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I'd turn it into Hornblower's Witch of Endor. The one he recaptured from the French after his escape down the Loir.

I think Nelson's Victory was actually the 4th of that name. I can't recall exactly but there were a number of Victory in the RN prior to Nelson's Victory.

I'm in awe.

1:12? That's gargantuan. No longer a model but a true small yacht. A very VERY detailed small yacht. Would be very cool to see. I love the 74s and can't see enough of them. Keep up the beautiful work Gaetan. Daniel

This build is going to be epic. Looking forward to it. Gaetan, will a 1:1 scale be next?

Masting and rigging the clipper ship and ocean carrier by Harold Underhill will get you a pretty good understanding of how it all works and why it's done the way it is. It's specifically about the clipper ship and large four posters of the end of the age of sail but even if you're interested in earlier periods, it will give you a good working knowledge of how and why things are done the way they are done.

The reason for raking masts differently like that was quite well known back in the day. It splays open the space available for sails without blanketing one another. In other words, your sails will not tend to overlap one another if the tips of the masts are further apart. Cutty Sark's masts are raked 1 degree more for each mast moving aft if I recall correctly. If you rake them all the same (except I suppose in a schooner with 3 more more masts) something will "not sit well" to your eye.

Looks li a great start. I'm helping my 9 year old son build the classic Revell model of her. He's enjoying it and so am I. I built a couple of them when I was a kid and it brings back memories. Looking forward to seeing her progress. Odd we don't see more models of her on this site, she's such a famous ship.

How long will she be between perpendiculars at this scale? Sounds huge.

I was in France earlier this year at the maritime museum in Toulon. I picked up 3 of the 4 volumes. They didn't have volume 3 in English. If I ever come across it, I'll probably grab it. I think I paid something like 500 Euro for the three books. They were new and still in the plastic wrapper they came in. They had some well thumbed examples of French versions of it and all of them in French new but were unfortunately missing the 3rd English volume.

Absolutely awe inspiring. Beautiful work.

Cutty Sark has her gun displayed on top of the monkey deck just forward of the helm. Pretty small, mostly for signaling but not a stretch to imagine it shotted.

Does anyone know, or can anyone tell from the images if all three axles spin at the same speed or is the gearing such that they spin at different speeds? Thanks for the images, they are really clear for a lot of the detail I'm trying to figure out.

Nils, I thought you might have something. Thanks.

I'm trying to find details on design and construction of Jarvis Brace winches. I can't seem to find much online other than a few pictures from Stad Amsterdam, Kruzenshtern or a few other old 4 posters etc. I'm looking for design details, ratios, drum taper. What are the considerations to make the winch work properly, not so much how thick to make the materials so they will hold up to the task though that is also important in the construction of them. Anybody research these winches and have some images or some text describing what I am looking for? Thanks, Daniel

Reading that article published in Nov 1851, there's a lot of detail that it would appear the newspaper publisher and author assumed the general public knew about ships, their construction etc. Today it would never fly. (pun intended). Too bad. It's nice to have a working knowledge of things and so much of our specie's history and advancement is tied to the ships and the sea......

Looking good Adam. Too bad you had to sell her. This model will be a suitable memorial to her memory. Did I tell you I have plans for my 1:1 ratio schooner now? They arrived in the mail this week. I can't spend enough time poring over them lately. Kathy's going to divorce me if I don't spend more time with her than these drawing soon. Cheers.

I thought you were going to say you snapped the model by accident with the towel. I can't imagine the damage that would cause.

Can't wait. I have been busy but still have a CS hull for you. I'll look into boxing it up when I get home from this deployment soon.

It's a place to keep all the lines connected that otherwise would have been made fast to the sail. Instead of downrigging everything and not having reefing tackles, bunts, clews etc struck below, they fasten them to the monkey face plate and call it a day.

Copper plates for sure.

Those chains are likely tops'l sheets. Since there are two, I'd say there's a pair for the upper tops'l sheets and a pair for the lower tops'l sheets but Campbell's I'm pretty sure shows which ones they are. Lower tops'ls for sure though, they were pretty much set when the ship sailed and never furled until she arrived at her destination. They were the first set when sailing and last ones taken in when the weather blew up. I may be wrong but I think some of the big 4 post cape horners didn't even have lower tops'l sheets, they simply shackled the sail to the course yard below it. I may be wrong on that though. There are some interesting details in that image. There's a spectacle plate (also known as a monkey face plate. Has the large ring with two smaller rings on top. It's in the top of the image, just left of center) in there which would have been fitted to the corner of the sail. As it stands, it only has sheets and clewlines fastened to it with no sail bent on. The riveted iron of the mast is clearly shown as well. On the left of the image there's a wooden hook fastened to the forward most shroud of the starboard main gang of shrouds on the outboard side. This was to keep the sheets from dragging in the water. All the way to the right is a spar on the boat boom. There's some sort of fitting on the end which leads me to believe it may be a stuns'l boom. Not sure though, there's not much to go on. It's not a bare spar though.

Each ship would likely be a little different, even amongst ships of a class. I tend to think this one has a roof though based on the drawings. I haven't seen a cistern there but I have seen a bathtub below in the quarter gallery lined with lead.

There's no doubt that's a roof with carvings on it. Often times that roof would have been covered in lead sheeting as well. Not always and I don't know for sure about this particular vessel but I can't think of any vessel that had a balcony with railing there. There's no access to it and as mentioned before, it's not very conducive to shedding water to have a flat surface there.

Awesome. That will come in handy for sure. Now that you're done so much small fiddly stuff.