uss frolick

Great job! Are those Thompson submachine gun drum-mags on top of the 75mm ammo rack?

Great job! Are those Thompson submachine gun drum-mags on top of the 75mm ammo rack?

Great job! Are those Thompson submachine gun drum-mags on top of the 75mm ammo rack?

Great job! Are those Thompson submachine gun drum-mags on top of the 75mm ammo rack?

Great job! Are those Thompson submachine gun drum-mags on top of the 75mm ammo rack?

Great job! Are those Thompson submachine gun drum-mags on top of the 75mm ammo rack?

Looks like something good is happening!
 
Their site now reads:
 
New store coming soon!
We are excited to relaunch SeaWatch books and are currently building a new shopping experience. Please sign up to our mailing list to receive a special discount code for your first order.
 
 

About a dozen years ago, there used to be in my town, a local artist who specialized in custom art and figurines made of traditional pewter. A really cool old hippie dude, I asked him if he could make custom pewter casting s of a some cannon barrels that I had much earlier lathed out of brass. There were two types, a long 18-pounder  - British pattern - 'hung by thirds', of course - and a 32-pounder carronade barrel. His results were astonishingly good, as seen below. These were not finished in any way or cleaned up . The seams are barely noticeable, and the barrel cross sections are round, not squished, as I am told is often the case. The pewter finish is lovely by itself, before any chemical darkening or painting is applied.
 
Here are the long guns. the master above in brass and a cast gun below:
 
0-2 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
Here are the carronades. Note I had the trunnion and the fighting bolt cast  into it as one piece:
 
0 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
Together with a scale:
 
0-3 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
For comparative purposes, I have shown the long gun with Bluejacket's two large 1/4" scale cannon, what I believe to be a medium US Navy 32-pounder and an 8" shell gun, and carriage, from the antebellum period. Bluejacket's guns are cast from their own pewter-like metal with they call "Britannia", and have obviously not been cleaned up, and show a bit of flash:
 
0-5 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
My two barrels sitting on top of Bluejacket's carriages:
 
0-1 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
And I cast a lot of these barrels too. I had initially wanted to build an 18-pounder USN frigate, the Chesapeake, which sailed in 1811-12, when under Captain Evans, no fewer than thirty 18-pounders, and twenty-four 32-pounder carronades, 54 guns total. These were soon reduced under Captain Lawrence in 1813 to 49 guns. 
 
0-4 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
My barrels compared to Bluejacket's large carronade, certainly a 32 or a 42 pounder and carriage slide:
 
0-7 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
A pile of guns ...
 
0-6 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
 
 
 
 
 

Brian Lavery wrote a detailed account of how the French Invincible (74) was captured and taken into service as HMS Invincible. This was in Warship 38 & 39 published in 1986. 

Chris's dining room table:

🙂
Jonathan

I know of at least one BC, the Siro , that was described as "coppered to the bends". She was designed and built  by Thomas Kemp of Baltimore in early 1812 (pre-war) as a French coast blockade runner. She was captured in 1813, but sold out of RN service. Renamed the British letter of marque Atalanta, she was retaken by the USS Wasp in October, 1814, and was noted as being remarkably well built. I would assume that the other Kemp built BC's, like the Grecian and the Lynx, the only two 1812 BC's of which named plans survive, would have been coppered also. Siro was described in one paper as the most expensively built, lavishly equipped private vessel built in Baltimore to date.
 
There is also a surviving contemporary built rigged model of the Schooner privateer Comet, also Thomas Kemp built, which appears to be coppered (green paint). Comet was briefly leased to the US Navy in 1813 because of the high quality of her construction. Kemp was thought to have owned the model.
 
 
Note. They were never actually called 'baltimore clippers' during the war of 1812. This term first popped up later about the 1830's. They were known as 'Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooners', or some variation of that, by those who knew them. See Geoffrey Footner's "Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner", Tidewater Press, Centerville Maryland, 1998. Highly recommend ...
 

And yet they started off so refined, here is a pic of the master carvings for Vanguard, Elephant and Bellerophon. A world away for the semi crushed, undersized white metal castings they turned into.
 
For digital carvings, printed directly from the original file is always the best way to go, as they're not duplicates of duplicates. 

OK, I have just about finished the Indefatigable stern area, and am happy with how this looks, not too austere but not too plain.
 
The PolyBak parts are not glued, but just lying in place. The columns between the lights/windows are 0.6mm pear. 

The weight worries me, to be honest. It will be very expensive to ship, being over twice the weight of even a Sphinx kit, and I worry some people may hurt themselves when moving the box - perhaps adding a set of wheels at one end and a handle at the other end of the box would be a good idea!

That's a great summation Harvey. 

The bound sets do have a number of photographs-- not likely all taken by researchers, but they are well-curated. There is also updated (ca. 1980s) information and background on most of the boats included. Another very nice feature of the bound volumes is the introductory sections which include the history of the HAMMS program as well as retrospectives by a number of people involved.  A very nice surprise is the artistic and full-color plates made by some of the researchers-- there's an entire "artwork" appendix in one of the volumes.  I haven't seen sets listed for $3,000 in recent years, but have for around half that; it's actually an incredible bargain when one considers ordering all the plans individually from the Smithsonian. 
 
Here's a jot I wrote about these Volumes recently, for any interested: 
 

The Historic American Merchant Marine Survey
 
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration had many projects designed to employ workers laid off from various trades.  The short-lived Federal Project No. 6 employed shipwrights, marine surveyors, and naval architects to document ships and boats around the United States.  Despite its formal name (Historic American Merchant Marine Survey), many of the vessels surveyed were more common or anonymous than historic; a number of recreational craft and foreign-builds are also included.  During the year-and-a-half they were active (1936-1937), they recorded over 350 vessels.  Some consist of lines lifted from half-models in museums and shipyards, while others were on-site documentation of full-size vessels—some derelict, some still active.  The presentation consists of the common three-view scale drawing of a vessel’s lines, and often numerous pages of construction details, machinery details, and sail and rigging plans. 
 
These drawings, while available individually from the Smithsonian Institution for many years, had not been assembled into publication until 1983, when the Ayer Publishing Co. of New Hampshire turned these into a large seven volume set, complete with an introduction on the project, retrospectives by those involved, and new introductory information on each recorded vessel.  Further, the volumes include photographs of many vessels during documentation, as well as full-color and monochrome watercolor sketches made by the surveyors. The beauty of this edition is astonishing—and every drawing in it was hand inked by gifted experts, each with their own style, precision, and artfulness. The size—23-1/2” x 18-1/2” is a very worthy size for the quality of the illustrations, and many pages are foldouts. Very few libraries hold these volumes; I haven’t been able to find how many were printed.  According to WorldCat, only 11 sets are in U.S. Libraries, only 2 of which are on the West Coast.  
 
The range of documented watercraft is astounding.  Some of the older recorded vessels are from the 1820s, while others were just a few years old.  The survey includes dugout canoes from Nicaragua, a U.S. Revenue Cutter, sharpies, scows, schooners, barks, full-rigged iron ships, sponge fishing craft, tug boats, steamships, stern- and side-wheelers, and even two Polar exploration vessels (Peary’s S.S. Roosevelt, and what may be the only larger vessel from the survey still in existence: Roald Amundsen’s Gjöa).  Small inshore fishing craft of many designs and lineages are also represented.  
 
The West Coast is well represented for some areas, but in the Retrospective, a contributor expresses regret at not getting the program into and up the Columbia River.  Columbia River watercraft have since received attention and documentation, courtesy of the Historic American Engineering Record, established by the National Park Service in 1969.  The closest-to-Astoria vessel in the HAMMS set is the Steam Schooner Willapa, built in Raymond, Washington in 1908. The Willapa is masterfully recorded in over 17 sheets of drawings.  The volumes include a number of vessels of this type as well as other lumber carriers, including sailing vessels built in the Puget Sound—no doubt many serviced ports on the Columbia River. 
 
That this project was ever created is a bit of a miracle; its success is perhaps even more miraculous given the necessary organization and its brief existence.  At one point, the director of the project (Eric J. Steinlein) was faced with an overwhelming backlog of work the very day before the official termination of the project.  He penned a letter that afternoon beginning “Dear Mr. Roosevelt…” which bought them six more months to work. 
 
That this was the right project at the right time cannot be understated. A collapsed economy and widespread poverty spelled a quick end to many already aged wooden vessels. The age of working sail was effectively over, and steel was becoming the material of choice for smaller and smaller craft—eventually fiberglass would replace the smallest of wooden work boats. During the Great Depression, the older relics had not yet rotted completely away, and they were ripe for documentation.  These volumes provide a glimpse of what was—a diverse fleet no longer in existence, captured in its twilight. Also captured in these volumes are the mastery of draftsmen trained by hand, shipbuilders trained by eye, and the ever-pressing urgency of historical documentation. 
 
 

I know cost is relative, but if we take a look at something very pertinent, then we get a better idea:
 
Caldercraft 1:64 HMS Agamemnon. A kit that uses the legacy POB methods, with dummy barrels for the lower gun deck, nothing in the way of laser-cut/engraved parts. Many generic fittings and also the gun port positions are determined with a paper template, with the exception of quarterdeck ports that are cut into the inner bulwarks. Finishing and detail timber is generally walnut with Tanganyika for decks. Aggy also doesn't have a lower gun deck at all. The main gun deck is complete, but stops fore of a ply bulkhead so doesn't extend to stern cabin areas as they don't exist in kit. In all, Agamemnon is an amazing kit, and we've seen some fantastic builds of her. 

What does she currently retail for? £935 direct from Caldercraft. This is a kit that's now 22-23 years old.
 
Vanguard Models 1:64 HMS Indefatigable.
A kit that uses new design techniques with gun ports built into the hull framing.  Stern cabin with internal engraved details (chequered floor, panelling etc), accessible quarter galleries with seats of ease. Stern cabin windows can be posed open or closed.  Complete main gun deck with option to plug the gun carts into position so they don't come adrift accidentally. No generic parts. All guns on kit are designed to be the exact ones, printed in matt black resin, complete with George III emblems. Other 3D print parts include a proper scale belfry, Brodie Stove (in 4 parts), anchors, carronades/wheels, and also some rudder parts. 10 thicknesses of laser cut sheets. Planking will be in pear, and not walnut. There really is a price premium for going with the much better pear. Less brittle, less fibrous, finer grain and more realistic in colour. Deck planks will be either Red Alder or maple, depending on supply situation at time. To assist with painting, main gun barrels will be positioned after hull painting, and carronades are designed to retract into the hull until the externals are painted, then they can be pulled out into position! Detailed bulkhead screens for cabin. Deck beam positions are also to scale and in scale position, and do not relate to the MDF bulkhead positions. As with other VM designs, a rabbet is built into the keel, allowing easier plank positioning.  Multi-layer channels to simulate the edging of the real thing. Engraved ply sub decks to assist with planking. Five mini kits for each of the ship's boats. Laser cut acrylic window panes. Laser cut and engraved acrylic stand with two-colour nameplate. Large and heavy full colour assembly manual detailing every aspect of construction and providing tips. Of course, Aggy is a 64-gun, but is around the same size, more or less to the razée Indefatigable. Indy just loses the razed areas, but it actually longer than Aggy due to the flying jibboom. 
 
Price? Tentatively around £1000. 
A whole 23yrs after Caldercraft's kit was released.

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone wishing to prepare for an Indy project might wish to purchase this excellent new biography of her most famous captain,  Sir Edward Pellew,
"Commander"
https://www.amazon.com/Commander-Stephen-Taylor/dp/0571277128/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TI3L8HC1BLJH&keywords=Edward+pellew&qid=1651878285&rnid=2941120011&s=books&sprefix=edward+pellew%2Caps%2C70&sr=1-1
 
 
Or this new study of all the midshipmen on board the Indefatigable at the time of her famous battle against the 74-gun Droits de L' Homme,
"Hornblower's Historical Shipmates: The Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable" :
https://www.amazon.com/Hornblowers-Historical-Shipmates-Gentlemen-Indefatigable/dp/1783270993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

"...so looks very rough as usual" 👀
You call this rough??
 
Best regards
Uwe