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

[Aa-schipper]

Ah, you mean this book? 😉😊 Yes, found it through another contribution here at MSW, some years ago. Very useful! (And rare in Dutch as well.)

[AJohnson]

55 minutes ago, Aa-schipper said:

Ah, you mean this book? 😉😊 Yes, found it through another contribution here at MSW, some years ago. Very useful! (And rare in Dutch as well.)

 

Excellent, a future project perhaps?  If you can do "Mars" I'm sure you could convert a Caldercraft "Cruizer" into an "Irene"! 😁 - The "Mars" & "Irene" would make an interesting 'pairing' with their joint Dutch/English histories etc.

[Aa-schipper]

1 hour ago, AJohnson said:

If you can do "Mars" I'm sure you could convert a Caldercraft "Cruizer" into an "Irene"! 😁

Interesting suggestion! I’ll keep it in mind when (not if!) I start to think about the next project 😄

[Aa-schipper]

Talking about books: On MSW members' suggestions I added Marquardt's Eighteenth century rigs & rigging to my documentation about rigging—another major task to be undertaken in the (near?) future. The book arrived today, bought online from a second-hand book shop in an even remoter corner in the Netherlands than where I live. What a volume of minutely-printed text, detailed drawings comparing rigs' details over time and across countries, and a host of tables for sizes, diameters and what not! That'll keep me busy this stormy weekend (and a few more).

The other books on the table are the well-known Petersson with his beautifully clear drawings of rigging of HMS Melampus, and Manhoudt's 1946 book about rigging of Dutch, mainly 19th century, sailing ships. Between the three of them and the various excellent MSW build logs, I should be able to find enough info to decide how to rig the Mars—or to get confused about the conflicting suggestions 😉. But that's for later.

First now I turn to planking the cutter, while I wait for some additional lime-wood to be delivered so I can experiment a bit with patterns for planking the deck, where I hope to include a waterway and scuppers. I can find scuppers neither on the kit's plans nor on the NMM line drawings, but every ship must have them, isn't it? 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Aa-schipper

[Aa-schipper]

A year since the previous post, during which the shipyard has been on its own for a long time, but with the advent of winter, I got going again. Following Petrejus’ observations about decking of the brig Irene, a couple of changes were made to the deck. First, to make sense of scuppers, the outermost planks of the deck were made wider and (at the outside) thicker: I used 5 x 1.5 mm lime wood, sanded down to 0.5 mm on the inside, to be flush with the deck. The MSW and YouTube sources on side bending helped me overcome my doubts and in the end my wife got her iron back without damage, while I damaged only one bit of a plank. 
Second, instead of the English tradition of a single king plank in the middle, I started the deck plank pattern with two wider (and originally thicker) planks either side of the hatches (5 mm in between the 4 mm from the kit). These ‘schaarstokken’ were the Dutch tradition, intended to strengthen the attachment of eyelets and the like.
Third, still following Petrejus, the ‘sharp’ ends of deck planks were made according to the ‘primitive’ pattern used in Dutch shipbuilding well into the 19th century, sort of overlapping each other, again needing wider planks than the 4 mm stock.
A drawback of my adaptations was that I used lime wood from different sources and only when working on the deck planking, I realised the colour differences between the original wood and the material that I had ordered from another source. The latter were slightly whiter than the original, and I tried to stain those planks with… tea. (Other methods, e.g. ’official’ stain or varnish, were either too strong or practically invisible.) Perfection was not reached, of course. When I varnished the deck and the first deck fittings, the hatches, earlier today, new colour variations appeared, not so much between wood from the different sources, but rather of individual planks. Well, they remain subtle differences of shade, which makes for a lively deck, not unnatural to my eyes (after all, originally they used planks from different trees too, didn’t they?). A good foundation for the next steps, I suppose: further deck fittings, those scupper holes, and I’m also busy with the bow.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Aa-schipper

[Aa-schipper]

Historic research on prizes and prices

Meanwhile, I made a little progress in my historic research about the Mars. When Captain McBride of the Artois wrote to a friend—a letter published in December 1781, within weeks of his capturing Mars and Hercules—he estimated the value of the two prizes at £ 20,000. In current money, that would equal about £ 1.7 million (source: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result). Prize money was the way for Royal Navy officers to get rich in those days, and the captain might add £ 7,500 to his fortune
(source: http://www.hmssurprise.org/ranks-and-prize-money), which would bring in a rent of £ 300 a year—not enough to retire upon for a gentleman of his day, but it constituted a nice addition to the family income, I guess. 

What was not known until now, is that only a month later the ships’ owner, Amsterdam merchant Cruys, demanded compensation from the Dutch Republic’s government for the loss of his two privateers in the course of fighting the country’s enemy, because if such losses were not compensated by government no-one might want to run the risk of outfitting privateers anymore (1. Hey, wasn’t that what privateering is about?, and 2. He was close to the truth and very few privateers went to sea during the 1781-1784 war). His demand amounted to f 225,000. In modern money, that makes € 4.6 million (source: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/research/projects/hpw/calculate.php), or at least double the estimate of McBride. There may be several explanations for the difference—I am not going to speculate which one(s) might be true.

By the way, I have not found what the government responded to this claim. The search continues, just like my building, i.e. surely but slowly.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Aa-schipper

[AJohnson]

Great to see progress on “Mars” again, looking forward to seeing more from you  and the deck fittings. 

[Aa-schipper]

Advice sought: shot garlands or ring bolts?

The deck starts to look neat, with the hatches (easy little job!), gallows, pumps etc. All except the hatches are just placed temporarily, because I’ll paint them first, safely away from the hull. But there’s a dilemma: should I add shot garlands around the hatches, or should I reserve the continental ‘king planks’ that run along the hatches for the ring bolts that must come behind each gun? On the one hand, the Caldercraft model does not include shot garlands, but such things are included in similar models, like Vanguard Models’ HMS Speedy, and they are also depicted in the Petrejus book about the brig Irene. On the other hand, those ‘king planks’ were extra sturdy precisely to give ring bolts a secure place. And I cannot have my cake and eat it too, as shot garlands take up almost 4 mm of width while those ‘king planks’ are 5 mm wide, so there is not enough place left to put en eyelet in. So if I add shot garlands, eyelets must be fastened to ‘normal’ deck planks. What advice would you give, dear shipwrights?

Edited March 2, 2023 by Aa-schipper

[chris watton]

I would put shot garlands in between the gun ports, either on the bulwark (in line or just below the lower gun port edge) or on the deck, up against the bulwark.

[Aa-schipper]

4 hours ago, chris watton said:

I would put shot garlands in between the gun ports, either on the bulwark (in line or just below the lower gun port edge) or on the deck, up against the bulwark.

Many thanks for this suggestion, Chris! Shows once more that if you think you’ve got a dilemma, you haven’t been thinking creatively. I like especially the ‘window sill’ idea, putting them in between gun ports. The calibre of the guns on this brig was not too large, the cannon balls not too heavy (9 or 12 pounders? I should look it up, one of these days) so it would have been quite feasible to put them there.

[chris watton]

I do believe that as a privateer, she had 9 pounders, and quite a lot of them too, with almost all the gun ports being populated. At least, if memory serves...

[Aa-schipper]

Another bit of inspiration from Petrejus’s book on the brig Irene made me try to improve the hawse holes. Until now, I just had drilled very small holes as ‘place holders’. Digging up the anchor cable of the kit (my first opening of the bag with rigging threads—a sign of progress 😉), it proved to need a 4 mm diameter hawse hole. Petrejus gave me three points of improvement. First, to protect the ship’s hull from chafing by the heavy cable, the planking would need protection, both outside (fig. 225 in the copy from Petrejus’s book, below) and inside the bulwark. Second, the inside strengthening also served as a band to keep starboard and port sides of the bulwark together (figure 226). Third, the inside of the hawse holes was clad with metal, again for protection but also to reduce friction.

For point 1, it was easy to take a scrap bit of material from the 1.5 mm sheet of walnut wood containing the cut-out parts and glue it to the hull, resting on the main wale. For point 2, initially I shaped a block of wood in about the form of fig. 226, but to fit around the protruding bit of the keel above the deck and with the needed height of about 8 mm, it became such a massive thing that I abandoned it. Slightly simpler, I made 4 mm thick plates (again from scrap bits of the kit material), which together with that bit of the keel above deck might simulate Petrejus’s band. Finally, point 3 led me to buy a piece of aluminium pipe at the local model building shop. With an inner diameter of 4 mm, the outer diameter became 5 mm. Quite a big hole needed to be drilled in the hull! Isn’t it oversized? But given the size of the anchor cable, there was no other option, so here goes…

Drilling and filing to get smoothly-fitting holes for the aluminium pipe was nervous stuff, and of course I did not get the hawse holes located as symmetrical and exactly-fitting as I had wanted. ‘Museum quality’ is hard to reach! But I did it and it works.

Yes, the red paint needs repairing, as does the ochre paint of the bow rails, but at least those are still whole and in place. I’ll also experiment on a bit of left-over aluminium pipe (lots of it left over!) to find out how best to get a more greyish sheen on it, to resemble iron or lead. Probably I’ll end up painting them.

[Aa-schipper]

A bit of frustration at the end of the week.

Expected but a bit of a disappointment is, first, that indeed the blackening solution based on sulphuric acid is not very successful for the metal casings in the hawse holes: it blackens the tube alright, but that's hardly visible on the cutting edge (right-hand photo). Paint was the alternative I had already thought of.

Second, all belaying racks have beautiful holes straight out of the box, but all those holes are less than 1.0 mm diameter while the belaying pins in the box have a 1.6 mm diameter. That means I must drill out all those holes, which I don't mind doing, but I do not manage to do it without damaging each and every rack (left-hand photo), however careful I try to be with my hand-held mini drill. What to do?

[AJohnson]

The walnut parts can be very brittle along the grain.  If you can, make some new ones from the sheet the kit parts came from.  For drilling try putting tape on top and drill through that, it can help reduce the damage caused by drilling, also I'd use a hand held pin vice to drill rather than an electric drill as it might be too fast and causing the fragile Walnut grain to lift as you drill.

[BenD]

I agree with @AJohnson with the tip about drilling with a pin vice drill and using tape to help reduce damage. Fixing the damage is fairly easy, use some wood filler, sand it down, redrill the holes carefully, then paint over it again. Expanding the holes to 1.6mm you might want to start small and work your way up to that size. If you have a decent set of drill bits you can work your way up to that diameter, it helps stop the walnut from cracking up so badly. To harden the surface you can also use thin CA glue, I've also found that to help a some. 

Your ship is coming along nicely. 

[Aa-schipper]

Thanks for the suggestions, @AJohnson and @BenD! Most of them I had been applying already, except the CA glue trick to harden the surface. So it’ll have to be the  wood filler, drill again (with my pin vice drill—I don’t even own an electric one for model building), and repaint.

Oh well, plenty other things to be done in the meantime, like the other deck fittings and anchors, to get into a good mood again.

[Aa-schipper]

Swivel guns
Imagining how life onboard might have been, back in 1781, is one of the things that gets me into a good mood—and it makes me glad I don’t have to undergo those hardships! A few little figurines help the imagination, and they also help to get a better understanding of the size of things. Which led me to some little tweaks of the kit at the swivel guns. First, putting the Amati figurine (I imagine it represents Head Surgeon Guiljelmus de Messemaker) on the quarterdeck, shows that the bulwark is as high as a man. The construction of the Caldercraft swivel guns, on a sort of pedestal and a swivel construction that gives even more height (see left-hand picture), strikes me as way too high to be practicable. Second, I found the guns in the box too bulky to represent light swivel guns. For those two reasons, I ordered a set of smaller-looking swivel guns (made by Amati again, as I noticed upon receipt) and I’ll put them directly onto the caprail, as I have seen it done on the full-size replica of VOC ship Amsterdam, lying behind the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. Moreover, the bulwark of that ship is no more than hip high, if I remember well. (I’ve got a photo of it somewhere and can insert it into this blog if you, my readers, would like that.)

Guiljelmus de Messemaker

Why do I call the figurine Guiljelmus de Messemaker? Well, any reader of the Aubrey-Maturin novels knows that a ship isn’t a story without a surgeon, and on the Mars, the ‘head doctor’ was called Guiljelmus de Messemaker. So I wanted a figure in civilian clothes onboard—she was a privateer, after all—for which from contemporary paintings a green coat and brown breeches (and a red waistcoat—why not?) seemed appropriate, and I thought it might well represent the doctor. Perhaps surprisingly for such a small brig, there was also a ‘second doctor’ onboard, Samuel Zwetz. Their names are known, because they acted as witnesses in the published ‘Account’ of Mars’s ill-fated voyage of December 1781.

[Aa-schipper]

Deadeyes

I’ve been wondering for a couple of weeks now how to make the deadeyes: what is Caldercraft’s intention with the two little protrusions on the bent metal rings that go around the deadeyes and then down through the channels? A search of this forum on the terms ‘deadeyes’ and ‘Caldercraft’ did not turn up exactly what I wanted, so I started to browse build logs of Caldercraft/Jotika models and just now I found @Kevin solved my riddle ten years ago when he built HMS Victory.

So the point of the points is to squeeze them into the little slots in the chainplates and then let friction do its work. And a little CA glue to make sure, perhaps? I wonder how much force the shrouds will come to exert on the deadeyes and don’t want to get nasty surprises when doing the rigging.

 

A thought on glues
As regards CA glue, I’ve been (and remain) a believer in PVA for anything wood, as I found the superglue stuff way too messy and too fluid. To stick metal and wood together, I have used a glue I had for my archery sport, Bohning Flex-tite Platinum (https://shop.bohning.com/adhesives-arrow-prep/fletch-tite-platinum-glue/), a slow-setting glue (not too slow though, setting time 5 minutes) to stick vanes to arrows. Recently I bought Zap Yellow CA glue, the gel type, and that works even better, as it can be used in very small dabs precisely in the place where you want it while it sets much faster than the vane glue yet leaves you some time to adjust pieces.

A thought on languages 
By the way, I much prefer the Dutch word for deadeyes: jufferblokken, which literally means lady’s blocks. Much friendlier idea to have rows of ladies smiling at you than to be staring at dead eyes 😉

Edited March 27, 2023 by Aa-schipper

[Kevin]

a few more days and it would have been exactly 10 years, glad you found the info your eare searching for

Edited March 27, 2023 by Kevin

[Aa-schipper]

Stern chaser gunports closed

While I'm collecting courage to attack the deadeyes 😉, I have followed another of Petrejus's suggestions: the stern chaser gunport were closed unless in use, he contends, so I made two little hatches from some centimeters of leftover walnut, glued onto some leftover boxwood (never throw away scraps of wood of any size!). I'd  love to make them working, with real hinges. Had I thought of this in time, then I could have ordered some hinges when last I bought things from a modelling webshop (there is no specialised shop in my neighbourhood).

[Aa-schipper]

I wonder if anyone still follows my build log—I’m soooo slow. After enjoying summer, vacation, sports and other hobbies, which took me well into the new year, I finally have a little progress to report on Mars. 
The masts were filed and sanded into more or less correct shape—not down to the historically correct sizes at the level of a tenth of a millimetre, I admit, but no-one of my expected audience (very few family members, all bigger landlubbers than me) will notice and I find it downright scary to make the wood so thin and fragile. With my clumsy, erratic moves the risk of breaking something during the build is big enough as it is.

But what makes it worthwhile to post about the masts, is that I found in the priceless Petrejus (confirmed by other online sources) that Dutch mastcaps followed the French design, with a closed ‘head’ on the cap rather than the simple oblong block with two holes in English style that are part of the kit. Starting from the provided English-style pieces, I simulated the Dutch/French style mastcaps with a couple of scrap pieces of 2 mm walnut. (Photo from before painting them black, for clarity).

Also in Dutch rather than English style, and also found in Petrejus’ book on Brig Irene, I made two holes just above the fid for raising and lowering the topmasts by cables that were hung through the mastcaps when topmasts had to be taken down, e.g., in stormy conditions. In English style, that part of the topmast would have been octagonal with holes for cables in diagonal lay out, which Petrejus claims was more efficient as it avoided the cables getting entangled—but apparently Dutch shipwrights did not do such newfangled things.

Edited January 26 by Aa-schipper

[Nipper]

Hello Aa

I've just discovered your build and I am fascinated by the story of Mars and by what your research has found.  To me, this is the joy of ship modelling - following the historical records and using this to create the closest possible to an actual ship - brig in your case.

 

In reading your log I've seen the book about the brig Irene, and I'm tempted to buy that book in order to build a model of her (Irene is my wIfe's name and we have family connections to the Netherlands!).  I'm wondering what brig model might be the best to bash into an Irene.

 

I had decided to build a brig once I've finished Sphinx ( I have tenuous ancestral family connections there too), but I think that Chris Watton's Speedy (which I had thought about being my next project) is too small to become an Irene.

 

Nipper

[Aa-schipper]

Hello Nipper, 

Thanks for your kind remarks. Please give me a day to check that out. The book (long out of print) has some drawings and measurements that should be helpful for you. But I’m off for the rest of this day…

[AJohnson]

1 hour ago, Nipper said:

Hello Aa

I've just discovered your build and I am fascinated by the story of Mars and by what your research has found.  To me, this is the joy of ship modelling - following the historical records and using this to create the closest possible to an actual ship - brig in your case.

 

In reading your log I've seen the book about the brig Irene, and I'm tempted to buy that book in order to build a model of her (Irene is my wIfe's name and we have family connections to the Netherlands!).  I'm wondering what brig model might be the best to bash into an Irene.

 

I had decided to build a brig once I've finished Sphinx ( I have tenuous ancestral family connections there too), but I think that Chris Watton's Speedy (which I had thought about being my next project) is too small to become an Irene.

 

Nipper

Hi Nipper, there are currently two very similar kits on the market you could try to "kit-bash" into Irene.  Caldercraft's HMS Cruizer & HMS Snake.  Irene (ex. HMS Grasshopper) was in fact a Cruiser class brig, so the ideal starting point.

 

However a word of warning (my personal opinion only), Caldercraft kits are much more basic than Vanguard ones.  I have HMS Snake and will be bashing it into HMS Scylla, but it will be a labour of love; still in the research phase atm.  The difference in quality between Caldercraft and the more modern Vanguard kits is noticeable.  Chris Watton design them all, but the CC Cruizer/Snake are over 20 year old designs now.

 

One glimmer of hope, if you are prepared for an undefined/possibly long wait, there was a hint from @chris watton he might one day revisit the subject of RN Brigs, but not sure that would be the ubiquitous Cruizer class, the Cherokee class, or something else...

 

There are many Cruzier/Snake builds on MSW, some including a kit bash into other Cruizer Brigs, some links for you:-

 

Hope this helps.

 

[amateur]

Sure I follow. Don’t bother the speed: as soon something shows up, I read the post.

 

Mars is turning out nicely.

one question: are upu sure the tips of the ‘zalingen’ are pointing upwards? I was expecting ‘backwards’: the holes are for the iron-work of the deadeyes to pass through.

 

Jan

Edited January 26 by amateur

[Aa-schipper]

18 hours ago, AJohnson said:

Hi Nipper, there are currently two very similar kits on the market you could try to "kit-bash" into Irene.  Caldercraft's HMS Cruizer & HMS Snake.  Irene (ex. HMS Grasshopper) was in fact a Cruiser class brig, so the ideal starting point.

Well, Hardly necessary to respond to you anymore, @Nipper, as the main answers are already there: Irene started life as a Cruizer-class RN brig, but Commander Fanshawe struck to the Dutch fleet after foundering on the Dutch coast due to a heavy storm in December 1811. Let me add pictures of the frontispiece of Petrejus' book, which gives the sizes (in amsterdam feet = 0.284 m = 0.932 ft) and a detail of one of the plans in the book that shows the design of the stern.

[Aa-schipper]

18 hours ago, amateur said:

are upu sure the tips of the ‘zalingen’ are pointing upwards? I was expecting ‘backwards’: the holes are for the iron-work of the deadeyes to pass through.

I'm afraid you're right, @amateur! So slow, and still I'm too hasty and did not check the building plans sufficiently. Now I'll take another month to think of a solution.. 😉 

[Aa-schipper]

The deck is taking shape: the guns have their breeching and outhaul tackles. The outhaul tackle is an extra. Having seen the display of guns on HMS Victory, HMS Warrior and HMS Unicorn, it appeared that they must be shown, and it makes sense, because without outhaul tackle, you cannot stow the guns next to gunports and they take no precious space on deck, the ends being wound up between the blocks on either end. Hence I bought the smallest blocks I could find online (2 mm), measured out some 7 meter of .25 mm rope, and put in a bit of time. I had previously provided the gunports with four eyelets: two for the breeching rope and two for the outhaul tackle. In the picture, also the additional cutter is shown. According to Petrejus (and as one may read in any Aubrey/Maturin novel), ships had a number of cutters, gigs and the like, so two (the other one will hang in the davits a the stern, eventually) seemed to me the minimum for this privateer. To be honest, I'm fairly satisfied with the look of the deck like this.