HMS Mars 1781 by Aa-schipper - Caldercraft - Scale 1:64 - Dutch privateer

[Aa-schipper]

Caldercraft is supposed to be one of the best quality brands around. So I have on my table one of the best kits! My ambition is to make out of this 3 kg bundle of different kinds of wood, the bag full of fittings, the brass details and other small elements the Dutch brig Mars. 

 

 

The “H.M.S. Mars” kit was made after plans of the H.M.S. Orestes, a British Royal Navy brig that began its life as a Dutch privateer called Mars. In fact, as others have noted, there never was an “H.M.S. Mars”. Being a Dutchman myself, I’d like to rewrite history a little, or recreate history: what did the ship look like that was lost in the encounter with the frigate H.M.S. Artois on 3 December 1781?

In the process, I hope to find out a lot more about the Mars, its sister ship Hercules, and about Dutch privateering in the fourth Anglo-Dutch war. The focus will be, of course, on the model itself: what did the Mars look like just before 3 December 1781? What were her colours, how was the rigging, with what cannons was she fitted out, etc.?

 

Count on this becoming a ten-year plan… I’m not in a hurry, and I am quite busy with my job (an office job, not related with wood-working at all), with other hobbies (photography among them—build pictures will be better than the one included in this post) and sports (on land, I'm not a sailor), so I’ll work on this project on and off, not in a continuous fashion.

 

As for my model building experience: after having built a number of plastic kits when I was in my teens (Airfix models of Victory, Wasa, and Cutty Sark), I picked up ship models a couple of decades later when I visited the reconstructed VOC return ship Batavia in Lelystad and found there was a (plastic again) model available. After completing that one, I turned to wooden models and first tried my skills on the Sperwer by Billing Boats. There is a picture of my Sperwer in the completed builds gallery. And now there is the kit that has to become the Mars…

 

On opening the box, others have commented about the quality of the wooden parts, etc. I am not so skilled that I could comment on their quality — it all looks pretty solid to me! I expect to use what is available in the kit, though I’ll be willing to try making adjustments and do some building from scratch to get closer to the historical Mars. I did notice, though, that the booklet with building instructions is not very long or detailed, but I hope that the seven large sheets with drawings will make up for that. Besides, there is the literature. On my bookshelf there are, amongst others:

·               Julier, Keith. (2004). The New Period Ship Handbook. Poole, Dorset (UK): Special Interest Model Books. [With a chapter on building H.M.S. Mars]

·               Dressel, Donald. (1988). Planking Techniques for Model Ship Builders. New York etc.: TAB Books. [Planking Sperwer I found the most difficult part; it took me a lot of time to admit having made errors there, but I finished the single-planked model nevertheless.]

·               Petersson, Lennarth. (2000). Rigging Period Ship Models. London: Chatham Publishing. [based on a 1785 British frigate: the correct period for Mars]

·               Petrejus, E.W. (1974). Nederlandse zeilschepen in de negentiende eeuw. [Dutch sailing ships in the nineteenth century]. Bussum: Unieboek. [Petrejus related that Dutch rigging in the early 1800's differed from the British way of doing it.]

And finally, I hope I can benefit from the experiences of all you great folks at this forum.

 

To translate a fitting Dutch proverb literally: We’ll see where this ship runs aground…

Edited September 6, 2015 by Aa-schipper

[hamilton]

Hi there:

 

Glad you decided to start a build log for this kit - there are a couple on here, I think, which will likely provide some help as you go - though since you're aiming for a particular version, the help might be more in particular construction techniques rather than overall aspects of the vessel. Anyway, I've always admired the look of the Mars and hope to build her myself one day.....I'll follow your build with interest (though ten years is a very long time!)

 

On another note, I've visited the Twente region a couple of times - both times staying in Enschede while visiting at the University of Twente. Good times!

hamilton

[*Hans*]

Hey AA schipper - good luck with this vessel. It is always nice do do some scratch-work and change an excisting kit into something diffirent. Makes it a nice job - not only the building, but also the bookwork you have to do.

 

And regarding the Batavia and the plastic model of Revell - please take a look here:  www.kolderstok-models.com 

[jwvolz]

I've always thought this was a nice looking kit. Good luck with the build. 

[Aa-schipper]

Last days of a privateer — some history in lieu of building

 

‘Hoist another flag! Tie it to a broomstick, if need be!’ But nobody responded as many were wounded, and from the sloop of the enemy frigate Artois officers were making ready to board the badly damaged Mars. Such must have been the last heroic moments of Pieter Hogeboom on the 3^rd of December, 1781, according to sworn declarations from several of the ship’s officers.

They made these declarations in front of a notary more than a year later. Pieter Hogeboom and his father Jan, the captain of the brig Hercules and commander of the two-ship privateering ‘fleet’ apparently needed such a defence of their loss of two beautiful, new, large privateers (I suppose once they all got back from imprisonment in England). Dutch public opinion had had high expectations ‘that they would make the proud Brit shudder’ and their loss during their very first cruise was much talked about. The Hogebooms were accused of carelessness, cowardice, or even collaboration with the enemy. After all, theirs had been the largest privateers that went to sea against the British in 1781, with 140 (Mars) and even 162 (Hercules) heads, while other Dutch privateers counted 13 to 85 men.

The short of the story is known to all builders of the ‘HMS Mars’ model: she was taken on the North Sea by the frigate Artois. Its captain, MacBride, gained fame throughout England for his letter, reporting that he had ‘effectively winged’ one ship (Hercules), then set about taking the other (Mars) as well, declaring them ‘perfectly new and alike … the completest privateers I ever saw; cost upwards of 20,000 £’. His words regarding the Mars were that she ‘struck on our coming up’—no words about hoisting the flag a second time after it had been shot down rather than voluntarily taken down, let alone about wanting to hoist it a third time on a broomstick, as the Martians told the notary.

 

Last days of privateering in Holland

 

The Dutch Republic stimulated privateering in 1781, because its navy was very weak at the beginning of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch war and building of new men-of-war went slowly. However, few merchants in the Netherlands were interested: most rather sold their ships to neutral countries and continued to earn money without engaging in the ‘risky alternative’ of privateering. After all, the British were prepared, having been at war with Americans and French already, protecting merchantmen through convoys with Navy escorts.

Historians counted 29 privateers in the 1780-1783 war, a number much lower than earlier in the century. Sixteen of the 29 privateers were lost, all without taking any prize—Mars and Hercules were not the only failures! Other privateers took some 61 British merchantmen and ‘ransomed’ 40 more. Ransoming means that they settled for a (lower) sum of money rather than physically seizing the ship and going through the tedious procedure leading to auctioning the ship and its contents by the one of the five Dutch Admiralties.

 

Sources

If you're interested in the sources of this story, just let me know—I did not want to clutter the text with notes; this is a build log, not a scientific journal.

 

[amateur]

Hello Aa-schipper,

 

(Btw must be a canoe on the Aa ). mars would make a nice model.

Ever considered bying that orher book by Petrejus : brik Irene? Could also be very helpfull building this ship.

 

Jan

[Aa-schipper]

Hello Aa-schipper,

 

(Btw must be a canoe on the Aa ). mars would make a nice model.

Ever considered bying that orher book by Petrejus : brik Irene? Could also be very helpfull building this ship.

 

Jan

Hello Jan,

 

You got the joke about being a skipper on the Aa! It's just about my level of actual naval competence...

Thanks for the tip about the book by Petrejus. Will get it!

[amateur]

Make sure you have a cheap dopy. Some (mainly US shops) charge ridiculous prices for the book.

 

Jan

[Aa-schipper]

First steps: bulkheads fitted, some already glued in place to the false keel. To make sure that the mast clamps (in the bottom right corner of the picture) will fit, I also dry-fitted the masts (lightly sanded to make them fit into the slots in the false keel).

As I was not sure whether the curve of planking would go well at the bows, I filled up the space before the first bulkhead with some rests of soft balsa wood I had lying around. Saw this trick on some other build log. More sanding to be done, but I guess it will be worth it.

[Aa-schipper]

Rumours and news about Hercules and Mars in 1781

 

Visiting the libraries of the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam and the Maritiem Museum in Rotterdam, in the last couple of weeks I got some additional literature from the 19^th and 20^th centuries about the Hercules and Mars, but nothing in the way of contemporaneous sources. All authors relied (some explicitly, most rather implicitly) on the two reports: MacBride’s letter of December 1781 on his capturing the two privateers, and the ‘Justification’ that the Hogebooms published in 1783. But writing a decade or more (or even more than a century) ago, they did not have easy access to newspapers of the day, which now have been digitized to a large extent. What can we learn from them?

 

Things seemed to be fine with the squadron of the largest privateers putting out, at the very first: one newspaper on 15 December 1781 sported the rumour, heard from fishermen, that Hercules and Mars had an English frigate of 36 pieces in tow. How wrong they were! Three days later the news broke that the reverse had actually happened. The newspapers and yearbooks in 1781 afterwards largely relied on the letter written by MacBride, and some also had been sent a letter by Pieter Hogeboom, captain of the Mars, who basically gave the version of the story as he had it put on record by the squadron’s officers in the 1783 ‘Justification’, stressing how valiantly they had behaved against the powerful Artois. The frigate was said to have 54 cannon, rather than the 44 (or 40?) that she actually had—an exaggeration that would make one a bit hesitant to believe the rest of Pieter’s account of heroism, like his assertion that the fight had lasted more than two hours (MacBride: half an hour), and especially Pieter’s call for a flag on a broomstick.

 

A day after the true news became known, criticism began to be voiced in the papers: how could such a brave captain as Jan Hogeboom, who had taken 101(?) prizes in the Seven Years’ War under French flag, now, sailing for his own country, let the British have his two large, heavily-armed and beautiful ‘cutters’ at their first ever cruise? Hogeboom’s answer came only in 1783, as we saw before.

Could the papers tell us more about the Hogebooms?

 

The Hogebooms: privateers and merchantmen

 

MacBride wrote that father Jan Hogeboom had been a French privateer in the previous war, and rather more successful than with his Hercules, as the Dutch newspaper confirmed—though we should not trust everything they printed, such as the 101 prizes. The only independent news I could find, was that in the Seven Year’s War, Jan had had his share of disappointment as well. A weekly from Leeuwarden, in the north of the Netherlands, reported that in August 1761 Jan Hogeboom, captain of the three-mast privateer ‘Maria Theresia’ (of four cannon and two swivel guns), was chased onto the island of Ameland by a British privateer of a single mast and 8 or 10 pieces. Hogeboom’s seventeen men fled into the dunes; the British took his ship and sailed away with it at high tide. [seventeen men for a three-mast ship? Surely there must have been more. Casualties in the chase?]

 

In between wars, Jan seems to have been a simple merchant. At least, in 1772 a Jan Hogeboom in Flushing (Vlissingen; ‘our’ Jan’s home town, so he may well be the same person) advertised that he had oysters from London for sale.

 

Pieter Hogeboom only made the newspapers shortly before the Mars adventure. In the shipping news of 1779, he was mentioned as captain of the ‘Waakzaamheid’ (‘Alert’), a merchantman sailing into Sète, Cadiz, Ostende and Flushing. 

Edited January 2, 2016 by Aa-schipper

[Aa-schipper]

Can a cutter be a brig?

Dutch contemporaneous sources called the Hercules and Mars ‘cutters’. Were they so loose in applying names of types to ships? In my understanding, a cutter has a single mast with for-and-aft sails, a brig two square-rigged masts. No doubt the Mars is a brig, then, not a cutter.

The only similarity of a brig to a cutter that I can see is that both were supposed to have S-shaped frames. (Which give Mars its beautiful sleek lines.)

 

Anyone who can offer some help, perhaps?

[Aa-schipper]

Lettre of marque found!

Privateers had to be certified by a 'lettre of marque' from their national authority to show they were not common pirates. It was among the papers taken by the British navy when H.M.S. Artois captured the ship on 3 December 1781, and now I've found that it is kept in the British National Archives in Kew. Too bad that having a scan made of this grandiose document (a couple of pages, size A2) costs a small fortune    I'd love to read it!

 

For one thing, the letter of marque might show who was the ship's owner, and maybe with that piece of information I could find out more about when and where the ship was built.

[amateur]

Would be nice.

By the way: how's the model?

[Aa-schipper]

Restarted today! Measuring for 1st planking. Frightening stage for me... 

[Steve Carruthers]

Hey, hows the build going, would be interested if you have made any more progress as im interested in starting the same model, regards stev3

[Aa-schipper]

Three-and-a-half years after your question (sorry, but I've been away for MSW and model building completely for a long time), I can finally say I've picked up the good old Mars again, with the full intention of finishing it in a decent amount of time.

I began planking and made a (re-)beginners' error: duly following the Caldercraft instructions I measured the largest bulkheads with a piece of paper, divided their length(s) by 5 (because the planks are 5mm each) and found that I had to lay 19 planks. So I tapered my first planks at the stem side to receive 19 planks at the first bulkhead, not thinking of the fact that the first bulkhead comes down only halfway (or thereabouts) to the keel. That only sank in after the first two planks—which had been laying about in the sun for some years; in the picture you can see that the new ones are a tad lighter. Now I'm first doing a couple of strips at the keel, not tapering except to follow the line of the keel where it meets the bow, and then will recalculate to correct the error. Long live double planking to cover up this snafu!

While a big plank's glue is drying, I do some tiny work on the cutter. Fingers still are the most versatile clamps :-)

[Aa-schipper]

Averaging just over a plank a day (on either side), today I completed the rough work on the first planking. A rough job it was, indeed, with more stealers than I see on more expert builders’ blogs. A lot of sanding (there is a bulge on a bulkhead, on both sides, which I had not noticed until the last handful of planks came on) is awaiting me yet. Experiencing the complex lines of the ship up close, does give you more respect for the 18th century shipwrights who produced these beauties. 

[Aa-schipper]

Thinking ahead a couple of steps, I have ordered alternative cannons (guns) from Vanguard Models. The commission letter to Mars was made out for a man of war of 24 pieces, and the victorious captain MacBride proudly wrote home that the Hercules and Mars were ‘mounting 24 nine-pounders and 10 cohorns each’. That differs from the kit, which is provided with 18 six-pounders.

Using a different type of guns may mean that the carriages are of different height than what Caldercraft (i.e. Chris Watton of Vanguard Models, he revealed somewhere in this forum, last August) designed the model for. Hence, I may need to adapt the height of the gunports on deck to ensure the guns will stick out from the (approximate) middle of them. And that has to be ensured before the second planking will define the gunports, by trying out the assembled guns on deck (on the false deck that’s already in place, covered with a temporary piece of decking for the exact height).

Admittedly, I am opting for English guns, not Dutch. Maybe I’ll file away the King George III crests ;-) Not just as my historical mock protest against the English navy that captured the Mars, but also because a picture I took last summer shows that the crest on a bronze 1793 (land) cannon of the Dutch Republic was only incised, not embossed. To make it visible I had to increase the contrast and definition of the photo.

Besides, where could one find Dutch-made guns on the internet? Moreover, we do not know what make and size of guns the shipowners, Cruys & Son, bought for their two privateers. Not necessarily the official types of the Dutch Republic. Cruys & Son lived on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, and just a kilometer further, on the Roeterseiland, the firm of Van der Valk Heirs produced cannon for the Dutch East Indies Company. Anyhow, there was a private market for artillery in the neighbourhood, while the official foundry of the Holland province was located in The Hague, and probably way too busy in 1780/81 working for the navy ships that had (finally) been ordered. However, if a single foundry could produce only a few dozen of cannon per year, as Brinck asserts, where did the 48 pieces of Hercules and Mars come from? The Amsterdam archives do not help me here—as was to be expected, because ordnance is not real estate, like houses or ships, which has to be bought through a notary whose documents are archived. In conclusion, the Armstrong guns from Vanguard Models are the best I can do. Filing the crest away for a bare gun barrel seems not a bad guess.

 

References

Brinck, Nico. s.a. Geschut voor de 7 Provinciën. s.l. [Lelystad]: Bataviawerf. (in Dutch)

MacBride, J. 1781. ‘Extract of a Letter from Captain Macbride, of the Artois, of 40 Guns, to Mr. Stephens, Dated in the Humber, the 4th Instant’. P. 666 in Lady’s Magazine. Vol. XII. London: G. Robinson.

On the cannon foundry, the Hague: https://shie.nl/bedrijven/geschutgieterij-1589-1904/ (in Dutch)

On Van der Valk heirs: http://www.nederlandsijzermuseum.nl/assets/files/Erven%20Van%20der%20Valk.pdf (in Dutch)

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Aa-schipper

[Aa-schipper]

Thinking ahead again, i.e. thinking of the advice to paint some small objects before glueing them in place, I bought a set of paints that will colour Mars as authentically as I can get it. In fact, the issue of correct colours has been on my mind for a long time, and I have scoured maritime and other museums in the Netherlands (physically and online) for models and paintings of 18^th century Dutch ships, visited recreated period ships, and took a lot of pictures (makes a fun screen saver, too 😊). But the NMM in Greenwich has the only two depictions of Artois taking Hercules and Mars, one a black-and-white drawing, and one oil painting of the event.

The pen drawing is by the Marine Painter to King George III, Dominic Serres the Elder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Serres). It can be ordered (http://prints.rmg.co.uk/art/504357/captain-macbride-in-the-artois-taking-two-dutch-privateers), but is that not very helpful for colours. The other is a painting made by the slightly less famous marine painter, Robert Dodd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dodd_(artist) ). The NMM does not offer prints of that painting (https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/11927.html), which is in dire need of cleaning. On the small reproduction that the NMM shows online, it is hard to make out the colours of the two Dutch ships, even after I did a ‘digital clean-up’ (see picture). If Dodd painted the ships historically correct (which Wikipedia maintains to be one of his strengths, although he gives the gunports lids which do not figure on the model, nor in the National Archive’s line drawing; and did you see the bowsprit sticking out horizontally?), they were rather similar to one another and on the whole darkish brown—natural oak? The wales apparently were not painted black, contrary to what the Caldercraft model’s box shows on the outside. There may have been narrow yellow ochre and black or green bands above the gunports, which also show the traditional red ochre/‘oxblood’ on the inside—that’s where the Caldercraft advice seems to be correct. The stern looks black or green again, with yellow (or golden?) stern beam and details.

From other models and paintings, I got the impression that on Dutch vessels of the late 18^th century, the coloured bands on the higher parts of the hull often were in green and/or blue hues, with golden wood carvings for embellishments, or painted on in yellowish tones. The later in time, the fewer carvings and gold; 1781 was already time for Louis XVI style. The line drawings of Mars/Orestes in the National Archive do not show any carvings on the stern either, so me may go for yellow paint, I suppose. With the Mars having had such a short career, I do not have to worry about ageing the painted parts and could go for bright colours. However, I do not like things to be too garish. At the site of the fairly new Dutch ship model maker, Kolderstok, I ordered paints that are made—in modern, water-based acrylic materials—to look like 17th century paints, including bright as well as more subdued varieties. I chose the subdued red (karmijn), green (verdigris) and yellow (burnt ochre). Black will be needed somewhere—whether I do the wales in black, or not. For the undership, off-white (harpuis) was added. The package was delivered quickly and neatly, with a full description of the paint’s historical names, use and ingredients (also to be found on the website https://kolderstok.com). I’m ready to get going after the second planking!

[Aa-schipper]

Final frivolity (for the moment): I had a brass name plate made for the stand. Won't stick it on until I know which side of the ship looks best 😉

[Aa-schipper]

Size of cannon is not going to be a problem: the Vanguard 9-pounders (black) are smaller and more finely built than the original 6-pounders (brass) from Caldercraft, but they are of practically the same height. 
Note that I just put the most important parts together to get an impression of the relative sizes of the guns; I did not yet add all the minute parts on the gun carriages. Vanguard has seven(!) brass rings for the rigging that I still need to put on—times 24 cannons...

[Aa-schipper]

On 1/12/2021 at 4:15 PM, Aa-schipper said:

scoured maritime and other museums in the Netherlands (physically and online) for models and paintings of 18^th century Dutch ships, visited recreated period ships, and took a lot of pictures

I knew I must have it somewhere: a picture of the painting with the inspiration for Mars's colour scheme! It's a detail, a cutter (or whatever type of sloop it is), from the painting Dutch men-of-war in the roads of Flushing by Engel Hogerheyden, 1784 (close enough to 1781), and it was on show in the National Maritime Museum of Amsterdam. Maybe I should go for a darker shade of green than what I have now... The transom is not very decorated, and the wales look good in black. But what about the mouths of the guns: were they actually painted white? The same effect is visible on Dodd's painting of Artois capturing Mars and Hercules—to be researched further, or do readers have an idea?

[Aa-schipper]

On 1/9/2021 at 10:21 PM, Aa-schipper said:

Averaging just over a plank a day (on either side), today I completed the rough work on the first planking. A rough job it was, indeed, with more stealers than I see on more expert builders’ blogs. A lot of sanding (there is a bulge on a bulkhead, on both sides, which I had not noticed until the last handful of planks came on) is awaiting me yet. Experiencing the complex lines of the ship up close, does give you more respect for the 18th century shipwrights who produced these beauties. 

If you look closely at the picture above, you see that the starboard bulwark with the gunports in it sits too low: the tops of the bulkheads show above it. Fault of early enthusiasm, in 2016, that needs repairing. And I did: I added half a plank on top of it and sanded it down till it was level with the bulkhead ends. And with files I enlarged the gunports at their upper side to bring up up to the required height (checked with callipers against their opposite number). At the bottom end, ‘thresholds’ made out of small rests of limewood planks brought the lower sides up to the required height. For which I had to cut off two bulkhead ends a little prematurely (with a neatly flexible mini-saw before breaking the last bits as the manual wants you to do)—hope it won’t affect the second planking. Second planking had better start soon, though: so many sins to cover up... 😉

[Aa-schipper]

Second planking

Another year gone by and I don’t blame you if you think my Mars build had been abandoned. She’s not, but for much of last year I lived by the saying ‘in doubt, don’t’, because after glueing on the five or so top and bottom planks I was in doubt about getting a neat planking with what I found the complex lines of the Mars. The bow is bluff at the waterline, but becomes somewhat sharp to the keel. The lines towards the stern are more usual for ships of the late 18th century, but nevertheless a combination of concave and convex, so there too I was sure stealers would be needed but I could not imagine where and how long exactly until I glued the planks on. Loose fitting did not give me enough certainty, and previous build logs did not give me enough exact info to steer by, either.

 

Probably these complex but beautiful lines helped make Mars such a fast sailer (as captain McBride remarked in his letter of December 1781, after capturing Mars and its sister ship Hercules), but it put me off for months: I could not imagine how to measure the number of planks or where stealers would be needed. In the end, I decided to find a line where a plank would run ‘naturally’ from stem to stern while touching the lowest plank of the bulwark at the stem. From there, I would work upwards with drop strakes (with reasonably serious scarfs) and downwards to the straight planks near the keel. Still, I had to improvise with stealers front and back and a number of planks had to be tapered at the bow too narrowly at the stem to be realistic.

 

After a first sanding and after applying a bit of wood filler (work in progress), you don’t see much of that and I have regained a bit of confidence that the end result will look satisfactory.

[Aa-schipper]

To be absolutely sure that the bulwark planks would run straight, I planked right across the gunports. Reopening them with a miniature drill, X-acto blades and needle files is another bit of work in progress; port side almost done, starboard to be started. Filing of the plank ends at those openings would have been necessary anyway, so I do not consider this to be much extra work.

 

In the meantime, as you can see on the false deck, I have been working on the cutter, first the one included in the Caldercraft kit, but later I bought the Vanguard Models cutter, because it looked so much better, and I have begun work on that one as well. The Caldercraft one, with its unnaturally high bottom (more like a deck than a bottom), remains as a training piece. And you’d better always have ‘an heir and a spare’, isn’t it?

[Aa-schipper]

An advantage of planking over the gunports is that I can cover up the 13th gunport on each side, right at the bow, which I found on the 1782 line drawing of HMS Orestes from the National Maritime Museum (RGM, nowadays), but which I could not get into the bulwark in a convincing fashion—no doubt that is why it was not outlined in the kit, anyway.

[Dave_E]

Welcome back (I know you never left) 😊 Looking good. 👍

[AJohnson]

Glad to come across this log as I really enjoyed building this kit, though I largely did it ‘out of the box’ as HMS ‘Orestes’, I wasn’t back with MSW when I built it, so no build log I’m afraid but I have put a few pictures in the ‘completed’ gallery.
I will be following along, don’t worry about the delays, my ‘Mars/Orestes’ took about four years. I’m Really impressed with your research into the ship and it is interesting to get the Dutch side of the story for a change and not the English version. I’m currently researching my next build and it is nearly as addictive as the actual building of the model itself.! (almost) 😅

[Aa-schipper]

Thanks for stopping by, @AJohnson! I had found your gallery of pictures, and liked them very much. Like you, I plan to have some figurines aboard to give scale and a bit of life to the finished ship (a few of the same Amati white metal ones you used are sitting in my drawer, waiting to be painted). But first, I begin orientating myself to laying the deck, for which your pictures are inspirational, too: beautifully detailed!

Through researching the Mars & Hercules ships, I have learned much about Dutch history, but am still left with a lot of questions about the ships, the skippers and the owners…

[AJohnson]

Hi, thanks for your comments about my “Orestes” that was my second completed wooden model; though actually the third one started as I abandoned my “Bounty” build for about ten years as it was a bit of a challenge and only came back to it last year when I rejoined MSW. 

As you mentioned your research and mention E. W. Petrejus, have you come across his book Modelling the Brig-of-War “Irene”?  It is a very good book and although detailing the conversion of an English Cruizer class Brig “Grasshopper” for service in the Dutch Navy (shoe on the other foot compared to Mars-Orestes!) Petrejus does cover other contemporary Dutch ships and practice’s. The English version is getting harder to find and more expensive, not sure if that’s the case with the original Dutch edition?