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

[SJSoane]

Thanks Allan, this is very helpful.

 

However I proceed with forming the cannon, I first need new masters for all guns sizes. I have drawn the four needed for the Bellona: 32# 9'-6"; 18# 9'-0"; 9# 7'-6"; and 9# 8'-6".

 

Finding the right proportions was a little challenging. These cannon would have been designed to a convention predating 1760, so some of the evolutions of the later 18th century would not have applied.  Working with Brian Lavery's "The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War 1600-1815", I discovered that the most likely patterns were developed by Albert Borgard in 1716, modified slightly by John Armstrong after 1725. The biggest changes came after the Bellona's time, with Thomas Blomefield after 1780.

 

A little searching online found a Google digitized copy of Muller's "A Treatise of Artillery". In that book, Muller gives John Armstrong's proportions, and then offers criticism and proposals for changes. I only needed Armstrong's proportions, not Muller's proposed changes, so I was good to go. I don't know if or where Muller's proposals would have been implemented; he proposed removing the flair at the end of the muzzle, and placing the trunnions on the centerline of the gun, for example, neither of which seem to have happened in most of the 18th century. 

 

The digitized book did not reproduce the plates, so for further details on the cascable and the muzzle I turned to the drawings in Lavery's book of a 6# gun based on Bogard's proportions, and a print from the National Maritime Museum of drawing a muzzle and cascable from a 24# gun c 1770. (pages 93 and 94 in Lavery.) These vary primarily in the stave shapes in the cascable,  the moulded sections between the base ring and the neck of the button. I chose the 1770 pattern, because it gives me a little more room to develop the mouldings at my small scale. I am assuming that this is not far off from what would have been cast in 1760.

 

Interestingly, I looked at Harold Hahn's summary sheet for guns in "Ships of the American Revolution and Their Models" (p. 195). There are several key issues which do not correspond with the information in the Muller book. First, Hahn takes the given length (for example, 9'-6" for the 32# gun) as the total length including the cascable. Muller's book clearly says the given dimensions do not include the cascable; they are to the hind end of the base ring. Second, Hahn lists the caliber dimensions for various gun weights, for example, 6.105" for a 32# gun. This is a critical dimension, because all of the gun dimensions are based on the caliber. But Muller's book lists both caliber and shot dimension for each gun size, and the calibers are larger than the numbers listed by Hahn; for example the caliber listed for a 32# is 6.410".

 

Indeed, it looks as if Hahn listed the shot dimension as if they were the caliber dimensions. I used the caliber sizes from the Muller book, and this consequently makes the guns slightly larger in their widths. Since the bore is the same as the caliber, it makes sense that the caliber is larger than the diameter of the shot, to provide windage clearance.

 

Hahn reported that he got  his information from an M.V. Brewington article in "American Neptune", 1943. I don't have access to that, so I can't confirm one way or the other if there was a different interpretation of caliber and shot size. Lacking any other information, I will go with the primary source I find in Muller.

 

Mark

 

 

[AON]

Why might the 9 pdr 7.5ft be longer than the 9 pdr 6.5ft image???

[SJSoane]

Oops, mis-labled. Here is the correct labeling....

Thanks for catching that, Alan!

 

The long 9# were for the forecastle, presumably for chasing possibilities. The shorter 9# were on the quarterdeck.

[AON]

Been there.

Done that.  😉

 

Actually, I've done considerably worse.

Edited November 20, 2018 by AON

[druxey]

Looking at English Sea Ordnance: The Age of the System by Adrian Caruana, the pattern used at that time period (Armstrong-Frederick and 1732 Regulation) had a small ornamental ring around the equator of the cascabel and the muzzle flare was slighter larger and distinctly more concave than in your illustrations above.

[AON]

like this one?

[SJSoane]

druxey,

 

Something more like this?

For the life of me, I can't remember where I found this years ago, to work from...

 

Mark

[SJSoane]

Alan,

Very nice! Did you extrude the king's emblem? and how did you get it to curve? I am impressed!

Mark

[AON]

Thanks.

It was the 3d program... all I did was draw lines and pick to wrap to the surface.

[druxey]

Yes, very similar to Alan's rendering. I can send you images via PM.

[CGN39BCO]

11 hours ago, SJSoane said:

Hahn reported that he got  his information from an M.V. Brewington article in "American Neptune", 1943. I don't have access to that,

Actually, you do.  Not much of the "American Neptune" is on line, but the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum has posted Volumes 1 through 7, here. (Use the "Click here to browse all items in the American Neptune collection." link to get to 1943.)  The "American Naval Guns" article is in Volume 3, Number 1, January 1943, pp. 8-18 and Volume 3, Number 2, April, 1943, pp. 148-158. The first article deals primarily with problems of procurement, but includes photographs of a carriage gun and swivel gun recovered from British vessels sunk at Yorktown.  The second article lists the proportions of guns and carriages under British (and French) practice and is possibly of more interest to you as it includes diameters and windage allowances.

 

Bill

[SJSoane]

Bill,

 

Thank you so much. This was a treasure to find. As it turns out it reproduced the diagram from the Muller treatise that was obscured in the Goggle digitalization. What a great magazine, looking quickly at some of the other issues and articles. 

 

Another day's research and drawing, and I discovered several interesting anomalies.

 

First, as best I can tell, it appears that M.V. Brewington sometimes used shot diameter, and other times caliber, in calculating dimensions. So Hahn was following him. But the Muller description of the Armstrong proportions clearly works everything from caliber.

 

Second, Muller's description of the Armstrong proportions does not correspond always with his own drawing to which he refers. He quotes the length of the cascable from the hind end of the base ring as 2 ¼ calibers, but the drawing is clearly shorter. And the drawing shows a ring on top of the neck, which I believed came much later in the century. So the more one digs into documents, the more mystifying it all becomes.

 

All is finally laid to rest thanks to druxey, who was able to show me a drawing of the 1732 regulation, which I believe would be the guns on the Bellona in 1760. The shape corresponds to the guns shown on Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine, from the mid 1760s. So, for better or worse, this is the pattern I drew today.

 

Now on to how I am going to make these.

 

Mark

 

 

[Mark P]

Morning Mark;

 

You are correct about the ring on the cascabel for the breeching rope. It appeared around 1790, I believe.

 

Prior to this, on some ships, a thimble was seized in a short strop around the cascabel to provide an eye for the breeching rope. The thimble was placed above the cascabel.

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

[Siggi52]

Hello Mark,

 

first of all, I'm happy to see you back at the shipyard. I think that I will return in the near future.

 

Like you, I have the problem, which cannon design should I use for a 1747 launched ship. I found this side in the internet, about britisch cannons.

https://www.arc.id.au/Cannon.html

But the more you know, the more complicated it seams. I decided for me, to use the Armstrong pattern of 1760. Scaled down to 1:48 I hope there will be no real difference to the 1722/24 or 1742 design. Because I could't find any description of these designs. If anybody has an description about these designs, it would be great to know more about it.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

I have drawings of 1735 for 1- 3 -6 - 12 -18- 24.

ex.

 

[SJSoane]

hi everyone,

 

After a break for the American Thanksgiving, I got back to the guns.

 

Siggi, that link you provided above is very remarkable. It gives very precise instructions on how to draw an Armstrong pattern gun, quoting Isaac Landman's instructions from 1788. For those who haven't seen it, it has an interactive section where you can choose a gun size, and it will draw the gun for you. Well worth having a look at it.

 

It gave much better information on details like the muzzle and cascable, so I tried his instructions. Interestingly, it creates a slightly different profile than the one I previously drew based on the one in Adrian Caruana's English Sea Ordnance showing the 1732 Regulation. Below, the one at the top is based on the Caruana drawing, the second is constructed from the Landman's instructions.

 

Both purport to show an Armstrong pattern. But notice a couple of differences. The cascable is longer in the Landman, with a broader ogee (the S shaped curve) and the button has a larger diameter. Also, the chase tapers at a somewhat sharper angle than the two reinforce sections, giving the Landman gun a more graceful profile in my opinion. And the muzzle flare is a touch longer.

 

It is beyond my research skill at this point to know which is the real Armstrong pattern, or whether it evolved over time while keeping the same name, or were these various authors looking back to different periods of development? The Landman profile does look like an effort to slim down the gun, which I understand was a desired effort through this period.

 

I have appended the Falconer gun from the date of the Bellona, for comparison.

 

Each step forward raises more questions! But that is the fun of this project.

 

Mark

 

 

Edited November 25, 2018 by SJSoane
added the Falconer gun for comparison

[druxey]

Apparently the Caruana drawing was from an actual example of cast cannon, not the theoretical drawing. I mention that for what it's worth.

[Siggi52]

Good morning,

these pictures of cannons I made 2013 in Chatham. Most of the muzzles are like the one in Marks second drawing, not so step. So what is right?

 

 

 

The No 9 is the big mortar far back to the right, No 18 is the mortar where the explanations are lying on.

 

 

 

[SJSoane]

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks to all of you, I now have a more sophisticated (that is, confused in a thoughtful way) understanding of the guns. Below are the guns I have tried drawing, starting with the Borgland gun in 1716, then the Armstrong pattern described by Muller in 1768, then the 1732 regulation based on Armstrong, and then Landman's 1788 instructions for an Armstrong.

 

Let's compare these to the drawing in Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine, which I have taken as the closest image I have to the Bellona's time. The Bellona was launched in 1760, and the Falconer book was first published in 1769--although I have only seen editions from the 1780s, and so I cannot be absolutely sure that these drawings were original to the 1769 edition. Has anyone seen the 1769 version of Falconer, and are the drawings the same as in later editions?

 

Assuming the Falconer drawings date from the 1760s, how do the various patterns compare to this?

 

The Borgard has a cascable with two ovolo mouldings (half circles), but the Falconer has an ogee (S shaped). So the Bogard is out.

The Landman has too fat a neck and button on the cascable; and the chase is too slender. So the Landman is out.

The Muller version of Armstrong and the 1732 regulation based on Armstrong seem very similar. But the 1732 drawing shows a more complex cascable than the Falconer; the Muller version of Armstrong looks more like the Falconer drawing. And the Muller version has a longer, more slender neck than the 1732 pattern, more like the Falconer.

I am therefore settled that the Muller version of Armstrong is closest to what I think the guns would have looked like in 1760.

 

Siggi's excellent photos do challenge these drawings a bit. If I read Siggi's photo relative to the text correctly, the two cannon closest to us in the second photo are labeled as Armstrong patterns; but their muzzles have a more gradual slope than either Muller or the 1732 pattern is showing. Could these all be from a later date, like Landman's instructions from the 1788? The beautiful cannon on the red carriage looks a lot to me like the Landman instructions, with the more slender chase. I think this is the most handsome cannon of them all, but I will faithfully follow what I now think is most historically accurate for the Bellona, the Muller version of Armstrong.

 

There is one last puzzling question, as I finish up drafting these cannon. The Muller instructions give the same width for all of the reinforce rings, ogees and astragal mouldings, no matter what the caliber gun. This doesn't seem consistent with the 18th century reliance on proportion relative to size, and they seem outsized on the smaller guns when I begin to draw them. I think I will proportion these down as a function of their relative calibers.

 

Mark

 

 

 

[AON]

At 1:64 won't they all look very similar?

[SJSoane]

Hi Alan,

 

You are quite right. I went down this rabbit hole purely out of historic interest.

 

The actual fabrication cannot likely reproduce the finer points. I have drawn my lathe duplicator cutter and follower to the size of the actual barrel, as below, and I can see that some of the moulding profiles will not be captured.

 

But I guess like everything else in this model, at least I will know what SHOULD have been there!

 

Mark

 

 

 

[druxey]

Regardless of edition, it is unlikely the plates in Falconer would have been re-engraved. It was an expensive investment, and only if major changes had occured would a plate be altered or re-engraved.

 

For some of those profiles, a left and a right hand tool are required. Otherwise, you'd have to refine the turnings by hand!

[SJSoane]

I am proceeding with fabrication of the cannon. I decided that this would be a good time to try a couple of strategies, to see which one gives the best results, and also to build my skills in a few new things. I will try duplicating from a template, reworking the casting I tried earlier, and 3-D printing.

 

I have started making the the duplicating template, as seen below, and also creating the digital file for 3-D printing. Regarding the digital model, I am struggling with how to get the king's insignia to curve to the gun surface. I am using TurboCad for Mac, if anyone has a suggestion for doing this.  I will also post this question in the CAD part of this website.

 

Mark

[AON]

Just answered your question at:

 

[SJSoane]

Thanks to great help from our colleagues on the CAD section including Alan, I managed to create the king's insignia in the digital file.

I will try getting a 3-D print of this, just to see the quality. Although I have heard that 3-D printing is not quite up to snuff at this scale.

And while waiting for that, I will continue with the duplicator...

 

Mark

[SJSoane]

Thanks to the members on the CAD threads, I tried using Autodesk's Fusion 360 software to build a second version of the cannon, and it was very high quality; I also converted the earlier model with the insignia to the STL file type needed for 3-D printers, as shown below. But, it all came to nothing when I got the quote for 3-D printing at an online service. For the 74 guns it was going to be $556 for the lowest level of refinement, up to $1950 for the highest level of refinement. Way too much for a retirement budget, especially since I have been told that they will still show the layers as they build up. 3-D printing is no longer an option. On to other ideas.

 

I realize that I was attracted to this because the digital model shows all of the wonderful, nuanced detail of the cannon itself, at a scale that looks real. But when this is shrunk down to 3/16" scale giving a 2" long cannon, most of the nuance disappears.  I was disappointed to lose what I know should be there. Perhaps the best thing is to print out a large image of the digital cannon and pin it on the wall of my shop, to remind me what the model cannon represent!

 

Mark

[paulsutcliffe]

How about just getting one printed to use as a master to cast your own in pewter or resin maybe

[AON]

Mark

If you are interested, I might possibly get you one of each size printed for you for free at our local library. This would be for your collection.  It is a shame to do all that work for nothing.

PM me and we can discuss.

Alan

[SJSoane]

Hi Paul,

 

Now that is an interesting idea. The highest quality one would cost $26.40, maybe an interesting investment to see how it could turn out. I have heard that the best still have slight lines where the layers are formed, but cleaning up just one for a master would not be as dreary as cleaning up 74! I will reflect on whether this gives me anything better than just manually turning a master on the lathe, as I did before.

 

Mark

[SJSoane]

Hi Alan, I just sent a PM.