georgeband

Allan, Here's a link to Phil's spreadsheet. Use it wisely. I, perhaps unwisely, have modified it for my own purposes and had to guess some sizes for ropes which Lees has not included. I forgot yesterday to include the drawing of the jibboom that I used for Whiting. It might be useful for a Ballahou builder so here it is. George

It has taken a while and I have completed the woodwork for the bowsprit, cap, jibboom and martingale. The drawings I prepared needed a few tweaks along the way when reality intervened and I have spent an age defining the rigging plan. According to my log this stage of the build took 18 hours though the drawings themselves took about twice that time. This is the finished article and I will not bore you with all the construction details. Here is the tip of the bowsprit from below to show the bees and bee blocks. My current task is to expand the rigging diagram to include the sizes of ropes. I have modified a spreadsheet table that Phil (Dr PR) originally set up using information from Lees. Lees' scaling rules give a wide range of sizes with some very small differences between them and I am resorting to rounding the figures for three reasons: I cannot believe that a vessel with limited storage space would keep sizes equivalent to model diameters of 0.20 0.21 0.23 0.24 0.25 0.26 0.27mm. (What happened to 0.22mm?) The visual difference between these sizes is too small to see Other tables such as zu Mondfeld give quite different answers. As with the spars and sails, the rope sizes are judgement calls. At this time I think I will probably have ropes that go up in steps of 0.1mm diameter, possibly with an extra for 0.25mm. What do others choose in this situation? George

George, I have scanned the relevant page from Marquardt and here is a crop which shows three alternatives for holding the bowsprit to the hull. The author gives precious little guidance about which was used when or where and I did not see anything which suggests that the choice of method depends on the length of the bowsprit. The other illustrations on the same page show variations for bobstays and shrouds. This is the key to the pictures (which I cannot make smaller here...) I hope that some of this helps. George

George, The book I usually refer to during my build of a schooner is Marquardt's 'The Global Schooner'. On page 169 he shows three alternatives for gammoning and the simplest is one that uses an (iron) ring in the stem, below the bowsprit. He also shows variations of shrouds and bobstays to support the tip of the bowsprit. Let me know if you want to see the relevant page and I will scan it for you. Best regards, George (another one)

It's my pleasure to help, Colin. Transcribing log books and other documents is an absorbing hobby and I vaguely remember when I first understood Do.Wr. It was when a log book had 'Do.Weather' for one day after a sequence of 'Do.Wr.' and the penny dropped for me. George

Martes, Here are a couple of pictures from USN archives. The first is St Thomas in the Virgin Isles in 1823 which shows a lot of ships and other vessels in harbour. At the left of the pack is what looks like a schooner with no yards on her masts; they might have been lowered to deck level but their absence in the drawing is certain. https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/USN-901000/USN-901913.html This is a crop of the area of interest. Here is another, similar picture of Laguira (Venezuela) which unfortunately is not dated. This time there is a schooner just to the right of the centre of the pack which is described as a 'Dutch merchant schooner'. As with the picture above she has two tall masts and no apparent yards. https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/USN-901000/USN-901914.html Neither of these pictures has positive confirmation of triangular sails though the absence of yards does suggest that they could be examples of Bermudan rig. Good hunting for more pictures! George

I have used teabag paper to make a sail for a 1/64 boat. The paper was reclaimed from a used teabag and therefore has sound environmental credentials, but the size is limited. The photo shows a tea-stained sail glued to a wire mast; the seams are drawn on with pencil. A quick search on the web for 'tea bag paper' shows several suppliers who offer sheets or rolls at low cost. My intention with Whiting is to use this paper for the sails, and even to try printing the seams on it. At my rate of building this is probably a year away... George

Phil, You are a brave man to try to follow the 'rules' for sails. They are much like those for masts and yards, and contemporary sources agree on some points but not on others. I am sure that the final decisions were made by the man holding the needle. One book that is worth looking through is Steel's 'Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship'. He concentrates mostly on the sails for a 20 gun vessel but does refer to others too, even boats. You can find a web copy at https://maritime.org/doc/steel/ and sails are from pages 83 to 151. There's a lot in there and it will probably confirm that your decisions are reasonable and realistic. George

Masts and yards Back to model making again and I have made a start on the masts and yards. Admiralty drawings are the original source of most information about the hulls of Royal Navy vessels but they often tell us little about the masts, yards and sails. Whiting is no exception and all that we can glean from the drawings for Haddock and Cuckoo are the diameters of the two masts and the bowsprit (6mm) and their positions and angles. For ships and brigs there are established rules for proportions with which we calculate the sizes of the spars from, typically, the length and breadth of the hull. The situation for schooners is not so simple and the rules given in different, near-contemporary books are not consistent and give different answers. For example, the length of the main mast from deck to top is given as 208, 194, 230 and 223 (mm at 1/64 scale) by Fincham, Rankine, Cock and Hedderwick in the mid-1800's. Two later books, Lees and Mondfeld, have answers of 152 and 161mm. Phil has done some outstanding work in Excel to combine all these results and I have drawn heavily on his work. Thank you Phil. An alternative approach is possible with the Admiralty drawing of the sail plan for HMS Adonis shown in ZAZ6196. Adonis was a Bermuda built schooner, very similar to the slightly smaller Fish class, built soon after the Fish schooners in 1806. It is very likely that the rules for masting of Adonis were the same as those for the Fish class. I took a pragmatic approach and changed the scale of the Adonis drawing so that the waterline length of the hull was reduced and made the same as Whiting. The lengths of the masts and yards taken from this reduced drawing could now be transferred to the Haddock drawing, making allowances for the different angles of the masts and bowsprit. (The length of the main mast with this method is 196mm and Rankine's formula happens to be closest for this dimension.) Adonis also has a different arrangement of jib sails in comparison to the descriptions written by Sub-Lieutenant John Roach in his log book and a few adjustments are needed to allow for this. The diameters of the spars apart from the two lower masts and the bowsprit are now found by comparing the answers from the various rules and using judgement. As one example, the maximum diameter of the spread yard had a range from 2.8 to 3.1mm and I chose 3.0mm. The diameter of the jib boom could be between 2.0 and 3.0mm and I chose 2.5mm. It might to possible to find a 'true' answer but this method gives parts which look right and the variation is within modelling tolerances. The masts, yards and sails for Whiting are in the drawing below. This is my outline plan. The spars now have their lengths and maximum diameters and can be drawn in detail for model making. Similarly, the basic outlines of the sails need to be refined. I am now working on the bowsprit and jib boom and it is taking a lot longer than I anticipated. The current status of the bowsprit is shown below. The puzzle that I am tackling now is where to put several eyes on on the bowsprit cap to attach eight ropes, as well as mounting a jack staff and a martingale (dolphin striker). The contemporary sources I have are arguing amongst themselves as usual. George

Here's a photo of a restored gig at Portsmouth (UK) which has angled footboards which can also be adjusted for length of leg. This footboard has three slots into which it can fit. George

A few photos to show a milestone in the build. (The pumps are standing loose at the moment so I can move them out of the way when rigging.) As I said above, the next big job is the masts and everything that goes on them. George

My experience with Caldercraft dowel and plywood has not been very positive. The keel and bulkhead parts were a very loose fit and measurements showed that the ply was 3mm thick and the slots were 3.2mm wide. It suggests that someone thought that 3mm and eighth inch looked the same and could be substituted. Similarly, the dowels were too big to go into the slots in the keel though that problem was easy to solve by sanding a couple of flats on the dowel. I hope that Caldercraft has improved since then. I agree with comments above that the dowels will acquire various tapers (and even octagonal sections) when they become spars and a small difference in the size of the original stock is minor. If you do want to reduce a diameter then grip the dowel with sandpaper and thick gloves and either spin the dowel with an electric drill or rub the sandpaper up and down along the dowel while slowly turning it with your other hand. I don't like the noise of a drill and use the manual method. For tapering I have used a small plane to get the basic shape right. George

Sweeps continued I made brackets from the etched brass 'chains' that came with the Ballahoo kit. I cut off the eye and filed all the edges smooth. The narrow section is then bent through 90° to form a 4mm long upright. A second right angle bend defines the base which is just over 4mm long internally. The remainder is a longer upright that will be glued to the bulwark. I glued a short length of thin, scrap, etched brass fret to the narrow section so that it projects a little below the base and is there to stop a lashing rope from riding up the side. The brackets are painted black. I glued the brackets between the gunports and their adjacent sweep ports with the top touching the underside of the gunwale. This looks reasonable and supports the oars in a balanced way. There are six sweeps on each side, three with their blades forward and three with the blade aft. I tried to arrange them in a cleverly designed pattern but gave up and let them fall into a natural arrangement when I tightened a thread around them to hold them to the brackets. I tied the ends of the thread with a reef knot and let the ends hang down. The hull is now mostly complete. The remaining additions will be Some figures to give a sense of scale. I have Captain Amati and his crew already. A spare spar or two, probably tied on top of the gunwales at the aft end of Whiting. The anchor rope on one side. Refitting the pumps that I took out while building the housing over the main ladderway. Making drivers for LED lights that connect to the optical fibres I installed to illuminate the interior. The masts and spars and sails and rigging are the big job that will wait until my next modelling season because I will need to change direction and concentrate hard. Lots of judgement calls needed for them. George

Research for a model often becomes historical research and a pleasure in its own right. This happened for me with the schooner HMS Whiting, built in Bermuda in 1805, which according to Wikipedia was captured twice in 1812 when her history comes to a halt. I had a lucky discovery with a commentary on a legal case that linked Whiting to her new identity as a privateer in the service of the nascent Republic of Cartagena. Her new name and captain's name opened other routes for research which takes her intriguing story to the beginning of 1814. The 1805 Club published my paper on this topic in its journal The Trafalgar Chronicle. I have attached a copy. George HMS Whiting as San Francisco de Paula.pdf

Thanks for the information, Ollie. At the moment I feel seduced by the idea of a rope walk and am parking the anchor rope for later. George