Jump to content
Supplies of the Ship Modeler's Handbook are running out. Get your copy NOW before they are gone! Click on photo to order. ×

uss frolick

Members
  • Posts

    2,148
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by uss frolick

  1. I've had that book for decades and I love it. Sadly, the zebra muscles are slowly covering the wrecks. (Thank you foreign tankers dumping your Asian-water-ballast.) For that reason, they should be raised and preserved a la Vasa. Can you image the clothing, possessions and paperwork still preserved in the officers sea-chests? Thank you for the review.
  2. I love a good "what if"!
  3. Come on, Chris, just add another deck to the Indy, and no-one will be the wiser ... Easy-Peasy, lemon squeezy! 😇 (The preceding was a joke.)
  4. The French method was fine for French purposes at the time, i.e., dashing quickly out of Brest and racing to Martinique or La Reunion, etc., with cargo, and then speeding home. The British needed stronger vessels, as they were constantly at sea on blockade duty, often not dropping anchor for months at a time. Without knees, the unaltered ex-French ships would work themselves to pieces on blockade.
  5. To save weight, the French did not use lodging knees, but instead dove-tailed the beam ends into larger than normal clamps. As soon as the captured ship went into the dockyard for a major repair, the British shipwrights would have added them with smaller clamps. L'Unite was taken without a fight, so there was no need for an upper-works rebuilding, unless she was already rotten. Will there be a main-deck, long-gun option, preferably with French pattern 8-pounders, for us Tourterelle-loving Francophiles?
  6. There are three old versions of the solid-hull Essex. The ancient 5/64 kit, the old 1/8th kit which is completely solid, and the updated version of the latter, which has better, newer metal fittings and the hull is carved-out down to the gun-deck. The last one, is the one you want.
  7. A very interesting video of a very beautiful ship.
  8. Congress had not yet authorized the rank of 'Admiral', so 'Commodore was the highest honor the navy could legally bestow upon a senior officer. The highest seniority belonged to John Rogers, a man ironically with no notable naval victories to his name.
  9. Scale wetness? It is a ship after all ...
  10. I can't read it without subscribing to the Bangor Daily News. Funny how the story is blurred out, but the adds aren't ... 😆
  11. Those similarities are very interesting, but Corne's East India Marine Hall ship painting does not fly a pennant, the mark of a naval vessel in commission, but what appears to be a big merchant house flag. It could be one of the big Salem East-indiamen like the Belisarius, America or Grand Turk. The (third) America was the former 28-gun French Corvette La Blonde.
  12. The final one of the series. I wonder what happens...
  13. And unlike L'Unite, La Tourterelle (620 tons) fought like hell before she struck to a larger opponent. She even used a special oven to heat "hot-shot" in her defense, but it didn't help her. Lively was a rare, 18-pounder 32-gun frigate. Tourterelle's "as taken" profile with carvings is just too beautiful!
  14. The problem is that most of the builders' plans were drawn up before 1800, at a time when carronades were not overly-common on ships of the line. After that date, bulwarks became planked over, and it was easy to determine where the Carronades went, as their bulwark openings were larger than the nine-pounders. Check later, post-1800 drafts to see where the carronades actually went. After Trafalgar, it was about an even split between the two, and the long guns jumped a caliber to 12-pounders. Harold Underhill's commercial (3/16" scale) plans of the Armada-Class 74's, circa 1806, show where the carronades usually went.
  15. With eighteen long-guns already on the crowded quarterdeck and forecastle, there was no extra room for adding carronades, except maybe on the poop. They sometimes replaced long guns in positions furthest from the chains, so their great flash wouldn't ignite the tar covered shrouds. Where and how many carronades varied greatly from ship to ship, and they increased in number over time. Study the six volumes of William James's "The Naval History of Great Britain" and you'll see what I mean. Their presence was a function of availability and the captain's preference.
  16. I lathed out master barrels in brass for a 12-pounder long gun and a 32-pounder carronade, and took them down to my local pewter artist. He moulded off multiple copies of each for my USS Frolick project. A posted the results few years ago:
  17. Don't forget the relatively recent magnum opus, "Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Pilot Boat Schooner." , by Geoffrey M. Footner, Mystic Seaport Museum, 1998. A modern must-have. Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Tidewater-Triumph-Development-Worldwide-Chesapeake/dp/0913372803
×
×
  • Create New...