uss frolick

One unusual thing about the Alliance: Late in the war, she was able to replace her 12-pounders with the guns that had been ordered to be cast for the lower deck of the Bon Homme Richard, had the latter survived - twenty-eight long French 18-pounders. No other contemporary American frigate could carry that many guns on their main deck, except the Confederacy! So the Alliance had some special characteristics of many other ships. But from the few contemporary paintings that do survive of her, every one conveniently sketched in John Millar's book, and unlike the Confederacy, the Alliance appears to carry a round modern bow, not a beak-head bulkhead.

One theory about the Alliance in "The Frigate Essex Papers" is that, since she was built by the same Hackett family that would go on to make the Essex 20 years later, both frigates were built to the same general model, with slightly differing dimensions.

A used copy of Michael Feather's Frigate Amphion book just appeared on Amazon. Softcover, 80 pages, only $113 plus shipping. Such a deal ! Too rich for me ... Is it really that good, or is it just very rare, or both?

I have the book too. It is fun to read! They are mostly reconstructions, but they are best guesses given what little information survives. Ex: The reconstruction of the Continental Frigates Providence and Warren based on the lines of the Privateer Oliver Cromwell, because the latter might have been built by the Brown Brothers of Rhode Island, who we know built the former two! Hey, why not? Could-da happened!

The Barbados was the Scourge. Just as well, since the term Scourge is often associated with marauding native americans, the figurehead might have been an Indian warrior like the Rattlesnake's, whereas Rhodes is associated with Greece (an island, I believe). An Indian figurehead trumps an allegorical Greek God in my book any day.

... Except the Rhodes is not the Rhodes! This according to author Miller in his 'Early American Ships' (1976), pp. 186-7. She was taken the same afternoon alongside another privateer called the Scourge by HMS Prothee. Both privateers were taken into the Royal Navy but only the slightly larger Scourge had her lines taken off. Chapelle mixed up the two ships in 'The Search For Speed Under Sail' (1967), since the Admiralty draught is of her after she was renamed, HMS Barbados. The surveys of both ships were printed in the letter-book of Lord Rodney, which allowed Miller to correct Chapelle. Makes little difference, however, except maybe for someone trying to reconstruct the figurehead.

Johann, I sure hope that you are planning to publish a book someday about your Creole build!

Eric Cartman is my hero: "Respect Mah Authori-tah!"

The Chatham series is outstanding! So many paintings, portraits, sketches and NMM plans packed into six volumes. Very informative text too. They were also published through Naval Institute Press here in the US. Well worth the cost if you are a RN history buff.

Probably. She was by then a "modern", nearly new vessel armed with carronades like the Syren.

I prefer the look too. A normal sized one is fine for the Enterprize's 1813 appearance, like the one on the Syren, or the later Grampus, but not one of those Confederacy-sized monsters on the Venice draught!

What was the function of the beak head anyway, other than fashion? Is it just to have something really strong to gammon the bowsprit to? Do square rigged vessels have more stress on the bowsprit than fore and aft rigged vessels?

Fantastic subject and model! In 1819, the Columbus carried 42-pounder carronades, and only 32-pounder long guns on her lower two decks. This should account for the additional height. In 1845, her second commission, she instead carried 32-pounder carronades on her spar deck. She didn't get any 8" shell guns until 1845 either. Are you working with William Crothers' "Seagull" plans? He reconstructs the stern carvings based on a letter written by ship-carver William Rush.

You 'splain things better.

Square rigged ships were reportedly less prone to roll with the wind abeam than for and aft vessels, which seems kind of counter-intuitive but it was so described in another officer's letter, and a brig was harder to dismantle in time of action than a schooner, primarily because there was so much more sail, spars and standing rigging aloft to begin with.

All Feldman's numbers are guesses, made either by him, or the curator at the time of the Naval Academy. If you don't know the scale of the original model, and you don't know a single dimension of the real brig, then all you have to play with, is proportions, and you have to guess. The conversion specifically of the Enterprize, at least, from a schooner into a brig, is shown in the correspondence of the time to have been made by her 1811-13 commander, the soon-to-be-famous Lieutenant Johnston Blakeley, over the objections of Tingey and others. As Blakeley explained to the Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton, wanted a more stable gun platform. In this, he was successful. At this point, I must make a shameless plug for my book, "Blakeley and the Wasp", Naval Institute Press, 2001. I have two chapters on the Enterprize when JB had her.

That's interesting about the Santee's new stern frames too. It mean that they took a lesson from the Adams lengthening and made the new midship section not so far aft along in the hull. The Portsmouth (NH) papers noted only that in 1855 Santee "was remodeled and her prow was made sharper".

Option One: Lengthening a ship can really only be done relatively EASILY amidships, where the task at hand is making a bunch of copies of the midship frame that would not interfere with the existing lines. This was done to the Adams frigate, in the extreme, but by creating such a long midships 'flat', it altered the ebb of the water around the hull so badly, that it created a 'chatter' at the rudder that it wore out the pintles and gudgeons after only a couple years. Since the Enterprize had to be so completely rebuilt after only a half dozen years since her visit to the Mediterranean dockyard, I suspect that the midships keel splice was equally as rotten as the majority of the new frames that had to be replaced. I suspect that they pulled out the keel splice and replaced it with a longer splice. I don't think that they would have added a eight feet midship keel splice in 1804, and then added a second five foot splice in 1811 right next to it. That would have been structurally unsound in the dangerous extreme. Option 2: However, in the 1850s, the navy lengthened the Frigates Santee and Sabine by replacing everything forward of the midships frame, including the keel, and re-lofting the lines to a new forward frame design. This was done in anticipation of a steam conversion which never came. If this was the method employed on the Enterprize, then it would have been more difficult, requiring a complete redrawing of her plans. But since the US Navy didn't even have plans in 1811 to 'redraw' (by their own admission) they would have had to take the lines off first, in order to have something in which to alter. So they might have just completely rebuilt her lines to a whole new set of plans, making use of the after keel and those floor timber which they could make fit.

Nobody knows how big the Fair American was. There is no scale on the model and no dimensions survive. The old Modelshipways kit guessed at the scale of the model with their solid hull kit and thought 3/16th on an inch was right. When they went over to the POB kit, they changed the scale to 1/4" sclae, even though the model was the same size! I think she was larger and the earlier 3/16th of an inch was closer to the truth. The model was thought to have been in 3/8 inch scale. So MS took the likes off, reduced the plans by half, and called it 3/16 scale. Later, for some unclear reason, they determined that the model was instead in 1/2 inch scale, so they relabeled the kit as 1/4th. I think she was closer to 100 feet on deck than 70-ish, so IMHO, MS got it right the first time.

Remember also, that not all heavier vessels pursuing you are behind you, like the classic motorboat chase in From Russia With Love ("Heave too, Mr.Bond! Spectre Three: You're firing too close!"). They only have to be to windward of you, most likely on your weather quarter where the stern ports are of no use. It seems that a recoiling gun could cut your tiller rope. In the heavier American sloops, like the Wasp and Hornet, the iron goose-necked tiller and its tackle were below in the great cabin, so perhaps the Enterprize was retrofitted with this device by 1813.

Remember, there's a big tiller with all its relieving tackle covering the deck aft the wheel.

Robinson said that he wanted to lengthen her, implying that he didn't. The lengthening must have happened in 1811. An additional 7.5 feet is substantial. Dumb question: Did Salvini use the English-measure foot or the slightly longer French foot? Carvings unknown. Probably a simple billet-head forward, and minimal astern: Stars - maybe a small eagle. All that we know about her stern, is that just an hour before they fought the Boxer in 1813, Burrows decided to chop away a section of it so that one of his nine-pounders could be run out aft, just in case he had to flee a stronger force. (A move which disheartened the men, according to a court martial held for cowardice against Masters Mate William Harper.) So no stern chase ports as re-built. Use similar USS Vixen for general appearance.

Sorry to hear about the lost half hull model. That's interesting what you pointed out about the lengthened section of the Salvini Plan. I didn't see that. Remember that the American Commander Robinson noted (rather strangely for a letter up the chain of command) that he wished that he could have lengthened her a bit. Perhaps Robinson and Salvini spoke of the idea, and were in full agreement. So maybe Salvini went ahead and copied the Enterprize, lengthened her (on paper, at least) and added all those European fiddly bits that make any Mediterranean naval officer's heart swoon, like a full projecting head, false stern windows, thick carvings and swivel gun posts for and aft. Were I to model the Enterprize, I would take that first plan, remove the lengthened center section and the swivel posts, redraw a simpler head, and space the gun ports to fit the paintings.

Excellent! As they say in Alabama, "Stop your fiddlin', and start your widdlin."

Cheers John! I'm not sure why you are comparing the body lines of the La Venus and the La Justice, two different ships, and expecting them to line up, even imperfectly. I've looked at so many draughts of Sane designed frigates over the years, that were supposedly sister-ships, and their outboard profiles don't even look remotely alike. Visually, it's almost like every French frigate is a one-off! If I were you, I would examine one of the MANY later British Admiralty as-actually-built draughts of Sane designed ships, and not one of the first earliest frigates like Venus. And I don't believe that every ship attributed to Sane was actually designed by him. The classic example is La Renomme of 1806, later HMS Java, "said" to have been designed by Joel Sane in the records. Although her specific draughts do not survive, there is a surviving contemporary rigged model of La Renomme in the Musee de la Marine. Photographs of her bow-on show a midship section shape drastically different from Sane's classic, French apple-body. Instead, it shows a frigate more attributable to Forfait with the long "V-shape" dead-rise. (Forgive my French spelling throughout.) As it turns out, Forfait built many ships in the Nantes region - where Renomme/Java was built - and the draught of one frigate in particular from the NMM, known to have been a Forfait designed frigate, bears a striking resemblance to the model, and even includes two features unique to only that model and not seen on other draughts. It's almost like since Sane designed so many ships of all types - hundreds - that whenever a question arose later on about who designed the mysterious "frigate X", about whom the historical records are at best fuzzy, the clerks might have said, "Uh, I don't know. The probability is high that Sane designed her."