Michael P

I made the boats some time ago, and now seems a reasonable time to put them in place. There are few contemporary models, as far as I know, that show boats in position. An exception is the early 19th century frigate in the National Maritime Museum (SLR0346 ; I’ll not put the photo up for copyright reasons) which has three boats in the waist, and a further one hung from stern davits. I have limited myself to four boats, though May, in his The Boats of Men-of-War, in a slightly confusing table, suggests that there would have been seven. That many would be very hard to fit in, and puzzles me, though I don’t think it’s wrong. One answer might have been to follow the example of the eminent ship modeller MalcoIm Darch, and leave all but one of the boats lying around on the bottom of the stand, but that does not seem quite right (https://julianstockwin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/darchblog2-whole-ship.jpg?). It would look something like this: So, the boats are now installed where they should be. I tried to fit all of them with rowlocks, but this was difficult, and looked odd, so it’s just the jolly boat that has them. It would have been possible to put oars, in the boats, though the sail and associated equipment for the longboat would have been far too hard to do. So, at least for now, the boats just have their thwarts. And I have not added clutter in the form of the spare yards that would have been alongside the boats.

As usual, apologies for it being so long since I last posted. Firstly, I’ve now put the stern lanterns in place. I’m not sure about the colour (yellow ochre), which perhaps stands out a bit too clearly. So I may try painting the tops of the lanterns bronze. And they do need a tiny chimney on top. Comments welcome. I may even have another go at making them, as I’m not all that happy with their look, though as usual they seem better in the flesh than in the photo. The small scale does not help on that score. Oh yes, I used a much thinner wire to hold them in place than that shown in an earlier picture. I knows the rigging in this photo looks a mess, but it will soon be sorted. I though it time to have a go at the anchors. At this scale, there’s no point in trying to find a way of making metal ones, nor was it worth troubling my grandson to see if he could do them with his 3d printer. So, they are wooden, with flukes cut from card. Here are the various bits and pieces more or less ready to be assembled, and the final version Anchor dimensions are conveniently set out in by Steel in a table; he also has a drawing which is useful. It was a bit fiddly getting them thin enough, and fitting the rings was harder than it should have been. My first effort used much too thin a gauge of wire, but some plastic-covered garden wire worked all right, and meant that I did not have to try to serve the rings with rope. One question was what colour to make the anchor cables. This has been a matter of some debate on this site, with opinion generally favouring a pale colour on the grounds that it was unlikely that the cables were tarred. Photos of HMS Victory show pale anchor cables. However, I went with black. Partly this was on aesthetic grounds, and partly because the model of HMS Mars in the National Maritime Museum has black cables. The anchor cables on the Mary Rose were coated in pitch, though fibres themselves curiously do not look to be tarred. Of course, the chronology reduces the value of this evidence. See https://maryrose.org/blog/collections/doing-the-twist-anchor-cable-cleaning/ . I think, however, that it would have been normal to tar the cables to prevent them from getting soaked, but I could well be wrong.

Goodness! I can’t begin to match that. Printing lanterns is way beyond me. A grandson does have a 3d printer, but I don’t believe he could manage anything like that. Inevitably, the photo of what I’ve managed so far emphasizes the faults; in practice the lanterns don’t look that bad, but I’ll probably try again, just once more. At least they are glazed, by using transparent glue. I’ve made them black inside, in an attempt to follow the look of the two surviving lanterns in the National Maritime Museum. I do wonder, incidentally, about the use of lanterns once driver booms came into use. It would surely have needed some care to ensure that they were not knocked off. On a different topic, I’ve been wondering whether to have royals. Steel has them, as in his plate showing a ship with all her sails. Most pictures of the period don’t show them, but a sketch of Agamemnon, showing her in 1796, by Nicholas Pocock has them. The sketch, however, was made in 1810, and I think I’ll be safe in following the example of, for example, the National Maritime Museum’s model of HMS Mars. There’s a practical reason too, in that I don’t have any thread thin enough and matching what I’ve uo, it’s now just a matter of finishing off the rigging of the topgallants.

Many thanks, Gabe. I'm trying a very simple method, using UHU Hart glue. Since the panes are no more than 1.5 mm square, if that, it covers the gaps quite easily, and looks like glazing. But I'll continue trying out possibilities, as a break from rigging. Oh, and the skies have been very clear here of late. Michael

Many thanks, Gabek. I may have another go at glazing, but I found it quite impossible on another model, which was a bit bigger than this one. It's difficult to know what the original lanterns looked like in this respect - if you search the National Maritime Museum for 'stern lantern', it comes up with one dating from the mid-seventeenth century, which has dark opaque panels of some sort. But it's about 30 inches high, surely far too small for the stern. I suppose it's possible that horn rather than glass was used, and that a pale opaque material might be correct. Clear resin is certainly an interesting thought.

Many thanks, Gabe. Yes, I'm probably the only person to know what's left out. In the intervals of doing the rigging, I have struggled with the stern lanterns. I could miss them out, for Pocock’s drawing of Agamemnon cutting out some French ships in 1796 (in the National Maritime Museum) does not show them, but that would be a pity. It seems impossible to glaze them, and after ineffectual attempts to make them straightforwardly from wood, what I have done is to stamp out card circles with a hole punch, inherited from my mother-in-law. These were then stuck together, and glued onto a tiny piece of dowel. I drilled a hole into the dowel, to take the wire that holds the lantern. The inside of the lanterns were painted black, and frames cut from paper were glued into place. The final result is, I hope, not too different from that in the painting of the Glorious First of June by Nicholas Pocock, where a stern lantern is dangling off the stern of HMS Brunswick (I’m bothered about copyright, so have not reproduced it. But you can find it easily at https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-11963. The photo below shows, on the left, an initial attempt in wood, next the interior of the lantern, then the first effort at the method I’ve decided to use, and on the right what I hope is a final version. I think the real thing actually looks a bit better than the photo. And now for two more lanterns.

It’s more than time for an update, but there’s not that much to report as progress has been far too slow. Most of my attention has been devoted to the rigging. There are lots of problems, of course, many as a result of the small scale I’ve ambitiously adopted. Remember that the hull is only about 15 inches long. I’ve cheated with the ratlines, and have simply glued them into place. I don’t think I could possible knot them neatly, without pulling the shrouds. In any case, to do them properly would involve making eyes for the ends of the ratlines, as well as knotting them. I added the ratlines after the shrouds were installed - I don’t like the idea of the alternative technique of making shrouds, with ratlines, on a jig before mounting them. Blocks are a problem. So far, I’ve mainly been using 2 and 3 mm blocks from Cornwall Boats. In practice, there would have been a far greater range of size. Steel stated that blocks vary in size from 17 inches to four inches, while I read that Victory had blocks ranging from 26 to six inches. In the mid-eighteenth century, Invincible had, according to the archaeological record, single blocks ranging from five to twenty inches in height. At the scale I am using, the 2 and 3 mm blocks would equate to about 12 and 18 inches. I have found it possible to cut down the 2 mm ones somewhat, but they then look a bit clumsy. So, I have a problem. I need to find a way to make smaller ones if the rigging of the topgallants, and royals if I fit them, is not to look grotequely oversized. Does anyone have ideas? It may be that all I can do for the tiniest blocks is to tie knots, and dab them with glue, but it would be hard to shape them. Milliput may be the answer, and I’ll try that. One irritation with the bought blocks is that the holes in them are mostly too small for easy threading, and it take time to drill them out, though it can be done. Parrels are a nuisance to make, but Cornwall Boats provides appropiate tiny beads, and the spacers work cut from wood. I have previously used wire not thread, and that seems best. I will, however, cheat, and simply glue the completed parrels in place. Nor, to date, can I make them small enough for the topgallants. One problem with the rigging is what to leave out. Bowlines, for example, do not go easily with furled sails. It’s possible that they were unshipped when the sails were furled, or somehow folded up within the sail. The only answer is just not to fit them. And I’ll omit many of the lines used to control the sails. Ideally I suppose there should be rigging for the stunsail yards, but I have no idea how it would work, and won’t try to fit it. My hope is that I’ll be able to provide a reasonable general impression. Some idle thoughts about the differences between making model ships now, and in the late 1950s. One very important change is the availability of plans and photgraphs, primarily through the National Maritime Museum website. That has transformed research. In the old days, I used to cycle to the Natural History museum in Oxford, go through the hall with the dinosaur skeletons, into the Pitt Rivers museum. After a quick look at the shrunken heads, I would note down what I could of the model of HMS Lizard and that of an eighteenth century 50 gun ship. Since those days the range of relevant publications also exploded, and there was of course no equivalent of the web, nor of this magnificent site. In the 1950s I used what materials I could get from Oxford’s two model shops - mostly balsa wood and glue. Professional model makers had, of course, good access to materials, but I did not. Cornwall Boats has transformed all that. Lastly, a photo showing the present state of play.

My attention is largely confined to the rigging at present, but here’s a thought about the figurehead. It’s made from Milliput, and I apologise for it - it was the best I could at this scale. Now, I read in the Mariner’s Mirror (May 2018) an article by David Pulvertaft, who knows all there is to know about figureheads, arguing that the majority were painted white, with a fair number polychrome. His evidence was taken from a long period, 1727-1900, and the article made me wonder if I had been right in having a gilded figurehead. One contemporary model, of HMS Mars, in the National Maritime Museum (oddly, not cited in the article), shows a fine white figurehead. As the photograph below shows, I tried an off-white colour - but though it may have been historically correct, it just did not look right. It makes it stand out too much. Pulvertaft did allow for gilded figureheads, citing the examples of HMS Semiramis (1808), and HMS Conqueror. In the latter case, Captain Pellew petitioned for the replacement of the figurehead lost at Trafalgar by one showing Nelson, ‘gilded in burnished gold’. Pellew and his officers paid for this. Pictorial evidence is surprisingly scant (artists tended to prefer stern views), but Loutherbourg’s picture of the Glorious First of June (available on Wikpedia) shows a French ship with a polychrome figurehead, and an English one with a white one. Nicholas Pocock’s painting of Nelson’s flagships at anchor has Vanguafd with a white figurehead. I think it nevertheless that it would be acceptable to show Agamemnon with a polychrome figurehead, but I don’t have the skill for that at this scale. So, the off-white has gone, and it remains gilded, because that looks best. Gold paint can be a problem, however. The Humbrol I used in the 1950s remains absolutely fine, but some of the gold I used three years or so ago has gone a vile green. What I use now is a gold paste made by Liberon, which seems entirely stable. I just might try silver for the shield and spear, but I’ll leave the figurehead as it is for now. More about the rigging soon, with any luck.

As usual, the rigging is not going as fast as I’d really like, but it is proceeding. I have given up with the model aircraft tissue for the furled sails, as it was proving too hard to fold up. So, it was back to tissues from the supermarket, which though flimsy when split into three sheets, are easier to work with. I have hit an unexpected problem, and would be very grateful for advice. The question is whether it is right to fit a driver-boom (spanker-boom if you prefer). I have done so, but have been wondering if this was in fact correct, even though Longridge has one in his Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships, as does Petersson in his very useful book on Rigging Period Ship Models. There is an obvious difficulty, discussed at length elsewhere on Modelshipworld, in that the driver-boom would hit the flagstaff as the ship went about.The model of HMS Mars in the National Maritime Museum shows the problem, with both boom and flagstaff fitted. This is not an acute difficulty, as presumably the flagstaff could be dismounted, or folded down. I thought that paintings might provide an answer, and Nicolas Pocock’s Ships at Spithead, 1797 (https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/fine-art-prints/Nicholas-Pocock/1503372/Ships-at-Spithead-1797.html) shows three ships with no driver-boom. Equally, his picture of the frigate Triton, built in 1798, does not have one. Pocock’s sketches of Agamemnon are not clear enough to determine the answer, though that showing the engagement with four French frigates in 1793 looks as if there may be no driver-boom. Sorry not to reproduce the pictures, but I’m hesitant to include them given possible copyright issues. Paintings and drawings, of course, are not photographs, and may not be correct. Interestingly, Steel (The Elements and Practice of Rigging And Seamanship, 1794) provides a table of boom-lengths, which shows that 64 gun ships should have no driver-boom, no jackstaff, and no ensign staff. Driver-booms were just for smaller vessels. Surviving ships are not to be trusted, as the rigging is modern, but Trincomalee has driver-boom and flagstaff, as did Victory (not sure of the present position). As for Agamemnon herself, there is no clear clue. The ship was refitted at Leghorn late in 1794, and I suppose it is possible that a driver-boom was installed then. I am inclined to remove the boom, but to leave it for now and ponder the issue further. It may well be correct either way. What does anyone think? Please excuse the unfinished ends of rope etc in the photo - all will be tidied up in due course.

As a break from rigging, I’ve more or less completed four boats - a longboat, a pinnace, a cutter and a jolly boat. They are made as I described earlier. A balsa mould, newspaper and glue for the hull, cut in half when dry. Then the halves are stuck together onto the keel, and card ribs and interior planking are fitted. Thwarts etc are of wood. Sounds easier than it is in practice, but it’s the best method I can manage for such tiny boats. The jolly boat features clinker planking externally. There probably should be more boats - the tables in May’s book on Boats of Men-of-War suggest that a 64 gun ship should have five. I’ll think about that, but it does start to look very overcrowded to have that many. There are elements that I just could not manage at this scale. There are no rowlocks, as everything I tried either looked too big and clumsy, or was just about invisible. Suggestions welcome, and I’ll continue to consider this. The tillers, at least on some of the boats, should be nicely carved - I found a good example at https://www.bada.org/object/19th-century-oak-boat-tiller , but as ever, that would be impossible when they are so tiny.

It’s been far too long since I last posted an update. The model didn’t make it to this year’s village show, but there’s always next year. The photo below shows the current state of play - please excuse all the loose ends etc which will be tidied up in time. The tiny deadeyes were a particular problem, even after stiffening the thread with glue, and sometimes in desperation using a very tiny drill to enlarge the holes. One major difference in appearance from what seems to be the common approach is that I have used black rather than pale thread for the deadeye lanyards. My argument is that it’s unlikely that the lanyards would have been constantly adjusted - it would have made sense, surely, to use tarred rope for them. Steel suggested that lanyards should be ‘well greased’,which is not all that helpful. I don’t think that contemporary paintings show light-coloured lanyards.I think that a dark brown might well have been more accurate, but I like the look of black. The current state of play The question of sails or no sails has been on my mind. It seems on the face of it somewhat odd to have a model of a sailing ship with no sails, though obviously there are innumerable precedents for that. I have seen photos of fine models spoiled to my mind by their sails bellied-out, with heavily-marked seams. I have tried various solutions in the past. Some 65 years ago I bought the finest cloth I could find in Elliston & Cavell’s department store in Oxford, to the puzzlement of the sales assistant. I avoided hemming it, for sewn hems look horribly out of scale. Instead, I glued the bolt rope to the edges of the sails, which worked fine, and looks as good now as it did then. The seams for the individual cloths making up the sail were simply marked in pencil, a practice I think some still follow. The trouble is that they do just look like pencil lines, and be warned - it looks from one of my models from the late 1950s as if they do fade in time. Nor do I think the lines should be dark. Steel says that the twine used to sew them should be of beeswax with a 1/6th part of turpentine, which suggests to me that they were quite pale. Cloth sails, on a small model built c. 1960 Recently I tried a very different tack, for a very small model of PS Britannia. I used kitchen foil, folded and then unfolded to mark the seams, and then painted. I’d used foil for flags previously, and it worked fine, with the only problems being that the sails have no translucency at all, and of course hang stiffly. I don’t think it would well on anything more than a miniature model. Kitchen foil sails on a tiny model Then I tried another way for a model of the celebrated ship drawn by Matthew Baker(see photo above), often thought questionably to have been the Revenge, and equally questionably identified as the Elizabeth Jonas by the Science Museum. I’d read about the use of ‘Modelspan’ (which sounds like the tissue I used in the 1950’s for KeilKraft aircraft models), but instead of buying some, I tried the kind of tissue used for nose-blowing. Soaked in a very dilute mixture of paint and glue, this worked reasonably well for furled sails. So, for this Agamemnon model, I considered kitchen foil, but in the end bought some tissue paper intended for model aircraft, coloured it with dilute paint, and used it for furled sails (well, one furled sail so far). Much tidying up to do, of course.

It’s been far too long since I last posted an update. There’s been the Olympics to watch, the garden to deal with, etc. , and progress has as a result been slow. The model won’t make it to this year’s village show, but there’s always next year. The photo shows that the standing rigging is now just about complete. The tiny deadeyes were a particular problem to thread, and the shrouds seemed to take ages. One major difference in appearance from what seems to be the common approach is that I have used black rather than pale thread for the deadeye lanyards. My argument is that it’s unlikely that the lanyards would have been constantly adjusted - it would have made sense, surely, to use tarred rope for them, given their exposure to spray, wind etc. Paintings for the most part do not show light coloured lanyards. An exception is the picture by John Cleveley the Elder of ‘A Sixth Rate on the Stocks’ which does show, on the left, a ship in process of being rigged, with light coloured lanyards, but I suspect that these would have been tarred when the ship went to sea. As for models, some of those in the National Maritime Museum do have light brown lanyards, such as that of Centurion (https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66403), but that was re-rigged in the 1930s. Steel suggested that lanyards should be ‘well greased’, which is not all that helpful. I think that a dark brown might well have been more accurate, but I like the look of black. Ignore the light-coloured threads in the photo - they are there to facilitate threading the blocks later with the running rigging. There are lots of very fiddly things with a model of this size. One is the hammock cranes. I experimented with various possibilities, and found it impossible to build them up in situ on the modal. The easiest method was to make the whole unit, complete with netting, and then to put it in place. I don’t do soldering, so relied on twisting wire and fixing it with CA glue (which I hate). The netting was bought for a different model some years ago from Cornwall Model Boats. The final result could, as ever, be neater, but it’s good enough for me, though there's some tidying to do. I've only done one so far, as the second photo shows. The sharp-nosed pliers, incidentally, must be about 65 years old.

It’s a long time since I updated this blog. No excuse really, but the rigging does take a lot of time, particularly at this small scale. Threading tiny deadeyes is not my idea of fun, but it has to be done. And there are distractions in the summer, such as the garden. This picture of the model goes back a bit, but gives a good general impression. Now, carronades. Did Nelson have two 68lb carronades on Agamemnon? The website https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/01/20/the-carronade-in-service/ says that he had them from 1793, but the excellent account in https://falkirklocalhistory.club/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/object-9-carronade.pdf , p. 35, has the date as 1798. I suspect that in the latter case a ‘3’ has been misread as an ‘8’. I found, rather to my amazement, that it is possible to buy very beautiful 3d printed 1/146th scale model carronades, but they would look out of character with the rest of my model. So, the carronades are simply carved from dowel rod. A bit crude, but all right at this scale. I managed to make breeching loops for the 68 lb ones, but not for the smaller ones. The carriages present more of a problem than the guns themselves. There was, it seems, a good deal of experimentation. There is a 68lb carronade in the Royal Armouries (https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-6134) with a carriage that has two small trucks at the front, and none at the back. It has no evident method of elevation, and there is no slide. It could have been intended for a fortification on land, or might be naval in origin, but it’s probably best ignored. There’s then the question of whether the carriage was fixed with a swivel at the front enabling it to be traversed, or be fitted with four small trucks. I’ve gone for the swivel option. The photo below shows three attempts, with the Royal Armouries type on the left, and a more-or-less final version on the right. The view of the stern shows the six smaller carronades in place. The forward ones would have shot through a gap in the shrouds, as it was not until a little later that the Admiralty forbad this, because of the potential damage to the rigging. The final photo shows one of the two 68 lb carronades in place on the forecastle. I’ve not tried to fit the tackles that a carronade needed, but I might attempt that later.

Work proceeds, if slowly, on the rigging. Tiny deadeyes are fiendish to thread, but I'm now on the mizzen topmast, so nearly done. I’ll leave photographing until the standing rigging is more-or-less complete - at present there are still too many loose ends etc., and it looks a bit messy. In between rigging the model, I thought I would have a go at the ship’s boats. Various ways of making them occurred to me . I could approach my eldest grandson, and ask him to make the basic shells with his 3D printer. He’s very clever with it, and has even made a model of a fighter aircraft with folding wings, but I’d rather do the work myself. Milliput might be a possibility. Or I could carve them, but that’s not easy as they need to be so thin. It then occurred to me to try using a balsa wood former to make a papier maché shell. The problem was, of course, that the paper strips, inundated with glue, would stick to the balsa wood. Greasing the mould with some Duckham’s car grease, bought in the 1960s and still usable (the tin alone worth much more now on Ebay than it cost when new and full), made it a bit difficult to get the first layer of newspaper in place, but after that the process went fine. The boat was then cut in half, to make it easier to remove the moulds. The balsa wood came away fairly easily, thanks to the grease. The two half-boats were then glued to the keel (made from card), and I could then proceed to put in ribs, again using card not wood. Then the thwarts were installed. I hope the photos show just how small the scale is - they show a 23 foot boat. A couple of uncertainties. Do I fit the boats with rudders? It seems to me more likely that the rudders were fitted when the boats were launched, not when they were stored. I could not find an ideal photo on the National Maritime Museum site, but it looked to me from the model of HMS Mars, for example, as if the rudders were not fitted. And I just don’t understand the davits that are shown on some of the plans in the Museum, so I’m not trying to fit them. Adding a windlass, however, should certainly be possible.

Oh dear. No one has complained about this, but the trestle- and cross-trees really were just too big. I looked at the plans in Longridge’s book about HMS Victory, and they are shown as tiny. That’s not right either - I worked out the dimensions using Steel’s figures, and I needed to make them about 2/3 of the present size. That was possible, though the cross-trees are now too small to be drilled for the rigging. Anyway, the revised ones don’t look too bad to me, though of course a photo brings out all the imperfections. Please remember that the maximum dimension is three quarters of an inch. Despite them being small, they seem strong enough, thanks to the Bahia rosewood. I think it’s very important to avoid making things oversize if possible; I’ve seen too many photos of models where this is a fault. The topmasts are not yet fixed in place, but I put them in just for the photo. The view through the window does not, incidentally, reveal just how unbelievably wet the garden is. On a different topic, I had asked earlier if anyone knew what had happened to the modelships.de site. I found the answer on the web, and it’s a sad one. The owner of the site died, and that meant the end of it.