Bob Legge

One more update: I finally made the trip down to the Missouri River for a photo shoot along Arabia's natural habitat. I had hoped to do this close to her actual sinking date of September 5, 1856, but this is only a few weeks off so conditions look pretty similar. I shot this at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area, about 135 road miles downstream of her sinking location near Parkville, MO (just upriver from what is now downtown Kansas City); she would have passed this location many times in her service along the river.
 
First, a reminder of the iconic painting used by the museum:
 

 
And here are my two best attempts to recreate the setting and angle (try to ignore the stand):
 

 

 
A few other shots at different angles:
 

 

 
Me with the model:
 

 
And for fun, a black and white shot as a what-if (she was never photographed, or at least no known photograph survives):
 

 
The river itself looks very different than it would have in her time. Back then it would have been a broad, shallow, multi-channelled river full of sand bars and tree snags, carrying a lot of sediment and generally brown, always shifting across its mile-wide floodplain between bluffs several hundred feet tall. Now, it's been channelized for navigation into a single narrow deep channel that never moves, flows a lot faster, and carries far less sediment due to upstream dams. But the shape of the landscape hasn't changed much and she certainly saw that small bluff in the background. There are much larger and more dramatic bluffs in this stretch, but none that can easily be accessed for a photo shoot in this context. But I hope this gives at least a slight idea of how she might have looked churning her way up and downstream in service before finally hitting that snag in 1856,

Hi.
Hi Robert. Did not check the post since October. 
Its been a while but she's all finished and turned out as I expected. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Just a little tidying of the edges and clean the dust off and she's ready to go.
Been a interesting build with Help from a lot of people from all over the globe.
 
Thanks for looking in.
Regards Antony.
 

HMS Dolphin passing St Abbs Head with some local inshore fishing craft
HMS Dolphin (1882) was a screw sloop launched in 1882. She served as a submarine depot ship in WW1 She foundered in 1925 but was beached then salvaged and used as a school ship in Leith. She was broken up in 1977. I did my 'Carering Boy' training in her , straight from school in 1956.

HMCS Rockcliffe on escort duty in the North Atlantic.
w/c 16.5” X 11.75”

Hot off the Brush. Thames Estuary on a blustery day. w/c 14” X 10”

All right, here's all the pictures and captions duly redone from above. Grrrrr.....
 

The way the jig was used to drill a 3/16 inch hole equidistant from the edge of the casement at all Davit points. A 3/16 inch long drill bit used in place of the brass rod. (BK05/24/19) 
 

With the use of the jig, the stanchions were able to be aligned perfectly. (BK 05/24/19)
 

All four and a half surfaces of deck houses are finished to add visual appeal to the model. (BK 05/24/19)
 

Hammocks (160) are tied and ready to be fitted into the line of hammock stanchions on the hurricane deck (done by Vince and Tim, 05/10/19)
 

Using a 1-in. belt sander, the front casement portholes are rough sanded off the ship. (BK 10/10/19)
 

The horizontal timbers are all fit in place and the port and starboard gun ports are filed smooth and true to the template gauge.
 

 

(Previous two pictures) Pear slabs are end glued to begin remaking the gun carriages.  (BK 05/30/19)
 
 

Front of carriage locks are trimmed to plan dimensions. (BK 05/30/19)
 
 

When glue which joined the stacks of cannon carriage sides is removed at plan lines, the stack of gun carriage sides falls apart. (BK 05/30/19)
 
OK, hopefully this will be good. Again sorry for the clunkiness, working to get better. October coming next.

And this is the finished model.
 
Regards,
Alexandru

And here is the rest of the rigging

Cordially
Adrián Sorolla

Hi I’m Adrian Sorolla, I haven’t participated in the forum for a long time
 
 
I’m building a 34-gun Spanish frigate, 1789, called "Mahonesa", I am building it on a 1/32 scale and for its realization I am following the plans drawn by Fermín Urtizberea.
 
Although its construction is already under way, but since there is still a lot of work ahead, I want to present it now in this fórum.
 
I’ll put an excerpt of photos from the previous construction, so you can get an idea of how it is.
 
 
 

 

 


 

 
 


 





Cordially
Adrian

Nice to see you posting your paintings again Jim. I know it has not really been all that long, but when I see a new one it always brings a little enjoyment to my day so I miss them when when they don't show up regularly. 

On the Clyde
 

Queen Mary

George!!!!
 
Thanks a lot for your kind words.....
 
Let’s see the progresses ......
 
First, I spent some time studying how the “stays” are going to be fixed in the hull......in some of the pictures and documents i found something like this....
 
 
 
So not having something else ..... I decided to “install” a couple of these artifacts....
 

 
And now... it is time to start with the external hull....
 



 
Let’s see some pictures of the interior....
 

 

 

 

 
Thanks for all those “likes” and kind words
 
 

This document is in the public domain.
 
Royal_Navy_Wooden_Shipwrecks_Database(1).pdf

Preview of next preparation :
     

90% of Niña's yard done :          

The illustration doesn’t necessarily have to be based on the Turkish ship they met.   I’d wager we are looking at a Hanseatic ship with Turkish flags. Even the figurehead (I doubt 15th century  Turks would put a dog sculpture on their ship by the way - though as mentioned they did charter ships from Christian subjects) looks like the one recently picked up from the bottom of the Baltic: https://www.vrakmuseum.se/en/wrecks-and-remains/shipwrecks/gribshunden

I haven't gotten to 1487 in The Great Sea yet,  but the Turks were mostly lubbers and the Greeks mostly handled the sea going - if not Genoa, or Venice or other webfoot traders - leading up to this time for the city on the Dardanelles.  For the ship type, I would be reluctant to make any regional specifics limited  to too small a region in the Med.  The relevance of the script may not be all that much.
 
There are some interesting details. 
3 masts,  main mast made,  sliding slot for lateen mizzen,  two part yards, 
near horizontal after castle,  too many mushrooms when drawing the fore castle slope. 
serious number of wales, 
I have wondered about  the vertical strakes at the waist -  vertical wales? , but with the number of horizontal wales and the problem that they could cause, I guess that they are rubbing strakes.  These guys stopped as often as a city bus,  for water, food, and trade so hauling up a boat or big barrels must have been a near daily operation.  
The "circular attachments" on main mast castle and fore mast castle - shields? 
The web above each of the mast castles -  was there a problem with resting sea birds and their poop?  If things got to a point where that was needed as a defense netting, conditions on deck would likely have been dire already.  To keep the soldiers in?   I remember a dice shaker -  a flat base, a clear hemisphere, middle long spring with a suction attachment - pull it to one side and let go - the dice rattle all around the interior.  In a blow, anyone up there would be a die.
Why does only the right side of the mainsail have a stitched supplement?

Sounds like me trying to decipher my great great great uncle's journal of his voyage from Gravesend to Adelaide in 1853.
 
April 18th The weather now very calm, had the awning up and established a ???? society for the ???? of bad language, G L ??????? secretary. ???? ???? for a week in succession every time one who said a bad word was fined 1/4d which the secretary collected & paid to me every Sunday afternoon, this has proved an admirable affair.
 
April 30th ???? the trade winds, crossed the Tropic of Cancer.
 
April 23rd Saw Cape de Verde Islands, at least two of them, vis ???? and Brava.
 
April 24th ???? all day, one of the forward passengers shot a duck but could not get it, saw three flying fish.
 
Back on topic, I think I've cleaned it up some.
 

Can anyone help with translating the accompanying text for this picture, of a carrack used in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1487?

I'd always thought the crescent flag meant that it was a Muslim ship, but it seems the crescent was in fairly common use in Western heraldry, and the text might give a clue to the nationality of the ship. 
 
I learnt German for a short time when I was in school, but the elapsed time, the script and the Renaissance German make it impossible for me tomake any headway. I've managed to work out a few words, but the overall meaning is far  beyond me.

There is a PDF copy of the whole (untranslated) manuscript at https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbhs/content/titleinfo/7061 (click on PDF) which can be greatly enlarged in a PDF reader (page 108). Edit: file size 128MB
 
 

Barrels, Sea chest, Bucket

In providing equipment I decided at least on the barrels, sea chest and bucket in addition to the oars. I’m still debating whether to try to make a portable binnacle, but reckon this boat would not have been used for any journeys requiring its use – so may decide to leave it out.


 
Barrels

As I had not made barrels before, I looked into the different ways of making them, and decided to try two of them. The first method was using a solid core of a wood dowel to which is added the width at the middle by ringing it with wood strip or, as I did, a strip of masking tape.


 
There were a number of problems with this method. The first was that no glue I used would stick satisfactorily to the masking tape. That is why it would have been preferable to use paper strips or else strips made of very thin wood shavings. I ended up using excessive quantities of PVA.


 
The second problem was that given the compressibility of the tape, it was difficult to keep to the width of the staves so that all would have the recommended 4” width (at scale). As a result there was a lot of variation in the width – which was to some extent compensated by sanding.


 
The big advantage of this method is that the staves overlap the ends of the barrel, so requiring no further drilling out to leave an overlap. The planking on the ends of the barrel is of course placed first, before placing the staves.


 
I found it was useful to soak the staves first and curve them in a template jig using a hair dryer for rapid shaping.

 


The second method involves cutting long angled strips of wood and gluing them together to form a cylinder. I chose to have 20 staves cut to an 180 angle (20 x 18 = 360). This was because the stave width at the circumference of a 10mm diameter cylinder would then be equivalent to 4” at full size.


 
I found this part to be very simple to do using the Proxxon FET bench saw angle function which has a nice accurate guide to the degree of rotation. The barrel was then fixed on to a dowel which could be held in the lathe, and it was shaped to the correct curvature using a template.

 


The barrel was then stained using walnut crystals, and bands placed with strips of black card. You’ll see the photos later in this post.

Sea chest

I made the chest using a card base on to which wooden planks were glued. A locking plate (made of card) and stanchion (0.4mm copper wire) were added, along with rope handles, two 0.5mm brass rod hinges and two supporting bands of black card over the curved top.


 



Bucket

Making the bucket was initially very puzzling to me. I could see others have made the bucket using the same method as for the barrels – namely the making of angled strips bundled together to form a cylinder, shaped and then hollowed out. I just could not see a simple way of hollowing it out while keeping the angle of the staves.


 
In the end all I did was make the staves individually using as a guide the end dimensions of 10mm tall with a 7mm base. In order to keep it simple I restricted myself to 8 staves for which I made a pattern, glued to a strip of wood, then cut and angled the edges with a razor.


 
I then took the gamble of just gluing the edges to each other, one stave at a time, in the knowledge that the grip of PVA would be sufficient to keep the parts together while adding them to one another and then curving into a cylinder. I left the cylinder to dry overnight, then glued the base on. As I had used white maple, I tried staining with my walnut crystal stain, but it didn’t alter the colour very well, so I had to paint with brown acrylic and finish off with a home-made shellac varnish.


 
I added a rope as a handle.

 



This now leaves me with the choice of whether to go with a binnacle and a boat hook. I can’t see my way to the method of making either one, but I’ve asked a question on the forum about the binnacle and I’ll see what answers I get.


 
Otherwise I’ll be labelling this build as complete.


 
Tony