Hyde Windlass Company Capstan and Windlass c. 1890

[CDR_Ret]

Hello, All.

I've been searching for any plans/photos/schematics of a Hyde Windlass Company (HWC) hand capstan and windlass assembly. This would be sized for a 350-ton sailing merchant around 1890. The brigantine Galilee was launched in 1891 in California and seems to have been equipped with a Hyde capstan (see the photo below).

Photo courtesy of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution, Washington DC (c. 1907)

(The attire of the men is somewhat strange. The research crew's surgeon is on the right and his steward/surgical assistant is dressed for surgery.)

 

What I really need is some information about the windlass, which was located in the open forecastle under the deck. I would like to render this equipment as accurately as possible, since it will be visible in the finished model.

An entire windlass/capstan assembly has been modeled; its images are available on the Web. However, all that i have been able to find are steam windlasses, like the one shown here.

Galilee's windlass was strictly manual.

 

I have already contacted the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, ME. They have some extensive archives pertaining to the HWC (which became the Bath Iron Works Shipyard), but their staff is limited and they haven't been able to find what I need so far.

 

If any members live in or near Bath and would like to look into this, I would be very grateful.

 

Terry

[druxey]

Terry: that is an excellent photo of the capstan. It should be easy to develop scale drawings from this if plans are not available. Assume the shorter man is about 5' 5" and the taller one 6' 2" and go from there.

[CGN39BCO]

If the capstan and windlass were manual, it's likely there was no connection between them.  The capstan would have been bolted to the deck/deck beams with no shaft extending down.  The force needed for line handling would be provided by the internal gearing of the capstan, unlike the large ships of a hundred years earlier, when more force could be called up by manning the co-axial capstan on the deck below.  The photo and drawing on page 98 of the 1915 Hyde catalog illustrate.  It's available here, https://archive.org/stream/hydedeckmachiner00hyde#page/n0/mode/2up from the University of Toronto.  The "Power Capstan" label refers to the power of the reduction gearing, not an external steam or electric motor.  There's an illustration of a similar steam driven capstan a couple of pages later which shows the difference.

 

The Hyde pump brake windlass shown on page 14 of the same file or something similar would probably be appropriate for the Galilee's windlass.

 

Bill

[Roger Pellett]

The exact Hyde Windlass/ Capstan arrangement was housed in the fore turret of the Whaleback steamship Frank Rockefeller built in 1896, now the museum ship SS Meteor.  The worm geared steam driven windlass still exists but the capstan that sat atop the turret was removed, probably around 1905 when Great Lakes steamships changed from hemp to steel wire mooring lines.

 

Fortunately, I have a copy of the Hyde drawing for the capstan / windlass.  Send me a PM with your address and I’ll send you a copy.

 

Roger

[CDR_Ret]

Bill, thank you for the link to that HWC catalog. It is my impression that, by 1917, Hyde had dropped their manual/hand-operated windlasses for all sorts of powered types, which are described in the catalog. During the transition period (probably around the time this ship was built), steam windlasses still had a capstan for motive power when steam wasn't available for some reason. That is why the capstan is geared into the windlass from a point above the unit, as shown in the brass model I posted above. Still, the book is  an excellent reference, which I will definitely save.

 

Roger, any windlass originally designed for operation by steam won't work for my purposes. Galilee was one of the last of the sail-only brigantines built on the West Coast for merchant service. She originally had a small steam donkey engine amidships for handling cargo and boats, but that was removed during the time my grandfather sailed in her. The crew operated the capstan/windlass by the traditional means—capstan bars and hard work!

 

I'm pretty sure the windlass was operated from the capstan above. As the photo below shows, there was no room for the crew to operate the machinery for raising and lowering the anchors between decks.

[Looking forward toward the forecastle on starboard side during heavy weather.]

Photo courtesy of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution, Washington DC.

 

Thanks again for your responses and interest.

 

Terry

[Roger Pellett]

No, the hand operated windlass driven by the capstan above is not interchangeable with the steam driven one, but the capstan itself shown on my drawing is likely to be the same, or at least similar.

 

Roger

[CDR_Ret]

Took a few hours today to do a detailed search of the Web on this topic. The only things I came up with were the following.

 

Balclutha, which is one of the premier museum vessels held by the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, is extremely well documented through the National Park Service HAER program. Several of the scale drawings in that program include diagrams of the anchor windlass, which is shown below. Though the Balclutha is much larger than Galilee, she is almost contemporary to the brigantine. The following diagram shows Balclutha's hand-powered anchor windlass.

The photo below that I found on Pinterest of capstan/windlass of the sunken Lucerne (check out the Wikipedia article) is probably more similar to the one Galilee carried. Since there doesn't seem to be any contemporary diagrams available of a Hyde windlass, I'll have to approximate one when developing the ship's plans.

Edited March 6, 2018 by CDR_Ret

[Roger Pellett]

Terry,

 

You may also want to look into the C. A. Thayer, also at the San Francisco museum. A smaller vessel than Balclutha she was recently rebuilt so detailed HAER drawings must exist.

 

Roger

[CDR_Ret]

Thanks Roger—good call. Sadly, the Thayer's windlass is actuated by a rocker-type mechanism. It has a standard capstan forward on the forecastle, but there isn't any indication it is linked to the windlass.

 

However, it is a Hyde windlass, so I should probably be able to pattern the wildcats and related hardware based on these drawings. It seems this type of windlass was bolted to a pair of bitts. However, Galilee had only one large bollard samson post located centerline and forward of the capstan. Evidently, the windlass supports were incorporated into the forecastle deck framing.

Edited September 29, 2021 by CDR_Ret

[CDR_Ret]

Here is the current status on reconstructing Galilee's windlass using the resources I have available. The diagram is constructed in Sketchup Make 2017 using the basic tool set. This part is probably the hardest to create, with all the curved surfaces in the wildcats and the crown gear. All that remains is creating the operating gear and the mounts to the ship's frames. I suspect that the windlass was mounted to the deck structural timbers, similar to the Lucerne and Thayer, rather than having a separate metal foundation like the Balclutha.

 

I'm hoping that this will be 3D-printable, but the level of detail at the anticipated scale of the model will probably be lost or not printable.

Terry

 

[CDR_Ret]

Update on my reconstruction of Galilee's capstan. I am three weeks out from a repair of a 25-year-old hernia repair, so I've been recuperating rather than sitting at a computer... (for you older guys, my surgeon informed me that redos of inguinal hernia repairs in men are quite common. The joys of aging!)

 

These images show progress and corrections from the previous post. I have most of the key components modeled in Sketchup Make 2017. The only things left for the windlass are the controls (ratchet pawl, wildcat band brakes, and capstan clutch lever).

 

I realized after the fact that the double pawl wheel shown previously was applicable to the lever-style capstan I was using as a reference. It has been replaced with just the windlass pawl ratchet wheel.

 

Please feel free to ask any questions.

 

Terry

Edited April 5, 2018 by CDR_Ret

[druxey]

Loverly rendering work,Terry. Wasn't Paul Pry a character in a play?  

[CDR_Ret]

You are correct, Druxey . Never heard of the play Paul Pry I wonder if that is where the phrase "prying into someone else's business" came from?

[druxey]

Exactly! The character was a perpetual busybody.

[CDR_Ret]

I finally finished drafting up my reconstruction of a Hyde windlass that could have been installed in Galilee. It uses components from Hyde and windlasses found in ships contemporary with Galilee that served on the West Coast of the USA. Since the prototypes were found on ships larger than Galilee, I will likely have to scale this down to a size that will fit in her forecastle. I am hoping to develop a model of her capstan, then show the combined capstan/windlass machinery as it might have been installed in the ship, with appropriate timbers and decking. Oh yeah, and that band brake operator contains a true 2-inch trapezoidal ACME thread developed from ANSI references. Quite fun to make!

 

So far, most of the major components have been separately built in Sketchup Make 2017, and are manifold, which means they could be 3D printed if desired.

 

Terry

Edited March 11, 2022 by CDR_Ret

[CDR_Ret]

Here is my reconstruction of the Galilee's capstan, based on the DTM photo of the upper 2/3 of the actual capstan, with reference to a 1915 Hyde Windlass Company catalog and a random photo of another similar capstan I found on a photo sharing site.

 

While Sketchup can support creating such models, there is a lot of fiddly mesh editing that is required, involving many hundreds (thousands?) of faces and edges. To minimize this cleanup, I created a clean version of a one-sixth sector of the capstan, then did a rotational copy five times to duplicate the sector, resulting in a complete model.

 

The next step will be to marry the capstan to the windlass, then place them in context with the decks and structural members as they would have been on the ship itself. This will help me work out the details for framing in the vicinity of this machinery.

 

Terry

[CDR_Ret]

Aaannd .... here is the final image in this topic showing the capstan and windlass in the context of the forecastle space. Based on my reconstruction of the Galilee plans, there will be about 39 inches of room between decks, so I had to downscale the windlass machinery to fit. I also flipped the clutch actuator so that I could maximize the size of the rest of the equipment.

 

The image seems tilted because the equipment rests on the extreme forward sweep of the deck sheer. There is a 4-degree slope at this point on the deck. Anchor chain comes up from the chain locker through pipes in the deck immediately below the wildcats and lead forward through chain stoppers (not shown) to the hawse pipes in the bow.

[CDR_Ret]

This past weekend, I received a packet from the Maine Maritime Museum*. It contained several scanned pages from a 1902 Hyde Windlass Company (HWC) catalog that related to their manual capstan and windlass machinery. Since the patents listed in the figure were several decades prior to the publication date, the design spans the time the Galilee was built, and is likely representative of the type she carried.

 

This is the scanned engraving of the machinery from the catalog.

 

Compare this design with the image in the previous post. The wildcat brake actuators consist of forked lever rods that engage the band brakes from the forecastle deck, rather than screw actuators mounted on the main deck as I drew them.

 

It turns out that Galilee did indeed have this type of brake control, as indicated in the following photograph, which was taken in 1905 during her outfitting as a magnetic research vessel. I also discovered from this photo that the capstan was mounted on a base about 8–10 inches high. This is referred to in HWC catalog, so I will need to include that detail in the final plans.

So I am now much more confident that I have identified at least a plausible anchor handling gear for this vessel, and can now move on to other deck furniture.

 

Terry

 

*Maine Maritime Museum contact information:

Anne Witty, Chief Curator

Maine Maritime Museum

243 Washington Street

Bath, Maine (ME) 04530

Tel: 207-443-1316, ext. 328

Email: witty@maritimeme.org

[Hyde Windlass Capstan]

I grew up in Bath Maine and now live a few miles away in Brunswick.  My step father worked for Hyde Windlass Co until it closed in 1969 and was bought by Bath Iron Works.  I have what I think is a salesman's sample of the deck capstan you are referring to.  This is an old model with no steam power and looks exactly like your drawing.  It is fully geared and ratcheted internally and externally and has all of it's dogs to prevent roll-back.  The only difference I see between mine and photos I have seen is it has a brass cap marked "Hyde Windlass Company   Bath, Maine" on the rim of the round cap.  I assume during many paintings the brass cap was painted over on the other photos.  It is 3-1/2" tall by 3" on the base diameter and in perfect condition.  I have no camera but will try to get a friend to take photos of it.  I'm not sure if I have helped you or not, but I hope so.  Regards,

Lane

[CDR_Ret]

Hello Lane.

 

Thank you for your efforts and interest. I'm in the process as we speak of changing out the local hand-crank brake actuator to the topside lever device in my digital model. Looking forward to seeing what you have.

 

Thanks again.

 

Terry

[CDR_Ret]

And here is my reconstruction of the capstan and windlass installation in Galilee. Basically, the screw actuators that tensioned the band brakes on the windlass drum were replaced by pry bar-actuated rods that tensioned the band brakes. I'm still not satisfied with the results because the loops which the pry bar fingers engage are much closer to the base of the capstan in my model than shown in the cyanotype photo. So, either the linkage is at a different angle than in the model or there may be a different lever configuration relating to the band brakes themselves. I suspect that windlass installations could be customized as needed to fit the ship.

 

 

 

There is one final detail that needs to be created for the forecastle equipment, and that is locating and installing the chain stoppers. Hyde's catalog shows them looking like this:

 

[Hyde Windlass Capstan]

Hi Terry - having trouble with the photos - can you querry ebay?  If you can, querry capstan postcard - you will see Soux Ste Marie card with a hyde capstan in the foreground, it even has a brass cap if you look closely - I'm pretty sure it is by Hyde.  Perhaps I should mail what I have so you can really see it.  It has green felt on the bottom with a large screw in the middle so I suppose it comes apart, although I would never dare to do it.  Let me know what you think.  Regards,

Lane