uss frolick

Portia's first book on the Frigate Essex, a softcover pamphlet reprint of her Ships in Scale articles from the 1980s, often goes for $100!

There was one revenue cutter called the Nonsuch, who briefly sailed with the USS Enterprise off Charleston, SC in 1812-13. She reportedly fought one of two British Privateers that had sailed out of Bermuda in company with the Frigate Aeolus on a cruise. Nonsuch had brought her, a shattered prize, into Charleston late one night and dropped anchor next to the Enterprise. These two privateers were reportedly manned by runaway slaves who had raided many coastal plantations, causing quite a panic amongst the landed gentry. Is there any information on the gallant Cutter Nonsuch?

Start with the basics from the era itself: William James's epic "Naval History of Great Britain" in six volumes, first published about 1823. It has always been in print. Should be easy for you to find over there. James's data was used and reused in every subsequent history. He is surprisingly detailed for the period. See volume III, pages 380-448, in particular.

99.99% of the time, a ship's shot would not need to be 'ready' for use. Most sailing ships of war never fired a shot in anger. Without netting or another wooden batten lashed on top, the shot just would not stay put. There is a sailor-built model in the Naval Academy's collection of a British frigate which shows the shot netted in place and even has anti-boarding netting rigged. It is thought to be the only model showing such detail. It was not pictured in the catalog, but it was once on display.

Remember, shot in the racks were tightly and securely netted in place, or the balls would have gone flying at the first slight pitch or roll!

Just be careful with any exotic wood. The dust can be irritating to some, or downright toxic, so wear a mask when milling. Padauk wood, for example, a beautiful red wood, is especially nasty, according to Father Bill Romero, who framed his 3/16th Essex in it. He had to stop building the model because of coughing spasms. I had heard that African Blackwood can be irritating to some, but not all, who use it. So be careful.

One of the members of the Tampa Bay Ship-modelers, Roman Barzana, used to sell loquat logs back in the 90's. He pops up here occasionally, usually in the 3D CAD section. He might know where to get some. There are two beautiful loquat trees here in my neighborhood, but neither owner wants to take me up my free tree removal offer yet ... (i.e., to get rig of all that yucky fruit on their lawns!)

Loquat - the perfect fruitwood. The grain is tight and makes clean edges like boxwood, it is colored like pear, and it bends without complaint.

That's why I used the weasel-words 'probably' and 'suspect'.

I think that it is now safe to conclude that all Cruisers had the square-tuck stern. This was probably done because nearly all (if not all) were built in private yards, where the standards were much lower than naval yards, using every dwindling bit of available oak timber, under emergency conditions, so it was thought that the stern, a potential weak point, would have to be built as strong as possible, even if that meant using a strong, tried and true, and ancient method of framing. I suspect that the earlier Swans had a much stouter frame. One of the editions of Steele's Shipbuilders Repository, c.1805, includes folded plans of the Cruisers, so I wonder if he mentions their unusual stern frames?

Surprisingly, while both were about 100 feet on the gun-deck, the Swans were just 300 tons, where as the Cruisers were just a tad under 400 tons! It seems counterintuitive, since the Swans were ships, built like miniature frigates, while the Cruisers were just flush-decked brigs.

Well, Beef W's log on his Snake model shows the Gannett's framing plan, and that shows the square tuck frame, so I'm guessing now that they all had them? (But why?) The answer to your question Charlie is, I don't know of any specifically. I just assumed that small oak ships were built according to the same rules of the larger ones. Why didn't the Swan/Pegasus Class Sloops have had them, since they were even smaller?

Thanks for the enlargement, Charlie! Lyon's pic is small. Is that the fashion piece shown on the body plan? It's very feint, but it looks like something is there. I'm leaning the other way now too. But why would an oak ship need one? Only six of the hundred or so brigs were built of fir ... The Scout's framing plan would be more decisive.

The square tuck appears flat from the side. That dark vertical line, about two feet long, at the back of the waterline, which is part of a narrow triangle, denotes one. Irene/Grasshopper has one too. Curious. Petrajus says, on page 62-3: "The Irene, together with a number of brig-sloops and ship-sloos and even frigates of the time, was not only built of fir, but had what was called a 'square-tuck' besides. It was a curious step back in history, which may have had something to do with the necessity for the Admiralty to have a great many plain, but serviceable ships built in the shortest amount of time. Normally, the connection between the transom piece and the stern post was achieved between athwartship timbers, called 'transoms '. The principle one was the 'wing transom'. It formed the base for the 'counter timbers', and the hooding ends of the planking were fastened to it, inasmuch as they could not be brought into the stern post rabbet. The lowest transom was generally short and sharp, like the letter 'V', the top one approached the shape of the beam, while the intermediate transoms formed a transition between these extremes. The transoms were dovetailed into the fashion pieces and let in on the stern post, besides being bolted to them. The did the same service to the planking of the stern as the frames did to that of the sides. The closing of the counter and the stern was affected by a frame of cross beams and stanchions, arranged in accordance with the number of windows, ports, etc. As already pointed out, the construction of the Irene's stern frame was unusually simple. 'Fayed' upon the fore side of the main post was a sort of inner post, on top of the rested the transom, let in on the stern post. Just as in the 17th century, the fashion pieces served to accommodate the hooding ends of the bottom planking as well as the planking of the tuck. There was only this difference that they were let now let into the rabbets, cut in the fashion pieces, so that these timbers remained visible for their greater part. That this was so, appears from the clause in the contract for the Raven, relating to the matter, and the expansion plan, mentioned before." The Raven's contract given in appendix 1, page 271, notes: "FASHION PIECES: To be sided 11 inches, rabbeted, on the outside, to receive the plank of the bottom, and on the aft side, to receive the plank of the tuck." According to David Lyon, in The Sailing Navy List, page 142, Raven is listed as one of only six fir built brigs. They are: Beagle, Elk, Harrier, Raven, Reindeer, and Saracan. Victor and Zebra were built in Bombay out of native teak. There are separate plans of for the oak, fir and teak versions. The plans of the Scout, of 1804, to which nearly all were built, shows, on page 140, no square tuck stern ... ! But Grasshopper was an oak brig. Did Petrajus make the Irene fit the wrong draught and contract? So I guess I was right the first time? Now I am really confused!

You may well be right. All fir vessels were square tuck, but oak ones could be too, I suppose. Was this a nod towards economy? The cruisers were built in private yards. Why would they all have such a old fashioned stern if built of oak? If their frames were lightly built, then would the stronger square tuck have been a precaution? But a square tuck places the plank end seams very close to the water, and this promoted rot and leaks. The round tuck placed those ends up much higher. Now I'm confused.

Nope. You got it backwards. All fir-built ships in the RN had anachronistic square-tuck sterns. Fir timber was too weak to form a modern round tuck, so the RN builders resorted to an ancient, much stronger type last seen on The Sovereign of the Seas! The area under a rounded stern was very high stress structurally. The fir frigates Leander and Newcastle, built of fir, and designed to catch the Constitution Class ships, show square tucks on their framing plans. England was running out of oak in 1812. The Sloop Levant, which fought the Constitution in 1815, and her dozen stablemates built in 1813-4, had square-tucks too, and she was built of fir. The famous Reindeer, which fought the Wasp in 1814, was fir, and her plans also show a square tuck. The Frigate Shannon model in Annapolis shows a square tuck stern, but she is actually a model of the Eurotas, later altered to represent the oak-built Shannon. HMS Eurotas was an 1812-built fir copy of the Leda Shannon Class. The problem was that fir tended to splinter much worse than oak when struck by shot. When Leander fought at The Battle of Algiers in 1816, she suffered 135 casualties I think teak was ok for the round tuck, but definitely not fir.

Notice that the above model wears a square tuck stern. HMS Reindeer and only five other fir-or-teak-built Cruiser-brigs did. Grasshopper did not.

Yep, I think so, just enough room for a vicious looking epervier - or sparrow-hawk.

British ships were not without decoration, but the styles were different, more subdued. Gone were the clunky allegorical figures of Truth, Liberty, etc., and in their places came modern scroll and vine-work, in the French fashion. The problem was that the scrolls, flora and intertwined hawsers were too fine to be represented in 1/48 scale, and so they no longer appeared on the draughts. Instead, separate drawing were made for both bow and stern carvings in 1/2 inch scale, where the detail could be better shown. The problem is that hardly any of those detailed little drawing survive. But some do, like the prize Frigates Imperious (Spanish ex-Fama) and Chlorinde (French), drawn in 1809 and 1810 respectively, following their extensive rebuilds. A brig much smaller than the Cruisers, HMS Boxer, was captured by the USS Enterprize in 1813, but not bought by the US Navy because she was too small. (She was a gun-brig, not a brig-sloop, because she lacked a continuous berth deck, instead having only fore and aft platforms.) Boxer was purchased by a Maine merchant, who used her for years afterwards as a coastal trading vessel. When she was finally broken up, her figurehead - a small lion bust - and her corresponding stern coat-of-arms-thingy were saved, and are now in a maritime museum in Maine. I saw pictures of them both a long time ago, but I can't recall the source.

Thanks for the information! Patrick O'Brian sometimes mentioned the Trabaccolo in his novels, and I wondered what they were!

The Irene book is a rare classic. You were lucky to score one.

When I read this thread title, I wasn't wearing my glasses. I initially thought it said "In Praise of Liquor".

Got it. Just started reading it last night, and it is really informative on 19th century US Navy life. Several gems so far. Mostly about life on board ship, and very little about the exotic flora and fauna of ports ashore - unlike most journals of the time. The Constellation contacts the school-ship USS Plymouth off the Azores on her 1859 training cruise, and she is crewed by 400 Annapolis midshipmen! Had she wrecked, there would have been no Civil War Navies! A fun read.

I just bought a used hardcover copy on e-bay for $11.32 with free shipping! Thanks for the heads up, Paul!

If you can find it, Loquat wood is the very best. It is pear colored, it is uniform, it takes a boxwood-like cut, and it bends without complaint. There is no other wood like it. It was planted here in South Florida by retirees over the course of many decades. Sadly, younger people are having them cleared out. It has light grey bark, and small clusters of grape sized fruit. Roman Barzana, modeler-extraordinaire of Tampa, enlightened me about Loquat.