Plans for Hermaphrodite Brig

[Nacioffi]

I am looking for plans ,including rigging plans, of the class of ships known as a Hermaphrodite Brig. Can anyone direct me to where i could find same

[GrandpaPhil]

The rigging plan for the Prince de Neufchatel, which had a hermaphrodite rig, can be found in The Search For Speed Under Sail by Howard I Chapelle.

[Kurt Johnson]

I believe the Model Shipways Niagara is a hermaphrodite brig. The plans should be available.

 

Kurt

[Roger Pellett]

Buy a used copy of “The Baltimore Clipper” by Howard I Chapelle.  The book is loaded with plans.  You should be able to buy a good used copy for less than $10.

 

Niagara is not representative of vessels usually classed as hermaphrodite brigs.  She was a true brig.  In addition, any drawings that would be available would be for one of several reconstructions attempted over the years including the one presently sailing on the Lakes.  In other words they do not depict a real vessel from the early 1800’s.  All of the drawings in Chapelle’s book are based in authentic drawings or half models.

 

Roger

[Jaager]

The plans in HIC books are for sale from The Smithsonian.

 

For the Antebellum USN  many/most of the vessels designed as schooners or brigantines were rigged as brigs.

The rig was a bit fluid.  It appears to me that you could pick most any brig, brigantine, or 2 masted schooner hull plan and mast and rig it as a hermaphrodite brig.  It would be helpful to give your model a fictional name, to avoid integrity problems.

[Kurt Johnson]

Sorry I was wrong about the Niagara. I looked her up and she has 3 masts. So she is supposedly a snow brig. There is a separate mast right behind the main mast for her gaff sail. I should have looked her up first. 

 

You didn't mention a time frame, but the ship I’m working with now Newsboy, 1854 is really a hermaphrodite brig, but it is often referred to as a brigantine.  You can’t go wrong with Chapelle as Roger says. And he’s right, I’ve gotten a number of used books at great prices and you wouldn’t even know they were used. If they say they were a former library book, they’re been read a lot more times than a private owner would have and I avoid those.

 

Kurt

 

[Bob Cleek]

3 hours ago, Kurt Johnson said:

You can’t go wrong with Chapelle as Roger says.

Well, Chapelle's books are great resources (I have all of them,) but I wouldn't go so far as to say "you can't go wrong" with him. Some of Chapelle's published plans and a fair number of the HAMMS ("Historic American Merchant Marine Survey") drawings from the WPA era contain some pretty glaring errors. They were done as a "make work" project during the Depression and some of the work was sloppy and some of it was conjecture. This is particularly true when it comes to rigging. Often, they were taking the lines off of an old hulk that no longer had a rig in it and they'd just pick one and draw it in there.   In other instances, they'd find but one surviving example of a type and then Chapelle would publish it in one of his books as representative of the type when, in fact, it was perhaps an odd ball outlier but just really all they had to go on, so they used what they had. Still, they managed to save a lot of what would have been lost forever.  Take it with a grain of salt, though. If you do your own research as well, you'll spot and possibly be able to correct some of the errors. (This wasn't necessarily Chapelle's fault, but that of the many unemployed draftsmen and architects sent out to find "old boats" and take plans off of them.)

Edited June 5, 2019 by Bob Cleek

[trippwj]

The time frame of interest is important as rigging nomenclature was far from standard until well into the mid-19th century.

 

As to Chappelle, he did a remarkable job with the resources available to him - all paper based, no"searchable" databases and so forth, just card catalogs and maybe a hardcopy list of items.  His biggest shortcoming, in my view, is poor documentation of sources for much of his work.

 

[Kurt Johnson]

I think it’s always somewhat of a gamble. The available information is almost always uncertain. And you can bet all your money the minute you complete your project some conflicting in formation will suddenly become available to you. Plans where just a guideline that the craftsmen building the ship would change because of the reality of the materials they had on hand, and how they accomplished there job. The plans themselves probably evolved into something different over the ships construction time. Ships and their rigging changed probably on a daily basis, due to advancements, personal preferences, etc. As a model builder you can never actually reproduce something in perfect scale due physical properties of your materials, skill, finances and life ( if I had time to, or if I could see better, or had the dexterity to I would’ve had done it differently.)

   I personally go with what was generally the practice at the time and does it physically or mechanically make sense to do it a certain way.  After that it’s how I see the subject.

   After all that ramble, there are still some hermaphrodite brigs existing as replicas or pleasure craft.  We don’t really know what Nacioffi is looking for and how strict his requirements are. 

 

Kurt

 

Edited June 5, 2019 by Kurt Johnson

[Roger Pellett]

The basis for any good model is a good set of lines that define the vessel’s hull.  Rigs could and did change to suit circumstances.  Chapelle’s Baltimore Clippers Book was originally copyrighted in 1030 so it is one of his early works.  Many of the drawings reproduced in it the were traced from takeoffs of hull lines for vessels acquired by the Royal Navy.  This book also includes copies of drawings redrawn from those produced by the French Naval constructor Marestier who visited the US in 1820.  I don’t know of a better source of information for these vessels unless you are willing to travel overseas.

 

My copy of the book book was printed by Tradition Press in 1965.  It is about 11in by 8in so the drawings show up well.  I believe that copies of this same edition are available.

 

If you want a later source I recommend Chapelle’s “Search for Speed Under Sail,” but my copy of the Baltimore Clipper produces the material in a larger format.

 

Roger

[michaelpsutton2]

https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/84960.html

https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/84959.html

HMS Griffon, Lynx, Termagant, Charybdis, & Forester 1831-38

[Talos]

On 6/4/2019 at 10:57 PM, Kurt Johnson said:

Sorry I was wrong about the Niagara. I looked her up and she has 3 masts. So she is supposedly a snow brig. There is a separate mast right behind the main mast for her gaff sail. I should have looked her up first. 

 

You didn't mention a time frame, but the ship I’m working with now Newsboy, 1854 is really a hermaphrodite brig, but it is often referred to as a brigantine.  You can’t go wrong with Chapelle as Roger says. And he’s right, I’ve gotten a number of used books at great prices and you wouldn’t even know they were used. If they say they were a former library book, they’re been read a lot more times than a private owner would have and I avoid those.

 

Kurt

 

 

She is a snow-brig with a spencer mast behind the mainmast, but it is not truly a separate mast in terms of categorizing by the number of masts (eg. a two-master or a three-master). It is a small mast scabbed onto the back of the mainmast, it does not reach down to the deck and is attached to the mainmast at the maintop. They were a feature of the later Antebellum US Navy warships, which had them on one, two, or even all three masts. Constellation used to have two in the past on her main and mizzen, but still has the one on her mizzen today.

 

[wefalck]

Nacioffi, perhaps you could precise in what period you are interested in ? The term 'hermaphrodite brig' or 'brigantine' tended to be used from the second quarter of the 19th century on for a vessel with a full-rigged foremast and a fore-and-aft rigged main mast. It was a popular rig in European waters up the to end of the sailing ship period, more popular than the brig (or snow). In continental Europe it was also preferred over the tops-sail schooner, which seems to have been more popular around the British Isles.