HMS Bellona 1760 by SJSoane - Scale 1:64 - English 74-gun - as designed

[SJSoane]

druxey, great idea, planking over the blank rather than scratching in the plank lines. That way, I can get tight joins to the mouldings, and also cope with how the planking on the counter intersects the planking on the quarter gallery. I am thinking that the planking on the quarter galleries runs past the planking on the counter, so the planking ends are seen from the stern and not from the side. that was going to be very hard to do, if I had to rabbet the quarter gallery blanks to receive the ends of the planking on the counter.

 

And thanks, Marc, for reminding me of Siggi's work. There is always much to learn from him. His post was like a road map for me, what is coming next and how to deal with it. It also reminded me that I have some challenging painting to do on the lower counter!

 

Mark

[druxey]

Rightly or wrongly, I miter jointed the counter and quarter gallery planking.

[SJSoane]

It has been a long time since I last posted. This stern structure is undoubtedly the most complex and difficult thing I have ever attempted to build. But I am making progress.

I had to use the horizontal moulding between the lower and upper counters, and also between the upper counter and the window sills, as templates for determining the curve and width of the quarter galleries. So these were left unmoulded for a time--and therefore a little stiffer--in order to keep everyone in alignment. Here I am confirming the window layout. the window frames will obviously require some leveling when they are finally installed:

And here is a template to see how it is all going to line up:

Next, the officer toilets are constructed. Working from a cryptic plan drawing in the original admiralty draughts, and a photo of Victory's quarter gallery, I decided that these were likely just holes in a bench with a chamber pot underneath, retrieved by a hinged top to the bench. Fun work for the officer servants to clean up every day. I wonder where they dumped these overboard--at the head, perhaps?

 

And then the mouldings are given their profile, and glued in place at last!

Next to come, planking the upper counter and the veneer of planking on the quarter galleries, druxey's great suggestion. I don't know how I would ever have formed these pieces without carving them from a whole piece. Curves in too many directions!

 

 

 

[AON]

Excellant work!

 

I believe the officers seats of ease had a discharge tube connection running down to the pointy ornate bit on the underside of the quarter gallery Dumping directly into the water.

 

I remember reading about gawkers getting too close to the Bellerophon When Napoleon was held onboard and getting a surprise.

[Hubac's Historian]

Exquisite, as always, Mark.

[SJSoane]

Thanks so much, Alan and Marc. I don't know if I am slowing down because I am getting older or the work is getting more complicated, or both. But it is a good push to keep going when I am able to share progress.

 

Interesting question about the plumbing arrangements in the quarter galleries in the mid eighteenth century. I have only found Brian Lavery's account in the 

Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, pages 202-204. He says that "presumably there was some form of piping...especially from the upper galleries." And he refers to some pipes on models. I have not seen this. Can anyone send me a photo of a model with this piping showing?

 

I am looking at the path piping would have to take, particularly from the upper quarter gallery, and there are some serious bends and long horizontal runs to get to a discharge in the lower finishing. One wonders how this was efficiently flushed out. Lavery notes that a flushing cistern and water closet was first ordered in 1779, 20 years after the Bellona was completed, and even then few ships were fitted with such. Without such a device, it would have been jugs of water poured down, and maybe a long loo brush or sewer snake?

 

The alternative idea, of a chamber pot, would have replicated the same toilet arrangements many of the officers would have experienced in their land based homes at the time, I presume. I also noticed that in the HMS Victory quarter gallery open to public viewing, the hole is in a hinged hatch on the bench, which I interpreted to be the access to the chamber pot beneath. But that is pure speculation on my part.

 

Small point that I probably won't address further in my model, but it is an interesting question about 18th century technology. Any further information on this would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

 

[Kevin-the-lubber]

4 hours ago, SJSoane said:

Any further information on this would be greatly appreciated!

There is a lovely bit of scrollwork at the base of the Victory's quarter galleries, as per the photos below, terminating in an inverted, 3-leaf, semi-circular 'thing' which doesn't seem to have any particular emblematic significance. I'm wondering now whether the 'thing' is actually an ornate pipe cover. Though the photos don't show this, I'm 80% sure it's hollowed, as this is how I subsequently replicated it, based on my first photo-visit, and I must have had a reason for that. I'm also fairly sure it's big enough to conceal a large diameter waste pipe (maybe 3" - 4") and is placed at the lowest point of the QG, so well situated to get a natural rinse from the sea from time to time 🙂. I'd have thought chamber pots would have been a risky business as the steward would have had to traipse through the day cabin (mind the rug please) within one of the 'rockiest' parts of the ship, all the way up to the heads, another bouncy bit of maritime real estate. Fine on a nice calm, sunny day off Malta but I wouldn't fancy my chances in the Bay of Biscay with a lively swell. 

 

By coincidence I'm (re)working my HMS Victory QG's, picking up where I left off two or three years back. Briefly, I'm using 3D modelling to make a better stern for the Heller 1:100 kit and the development process is very similar to yours, Mark, minus your meticulous research and model-making skills.  

[AON]

The model is getting more difficult!

 

Below is a pic of the soil pipe discharge from the quarter gallery that David Antscherl included in his model of the HMS Comet

I note it is a direct run and not to the dangling ornament.

How was it plumbed for a two or three decker?

I'll keep looking.

[AON]

I am reading in Those Vulgar Tubes ( by Joe J. Simmons III) that when two or three levels were involved the seats were offset and by the late 1700's they had a flushing mechanism utilizing a water tub located on top of the quarter gallery. They do not describe or show how the soil tubes were run or located.

 

Goodwin's Sailing Man of War, pg 199 has a photograph of the Foudroyant port quarter under gallery restoration and you can see the "flushing pipe" and "cistern" but doesn't seem to discuss it at all in the text on pgs 199-203.

[druxey]

Until flushing heads were introduced, I think gravity and a straight drop were the order of the day!

[AON]

In my mind there was one communal discharge point and multiple levels plumbed into each other.

 

I also think the hinged seat was to allow scubbing the bowl clean by the Stewart of the gallery (I made up the title).

[SJSoane]

Interesting, interesting! Thanks everyone!

 

So here is a first thought about how the pipes would run to a discharge in the lower counter, under the quarter galleries.

Some assumptions:

 

1. The pipe from above has to run down the outer face of the hull--along the inner wall of the lower quarter gallery, in other words--because there is no place to bury the pipe in the hull itself. Presumably there would be a paneled chase to disguise it.

 

2. Offsetting the seats doesn't appear possible, or helpful. The Bellona admiralty drawing show the lower one centered in the bench. The upper bench is so short that there is not much room to offset. And given number 1 above, there is no advantage gained in an offset a few inches one way or the other since the pipe has to bend inboard to run down the outer face of the hull anyway.

 

3. The two discharges could be aligned athwartships, with the upper pipe closer to the hull and the lower pipe further out. maybe closely paired like twin exhausts in a sports car!

 

4. I don't see these both bending sharply forward another three feet--and outward to clear the tumblehome-- in a two foot drop to discharge through the lower finishing. It is just asking for clogs.

 

4. I have provided a chamber pot for the upper toilet, just in case those long runs of pipe with bends doesn't always do the job!🙄

 

Mark

 

[druxey]

Depending on the design of the stern, there may be enough overhang to the upper gallery for a discharge immediately below the seat. If not, I can't see a long or angled  discharge tube functioning. It may be the 'gazunder' (goes under) pot solution!

 

The lower gallery head is probably located a little further forward to allow a vertical discharge.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

4 hours ago, AON said:

Below is a pic of the soil pipe discharge from the quarter gallery that David Antscherl included in his model of the HMS Comet

I note it is a direct run and not to the dangling ornament.

You may be on to something there, see below. There are also numerous plugged circular holes at each end of the counter as well as a few below it. Though none, including the one in this photo, that look big enough for the purpose. 

 

Mark, I accidentally deleted the important bit in my earlier post: what you're doing in wood and by hand is extraordinary and extraordinarily beautiful. While it's erroneous to think that CAD makes everything simple (I have spent many hundreds of hours on the Vic stern), it does reduce the task to solving a set of geometrical problems and then making the software do one's bidding; but while we converge in the design phase, when you have to turn the designs into shapes by hand, I do more or less get a free pass and only need to hit 'print'. Even though I can see the shapes in my mind and even on the screen, I'm not at all sure I could make these by hand.

 

And also, it's really encouraging to see that you've been working on this for years and years! I mean that in a nice way of course, that it gives me a bit of belief that I will get there eventually.

 

 

[SJSoane]

Hi everyone,

 

Thank you, Kevin, for your kind words. It is definitely turning into my life's work after all these years, and many more to go at my current pace. I might as well make it as good as I can!

 

druxey, I agree with your "gazunder" conclusion. Given the geometry of the quarter galleries, the only direct drop from the upper--captain's--seat of ease would discharge directly onto or out of the face of the false window in the quarter gallery below. Not likely. I am sticking with a chamber pot and proceeding accordingly!

 

The stern construction is undoubtedly the most difficult thing I have ever attempted to make. Even planking the upper counter seemed straightforward at first, but the wood is so thin here that I struggled to keep the surface fair while rounding up and aft, and on a curved frame in the vertical direction. I had to redo in order to remove some initial hollow low spots. All is well now, ready for paint. It also strikes me the ridiculous fragility of this entire stern. No wonder captains dreamed of raking their opponents through the stern.

 

Moving to the side lower windows of the quarter gallery,  I had read long ago that the upper and lower boundaries of these windows had to be exactly the same radius, held in the same orientation when the top one is offset to the stern. This is to ensure that the vertical mullions between the three windows are parallel to each other in the x and y axis. If they are twisted, the windows would be twisted and could not be paneled with flat sheets of glass. I thought of it as a cylinder sloped back at the angle of the windows across the stern, and then parallel planes aligned with the sheer of the hull cutting through to define the tops and bottoms. Hopefully this diagram makes this clear. The dotted lines are the lines of the window mullions:

I arranged this by making panels top and bottom to the same template, then ensuring that the curves coming forward made the same angle with the stern moldings top and bottom:

And these resulted in window surfaces that are flat and untwisted. However, the three windows are not geometrically the same, which initially surprised me. Although the length of the sides are the same--since the two planes forming the top and bottom are paralleI--the angles these form with the top and bottom edges of the window are not the same.  The sternmost window has a sharper angle, the middle one somehat less but still sharper than the foremost window.

I eventually realized that this would have to be. The aft most is most parallel to the side of the sloping cylinder, while the foremost is coming around to the fore face of the cylinder, which is less angled relative to the cutting planes. The sides of a window on the front surface would be at right angles to the tops and bottoms.

I also noticed that the changing geometry created an optical illusion. I initially made the three windows the same width fore and aft, then saw that the aft most window looked too skinny relative to the other two. I made a number of paper templates installed in the openings, varying the widths until they "looked" the same width. It turned out that the aft most had to be made wider, then the middle a little less but still wider than the foremost window.

 

Here is the result with the final paper templates:

 

I also discovered the reason for the little scroll work carving at the fore end of the windows, which shows up in every  74 gun ship of this era. It hides the fact that the fore edge of the foremost mullion is not parallel to its aft edge; the upper edge has to be longer than the lower edge in order to fair to the side of the hull. This would have been visually clunky, so they disguised it with a little carving to cover it up.

 

 

Looking forward, here are paper templates of the upper works:

Still a lot to do!

 

Mark

 

Edited 12 hours ago by SJSoane

[druxey]

Isn't it a fun challenge, Mark? Look like you have things well under control there. I'm currently working on upper quarter galleries that are even more of a challenge. In plan view they are the shape of half a teardrop. Be thankful for small mercies!

[dvm27]

This is an area that is so often done wrong when re-creating these warships. I don't really understand all the geometry but intuitively your version just looks right. The eye truly is the best judge here.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

9 hours ago, SJSoane said:

I also discovered the reason for the little scroll work carving at the fore end of the windows

How interesting! The same 'problem' is present on the Victory, but not the solution, and you're right, it's absence does detract a little from an otherwise very elegant bit of architecture.