice for the upper parts of the ship as it is less dense so these parts would have been less heavy!

So we are going to see some wood dust as well... good luck with the build! It seems the original Lomellina's outer "skin" was built with oak and pine boards, with the pine ones specifically hidden under the lead sheating, which may suggest a bit of cheating intent from the shipbuilders - they put cheap wood in a place where it would be hard to notice!

Just to turn back to our sheep a bit: Waldemar, thanks for posting the yacht plan I was talking about! Yes it is very useful in terms of details in section even if it lacks details on the deck, but it can be complementary with the plan discussed here. As usual when coming to ships, unless someone has the full portfolio with original plans from the designer/builder (which can never be the case with earlier than 20th century plans) there's still place for some more or less educate guess. My favourite details on this yacht plan are the "wells" of the two toilets, one which is set on the starboard bench just facing the helmsman and goes straight through the ship to her bottom, the other on the aft bench of the rear cabin is slightly curved to go outside the ship's body just under the waterline. Also you are right, the credit for first debunking the internal layout of this little yacht goes to Jan (Amateur) so thank you too for all your very valuable inputs to this discussion! Now, Waldemar, regarding the true or not-so-true verticals of the plan, we must think how developed were the drafting skills and especially the drawing instruments available to 18th century people. I started my training as an architect in the early 80's of the previous century and then we still relied on simple technical instruments which could deviate from the vertical, so the first thing you had to do was to check if your instrument is square - so to my eyes, relative to the instruments they may have had in the 18th century the plan is quite well done. Also we may consider these plans were made by people which really knew their ships so didn't need to add some of the details, which were quite "standard" to them. For instance the author drew the deck plan but did not bother to draw in also the external contour of the ship, which would have needed considerable drafting effort with too little an outcome. That he already knew how it would be! He simply considered drawing the boards of the deck, probably to calculate the length and size of the planks needed. As you say, these drawings were made on some purpose which we may never know until we know more on the author. These may have been either a ship building proposal to discuss with a prospective customer or even a draft for building a model, but one thing is sure, the author knew precisely how these ships were built! As for the thing (number 2) in your numbered quiz plan, my guess is that it's the point where the rope which raises the leeboard goes. Notice the position of the leeboard drawn just above, that point goes directly where the attaching point on the leeboard would have been. Also the element you called "mast" would probably be called properly "tabernacle" in Dutch - it's a fixed three sides box on the deck on which the mast rotates, coming out from vertical to horizontal through the open "well" (number 5) drawn on the deck, which is a typical arrangement on small Dutch ships. One last comment is regarding the identity of the author of these plans. You advanced the name Jan Veltmand for the collection of these drawings. But have you noticed the scale is decorated with a garland which goes over a central roundel on which the initials JV are set? So this drawing is even signed by him in some way!

Hi, just my two cents so far as there's a long story here and it's still in development: these small yachts had indeed two cabins, one fore cabin and one aft cabin just as the plan shows and as our friend Waldemar points in his post #14 here. But between them there's not a deep hole, but instead a cockpit with two benches to the sides, put to the normal height as a person sitting on the bench would normally look outside (after all, there's where the helmsman would stay, sitting on the port bench and steering the big helm above the aft cabin with some ropes). And then in the middle deck between the benches there would be two narrow flights of stairs, one to the fore cabin and another to the aft cabin. There's another plan of a similar "spiegelyacht" of 1751, inventarisnummer A.0149(063) titled "Zeil Plezier Jaght" (Sail pleasure yacht) from the collections of the Maritime Museum, Amsterdam, plan II C (26) which I have downloaded from the Maritiem Digitaal some time ago and which shows all these details, but unfortunately I can't get that link anymore so I am not sure if I am allowed to post that picture here. Can any of our Dutch friends find that file either on the Maritiem Digitaal or on the Maritime Museum Amsterdam site?

Hi Steven, just came across your build log here. Somehow I had missed it although when I received #310/june 2023 of "Neptunia" - the magazine of the Friends of the Maritime Museum in Paris, which features a paper on "La Lomellina" my first thought was "Let's see how much time it takes until someone on MSW takes on this one" - and there's just a handful of gentlemen here trying their teeth on such a hard thing as an early ship, so certainly you were on that short list! So here you are, struggling with incomplete information and struggling to understand a text in French language! Let me tell you that I hadn't liked too much the restitution of the shape of the ship as done by Beatrice Frabetti, it looks too pointed at the fore end to my eyes so yours is certainly better. And also, about the wooden wheels, it looked to me as if these were indeed part of the cargo and were transported without their steel rims and the fact that they really found a gunport may point that they were certainly more! Also, the paper cites a contemporary account of Antonio de Beatis which writes in 1517 in his account of the travel of the Cardinal of Aragon about the loss of the Lomellina two years before "a big Genoese ship, very well armed, with more than three hundred people aboard which sank in the said point (Villefranche harbour) and the main mast of the said ship can still be seen protuding from the water for about two canes" (a cana being an Aragonese unit of measure of roughly 1,5 meters). This "very well armed" may be taken seriously and may mean she had indeed several guns in gunports - my two cents so far! Good luck with your reconstruction, which I will follow with much interest, and if you stumble upon some hard to translate French bits, just drop me a line! I may not understand it as well as a true born Frenchman, yet since my own language is also a Romance language and I started learning French quite a long time ago, I may be of some help!

I received mine in perfect order despite the fact that it travelled for nearly half of the globe circumference and also I was able to check the status of the parcel almost every day through the site of the carrier so rest assured it is just a simple transport glitch. Enjoy your book when it arrives!

Thank you very much for showing us this lovely yacht! As I have mused through the plans there are some interesting details on it, for instance the deck which curves down to the stem to allow for the cables of the anchor to come up smoothly. A little yacht worth of being considered for a nice model, which at 1:64 would be of just the right size. I also completely agree with you that dividing modeller's attention to several subjects at the same time is a good way to never finish anything. However, I know modellers which work just like that, taking small steps to several models in the same time. Also unlike the girlfriend, a ship model is never jealous of being left some time on the shelf for another ship model! 😉 Also you did a very nice job in cutting these pieces and putting them together. It seems it takes much less time to project the cut on a computer and then laser it all in a single pass than it would have to cut them by handsaw and then smooth them one by one! Nice one!

Hello again, very nice structure on this one! Definitely better with thinner mdf and also I like that you put three longitudinal members instead of just the keel - makes a nice strong structure, ready to be planked over! Also however "hukkert" I don't believe can be translated with "cutter". Just look out, we have a Dutch friend named Rik Buter here on the MSW which currently builds an 82 feet long hooker ship model and he says the name comes from the fact it was originally a fishing ship using many lines with hooks. Anyway, it's a ship type different of a cutter!

It largely depends on how you feel secure with your modelling skills in continuing the model! You can abandon this and start anew or continue that one. For instance I would simply fill in the void between the frames with blocks, (probably rather linden than balsa wood, which is too soft) and then I would round them to the shape of the ship thus you would have a solid block base to glue your outer planks on it. If only when doing the body lines you took into the account the thickness of the planks, otherwise the size of the model would get slightly out of scale!

Just came across this one! That's a very nice ship and also a very good model taking shape, congratulations, will follow with much interest! As for the name of the pieces which keep the windlass to roll back under traction, you may try "pawls"!

Hello, just came across your build log. Very impressive, clean and crisp work, congratulations! Also came upon your mystery photo regarding channels and it reminded me of a photo I had from the training ship "Mircea" of the Romanian Navy, built in 1881 by Thames Iron Works and Shipbuilding Company in London/Orchard Yard, Blackwall. The photo is from around 1940 with the ship already in conservation (it was set afire by Russian bombers in 1944) and you can surely see she had normal deadeyes with three holes, but the ropes were protected by wrapping a canvas around them. Also there seems to be an iron bar which keeps the upper deadeyes in line and the wrapping goes above this bar. To my eyes it looks like your photo shows the same arrangement, only in a tad bigger scale as Loreley was certainly bigger than Mircea! Hope this helps!