SS Benjamin Noble by Roger Pellett - 1:96 - Great Lakes Freighter

[Roger Pellett]

“The legend lives on from the Chippewa of the big lake they call Gitchi Gummi.

Superior it’s said never gives up its dead when the gales of November come early.”

   Gordon Lightfoot “The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” 1979

 

Freeboard:  The vertical distance from a vessel’s waterline to the upper deck, measured at the lowest point where water can enter.

 

Chapter 1-  THE LAKE

 

In his classic 1941 children’s book Paddle to the Sea, author Holling C. Holling describes Lake Superior as being shaped like the head of a wolf.  Sault Saint Marie ( the SOO) where the lake discharges into Lake Huron via the St Marys River at its Eastern End is its neck.  The Kewanee Penninsula jutting out into the lake from its south shore is the wolf’s mouth and Isle Royal off the lake’s north shore is its eye.  At the extreme western end of the lake, the tip of the wolf’s nose are the “twin ports” of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior Wisconsin.  This side by side array of docks handles more cargo (by tonnage) than any other port on the five Great Lakes.  Even today, when cargo is handled by fewer but larger vessels over 800 ships arrived at and departed from the Ports during the eight month shipping season.

 

Most of the time the waters in the 80 mile funnel shaped arm leading to the Twin Ports are rather placid, but as Gordon Lightfoot haunting ballad says, the lake can be swept by vicious gales; not just in November but also in the spring.  The storms that are most dangerous to mariners approaching the Twin Ports are Northeasters as they sweep down the lake from its eastern end 350 miles away and this “fetch” can build up huge waves that can completely engulf the Duluth Harbor entry.

 

On the night of April 26,1914 the 250ft long Steamship Benjamin Noble found herself battling just such a storm while headed for Duluth to deliver a cargo of railroad rails to be used in the construction of the Great Northern Railroad.  She was badly overloaded to the point where she had almost no freeboard.  In  1914 there were no freeboard regulations for ships on the Great Lakes.  Captains were expected to use their judgement.  In this case, the Noble’s 31 year old captain was under pressure to deliver the entire shipment in one load.  Times were tough and John Francombe, representing the owners had used a “sharp pencil” to prepare the bid.

 

Replying to the “Dock Wallopers” watching her load at Conneaut, Ohio on Lake Erie, Captain John Eisenhardt said that he would be safe as he planned to hug the shore all the way.  His plan seemed to work.  He crossed Lake Erie, sailed up the Detroit River, sailed up the length of Lake Huron and locked through the SOO Canal into Lake Superior.  On Lake Superior he probably transited the canal that bisects the Kewanee Pensula and wound up among the sheltered waters of the Apostle Islands.  Leaving the Apostle Islands, though, the compass course to Duluth is due west through completely unprotected waters.

 

As he entered the western arm of the lake on the final 80 mile run to Duluth he was hit by a violent Northeaster.  Winds of over 65 miles per hour were clocked at Duluth that wrecked several Harbor structures.  These winds would have hitting the Noble on her starboard quarter, but Captain Eisenhardt was now committed and plodded on passing Two Harbors, 26 miles northeast of Duluth at night.  Somewhere between Two Harbors and Duluth, the Benjamin Noble and her crew of 20 men vanished, despite the fact that two other vessels were close enough to see her lights.  The next day the Noble’s loss was confirmed when empty life raft and hatch covers whith her name washed up on Duluth’s Park point beach.

 

As Gordon Lightfoot says, Lake Superior never gave up her dead as no crewmen or their remains were ever found.  For 90 years, the Noble was one of Lake Superior’s most famous Ghost Ships.  Then in 2005 a group of dedicated shipwreck hunters found her about 20 miles northeast of Duluth in over 300ft of water.  The wreck is headed at a compass bearing of 20 degrees.  The wreck has been entered on the National Register of Historic Places and is hopefully protected from shipwreck looters.

 

This Model has been in the works for longer than the short life of the actual ship.  This will be the second time that I have taken the model down from the shelf and resumed work.  Hopefully this build log will keep me going.  In the next two chapters I will describe the ship, her historic context, and the research that I did.  Then we’ll get into actual model building.  Somewhere along the line I’ll make some educated guesses about how the wreck actually happened.  Stay tuned!

 

Roger

[ccoyle]

8 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Paddle to the Sea

Ah, now that brought back some memories!

[Jim Lad]

An interesting looking ship, Roger.

 

John

[Roger Pellett]

Chapter 2- THE SHIP

 

Sometime during the year 1908, Benjamin Noble decided to invest in the Great Lakes shipping industry by building a ship.

 

Mr. Noble was President and part owner of Detroit, Michigan’s Capitol Brass Works, a large producer of brass plumbing fittings and steam plant specialties such as steam gages and traps.

 

By 1908, it was not easy for a small operator to break into Great Lakes shipping. In 1906, the influential magazine, Marine Review that covered Lake shipping news reported,  “One of the characteristic features of the past two or three years has been the distribution of the great steel making companies to control the avenues of transportation from their mines to their furnaces.”  This meant that the major steel companies each had an in-house fleet carrying iron ore, the Lakes’ principal bulk cargo.  Independently owned vessels could only count on hauling the cargos that occasionally exceeded the capacities of the company owned fleets.

 

To overcome this problem Mr. Noble’s vessel would be specially designed to transport a niche product.  The original major Great Lakes bulk cargo was lumber, milled from the supposedly inexhaustible white pine forests bordering the Lakes.  By 1908, this cargo was in decline as supply of lumber from these forests had proven to be finite.  Another wood products cargo, pulp wood was, however, booming fueled by the growth of the demand for newsprint.  A ship intended to haul this cargo would require some special design features:

 

Dimensions-  unlike vessels in the other bulk cargo trades that traveled between the Lake Superior and Lake Erie or Lake Michigan, those in the pulpwood trades needed to travel through the Welland Canal Around Niagara Falls and often through the St. Lawrence River Canals to deliver their cargos to Canadian Paper mills.  Unlike the much larger SOO locks that could easily handle the large 600ft “Ore Boats” ( shown in the photo below), the length of these vessels going through these lower lake and river locks was limited to about 260ft.  The Ship’s designers fixed her dimensions at 250ft length overall x 42ft beam.

Standard 600ft Great Lakes Freighter or “Ore Boat”-  Photo dates from 1950

 

Cargo Handling-  Great Lakes vessels hauling cargos of ore, coal, and grain could take advantage of highly developed shore-side loading and unloading equipment but those in the lumber and pulpwood often loaded at undeveloped locations so were fitted with onboard loading booms located at the fore and aft ends of the cargo bay.

 

Loading- Pulp wood is a very light cargo;  It takes up a lot of volume per unit of weight.  As filling up the cargo hold did not sink the ship to it’s intended draft it was customary for vessels in this trade to carry a large deck load.  To contain this load in heavy weather the stern cabin atop the boilers and engines was elevated on a raised poop deck, and the sides of the weather deck were enclosed by permanent bulwarks. The poop deck, the usual Great Lakes vessel forecastle and the bulwarks along each side formed an open topped box intended to enclose a deck cargo.  The bulwarks were each pierced with three large freeing ports to drain water coming onboard.

 

Draft-  Unlike The standard 600 ft bulk carriers, vessels in the pulp wood trades often needed to venture up shallow rivers to load, and of course contend with the limitations of the canals, so the designers of Mr. Noble’s ship fixed her design draft at 14 ft.   As there were no laws governing freeboard on the Lakes until 1936 she was often loaded much deeper, eventually leading to her loss.  

 

Depth- Vertical Dimension from top of keel to underside of deck beam.  18ft. This means that floating at her design draft she would exhibit a freeboard of about 4ft, considered adequate for a vessel hauling a “buoyant” cargo.  Unfortunately her designers had no control over the cargos that she would be chartered to haul.

 

To be continued

[Red Rhino]

Hi Roger: I'm really looking forward to this build and the history that accompanies it. Do you know if the Noble was carrying the GN Rail as a deck load on top of the Pulp Wood Load?

I have the old A.J. Fisher Lumber Hooker kit, which looks somewhat similar to the Noble. I will have to pull out the plans, and compare the two vessels.

 

Regards,

Dave

[Roger Pellett]

Hi Dave,

 

After launch and fitout it appears that she was chartered to the Argo Steamship Company that operated a fleet of pulpwood steamers.  Sometime during her short six year life her owners decided to place her under the management of a J. Francombe of Detroit.  Francombe sometimes invested in the vessel’s that he managed so it is possible that he was also one of the Noble’s owners.

 

While under Francombe’s management she operated as a tramp steamer hauling a variety of cargos- coal, scrap iron, and of course railroad rails.  In fact, all of the photos that I have found shoe her hauling these cargos, not pulpwood.

 

There is no evidence that at the time of her sinking she was carrying anything but railroad rails.  This includes contemporary newspaper reports, and a subsequent lawsuit that went all of the way to the US Supreme Court. A photo of her leaving Ashtabula, Ohio on her final voyage confirms that she did not have a deckload and photos of the wreck shows railroad rails in her hold.

 

The Noble is an excellent example of someone using a ship for a purpose for which it was not designed.  The Noble was designed to sail with a hold full and deckload of a light cargo.  Instead she was loaded with a very heavy cargo that didn’t fill her hold entirely, even when she had little freeboard and reserve buoyancy.  Leaking or damaged hatches would have allowed water to flood the empty space within the hold and she sunk like a stone.  A heavy cargo like railroad rails would have been a dangerous cargo for a vessel of the Noble’s design.

 

Roger

 

 

[Kevin]

going to follow this, 

have you seen this @realworkingsailor

[Roger Pellett]

CHAPTER 3. Research

 

OK, Time to get this moving before someone deletes it for inactivity.

 

As the first 22 years of my life were spent near the Great Lakes (Lake Erie), building a model of a Great Lakes Steamship has long been an ambition.  Unfortunately classic Great Steamships are long!  A model of one built to any reasonable scale woluld result in a model of impratical size.  A model of one of the “standard” 600 footers like one in the picture in Chapter 2 built to a scale of 1:96 would be over 6ft long.

 

In the 1980’s my parents were living in the town of Vermilion, Ohio on the South Shore of Lake Erie.  Vermilion was the home of the Great Lakes Historical Society (the forerunner of the present National Museum of the Great Lakes, now in Toledo, Ohio).  During a visit to my parents I learned that the Society was the recipient of the drawing archive of the American Shipbuilding Company, the principal shipbuilder of Great Lakes Vessels.  My Dad and I paid the museum a visit and the curator reluctantly agreed to let me look at some of the drawings, but at the time they had no way to reproduce them or desire to do so.

 

Several years later, in 1986 I learned that the museum had selected several example ships and were now, selling plan packages.  Among them was Benjamin Noble.  Although I was aware of her loss on Lake Superior, I was primarily interested in her because while she included many “laker” features, with a length of 250 ft a model at a scale of 1:96 would be 31-1/4 in long which I considered to be manageable.

 

When I received the plans, I was pleased to see that they were reprints of the original builders drawings reproduced at the original scale.  The Package included separate sheets for each of the following:

 

Outboard profile, and Deck

Midships Section

Stern Outline (lines drawing of stern)

Construction Drawing- Longitudinal section and decks

Bulkhead Details

Hatch Details

Coal Bunker Hatch

Hardware for Masts and Booms

Boom Rigging Drawing.

 

I was disappointed that the package did not include a lines drawing for the vessel other than the Stern Outline Drawing listed above

At that point, I was finishing another model and then the company transferred me to Duluth, MN, less than 20 miles from where the Noble sank.  By the time life returned to normal it was 1992.  I dug out the plans and using the longitudinal section, deck plans, midship section, builkead details, and stern outline I drew what I considered to be a reasonable lines drawing for the vessel.  Using this, I carved a 1:96 scale hull.  Again my job and full-size boat and canoe projects interfered and the hull sat on the shelf.

 

In 2005, I retired, and was researching the history and construction of the SS Meteor, a museum ship in the Duluth Harbor.  One day, the director gave me a CD file of the American Shipbuilding Drawing Collection, now, housed at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University.  Looking up Benjamin Noble, I found two items not included in my plans package- a hull plating expansion drawing and most important a table of offsets.

 

With the Mould Loft Offsets, I was now able to make an accurate lines drawing.  Since like most Great Lakes freighters, the Noble had a long parallel midbody it was only necessary to draw the bow and stern.

The lack of a Company prepared lines drawing is curious.  There are two possibilities:

The lines drawing was lost. Or

The mould loft offsets were developed from a model, so a lines drawing was never prepared

 

The American Shipbuilding Company was an amalgamation of shipyards on four of the five Great Lakes stretching from Superior Wisconsin at the west end of Lake Superior to Buffalo, New York on the Eastern End of Lake Erie.  The Benjamin Noble was built at their yard at Wyandott, Michigan but she was designed by their central design office in Cleveland, Ohio.  There is a half model of a Great Lakes freighter in the Lake Superior Maritime Museum here in Duluth that has been cut to allow body plan sections to be traced so some yards did build from half models.  American Shipbuilding’s design office was lead by A.C. Diericx, formerly of the American Steel Barge Company designers and builders of the famous Whaleback Ship. Mr Diericx had been formally trained at the Royal Navy’s Woolwich Dockyard and certainly knew how to prepare a lines drawing.  It is, therefore, my opinion that A lines drawing was prepared by the Cleveland Design office, offset dimensions were recorded and sent to the Wyandotte shipyard where the hull was lofted.  The Wyandotte Yard would have not needed and probably never saw the lines drawing which was either lost or destroyed.

 

After reshaping the hull, my original lines drawing was close but not close enough, it again sat on my shelf while I worked on other projects.  During this time, the wreck of the ship was discovered after over 100 years on the bottom.  Steve Daniels, a member of the Lake Superior Shipwreck Preservation Society graciously supplemented my research with a DVD of the wreckage clarifying some details and more questions.

 

We’ll discuss other research as I proceed.

 

Roger

[FriedClams]

A very interesting vessel Roger and quite a daunting project.  I’m going to pull up a chair and get comfortable.  I’m looking forward to this.

 

Gary

[JKC27]

@Roger Pellett Been a bit since I've visited, as I have been working away (slowly) on my Fitzgerald build - which I should upload some pics here.  I will be watching this build of yours closely as this topic is really in my area of interest.  Love the short, but detailed history on this ship too.

[Red Rhino]

Hi Roger: Just completed my move from Minnesota to Arizona and able to follow back up with your build. I'm curious what information from the Survey of the ship supplemented your original lines. This is turning out to be a fascinating story!

 

Dave

[KeithAug]

An interesting vessel Roger - I will follow with interest.

[michael mott]

Hi Roger this one has peaked my interest as well, I shall follow along.

 

Michael

[Steve Joachim]

Hello Roger. My name is Steve Joachim. My great Grandfather Theodore Grant was Captain of the Benjamin Noble right up until it's final trip. He was watching the loading at Ashtabula and refused to sail her in such an overloaded state. He was replaced by young Captain Eishenhardt. The rest is tragic history. My Great Grandfather finished his working days as postmaster of Algonac Michigan. I don't know all the details but I always wondered if the Nobles sinking stuck with him and made his decision to retire from sailing. I'm glad you are doing this project..I'm very curious to see the finished work. SJ

[Roger Pellett]

Hi Steve,  that’s a fascinating coincidence!  Your Great Grandfather certainly made a wise decision.  On the other hand, had he been in command he might have waited out the storm behind the lee side of the Kewanee Penninsula and saved the lives of all on board.  But there was probably little warning.  Radio technology was in its infancy, the transmitting and receiving sets were huge, and I’m not sure that the Noble was even fitted with an electrical system.  Marconi’s manopoly also required a dedicated operator.  As a result, Great Lakes bulk carriers would not be fitted with radios for many years. The Weather Service would have posted storm warning flags at the SOO had they known but midwestern weather can change quickly. It’s entirely possible that those on board the Noble wouldn’t have been aware of the storm until it was too late.

 

In my opinion, Francombe, the vessel’s manager bears the entire responsibility for her loss.  He assigned too much cargo to haul and then hired a young captain that could be convinced to overload her.

 

Hi Dave, sorry to hear that you moved from Minnesota.  I hope that you are enjoying life in Arizona.  I don’t know if you heard but Sara Blanck left the Meteor Museum shortly after my book reception.  Since then I have had little to no contact with them.  The new director seems to be hostile to the idea of Developing the Meteor into anything other than a Tourist Attraction.  There are things going on in the background that I don’t understand.

 

I apologize for letting this thread sit idle.  While it would seem that I would have lots of modeling time due to Covid19.  I have been cleaning up a number of part finished non ship model projects before moving ahead.

 

Roger

Edited December 10, 2020 by Roger Pellett

[Feathermerchant]

Roger, interesting blog. The CD file of the American Ship Building (ASB) Drawings were an outcome of a three year project that a member of our ship modeling club and I did at the Inland seas Museum, Vermilion.  ASB donated all their ships drawings, including their predecessors, to Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Great Lakes Historical Society and the Dossin museum in Detroit. Prior to distributing the plans, BGSU microfilmed all the plans and has them on file. Those plans covered a period from 1867 - 1920. They released that catalog in 1988, and I do not think it has been reprinted. When we completed our work, we also contacted all the maritime museums around the Great Lakes and recorded their ship plan holdings. the only museum that did not participate was the Dossin. 

 

I have had a copy of two Great Lakes ships that have been on my "To Do" list since that project ended in 2005. The lumber hooker "Sidney O. Neff" and the Great Lakes tug "Edna G".  I also have the A.J. Fisher plans for the "Huron Brave", which is a composite of different "Lumber Hookers" and is has never been a real ship. though it is very good looking.  I got my plans out on the drawing board and wondered what was available on MSW. That is how I got here.  

 

It will be interesting watching your build. Did you carve  your hull out of a solid wood block or in a "bread & butter" style?

 

Bill  

[Roger Pellett]

Hi Bill,

 

My parents lived in the Vermilion Lagoons from 1979- 1986.  Looking down the lagoon from their kitchen, the Inland Seas Museum was atop a small hill across theVermilion River.  My father and I visited the museum when they still had the original ink on linen drawings.  There was also an attempt in the 80’s to start a model ship club there, but I was living and working at the other end of the state in Marietta and only attended one meeting.

 

Your plan catalog was quite a project.  It’s a shame that it is not more widely distributed.  While volunteering for the Whaleback Steamship SS Meteor Museum, I had them buy the two microfilm rolls of American Steel Barge drawings from BGSU.  We then had them scanned and saved on CD’s.  In 2007? I wrote an article cataloging them that was published in the Journal.

 

Fraser Shipyard in Superior, Wisconsin recently donated their stash of obsolete drawings to the Superior Branch of the University of Wisconsin.  A young lady who worked with me on my Whaleback Ship Book, has cataloged them and published an article recently in the Journal.  They may have some drawings of Edna G.  Edna G. Still exists afloat in Two Harbors, MN just up the North Shore of Lake Superior from where we live.  She is owned by the Lake County Historic Society and appears to be in good shape.  She is currently painted in the Maroon and Yellow colors of the DM&IR railroad, a subsidiary of US Steel that owned the Ore Docks where she worked.

 

I build my hulls as two half models.  Benjamin Noble’s hull was actually built by constructing each parallel mid body half as a U shaped box with bow and stern added as laminations.

 

Roger

 

[Red Rhino]

Hi Roger: thanks for your note. We moved to Tucson in August. While I really like it down here, I do miss the the Big Lake and especially Duluth Superior. though I must admit we got some snow this week (it lasted about an hour) and realized I didn't miss that aspect of Minnesota. It is too bad about the change in direction with the Meteor. I really liked Sara, and hope she is doing well.

 

I've got the AJ Fisher kit of the John Erickson that I would like to get started on, but in the meantime I will enjoy following your build of the Benjamin Nobel.

 

Bill: If you need anything related to the Huron Brave or the Edna G. I have both kits from AJ Fisher. I used to live near Detroit and was able to visit with Bob Irwin of AJ Fisher several times. His workshop was a step back in time.

 

Best Regards,

Dave Evans

[TBlack]

Roger,

I also struggled with how to do a model of an ore boat in 1:96. Here is my solution:

[cdanly]

Hello Roger,

 

I joined this forum yesterday after a search led me to your post. Many many years ago I started a project to build a lumber hooker. Unfortunately I put this on hold when kids came around and now that they have left the nest it is time to start up again! My journey began when I saw the Huron Brave kit offer by AJ Fisher and thought it would be fun to build but I wanted something bigger, and make it R/C. I was able to get a set of prints for the kit and squeezed out information that it was modeled after the lumber hooker Oscoda - owned by Hines Lumber Co. in Chicago. I contacted Mr. Hines and told him what I wanted to do and he subsequently sent me a packet of information including original photographs. At that time I was in a modeling club and another member mentioned he had a fiberglass hull that would be perfect. I bought it from him and he included a set of prints for the Benjamin Noble. The hull is approx. 59" x 10" which makes it proportionally aligned for the B.N. at about 1:50 scale. Now I have to decide if I should continue with the (disproportionate) Oscoda, or change gears to the Benjamin Noble. I have built a few ships already but this will be my first scratch build.

 

Anyway I guess this is a long introduction and to say I enjoyed reading your post(s). I welcome any feedback anyone has to offer!

 

Thanks,

Craig

[Roger Pellett]

It’s way past time to catch up with my progress on this model.

 

CHAPTER 4. Carving the Hull

 

The basic hull for the model was built in two stages.  Stage 1 in the early 1990’s and was based on my first lines drawing drawn from limited information.  Stage 2 was completed after the stage 1 hull had sat for many years and was based on the lines drawn from the table of offsets.   Fortunately my Stage 2 hull was just a refinement of my previous work.

 

The hull was carved from ordinary 3/4in lumberyard pine.  In doing so, I try to take advantage of flat surfaces wherever possible.  I, therefore, like to make hulls as two half models.  This allows the flat centerline hull surface to lay on a flat surface when checking the hull with templates.  It also means that I can cut the hull’s longitudinal profile on my bandsaw.

 

This sketch shows the scheme that I used to build the hull.  It shows one half only.

 

 

The holes for the locator pins for the two half hull pieces were drilled while the halves were still rough blocks.  This ensures that the two half hulls will register correctly once shaped.  Areas II and III are solid laminations unlike area I which was built up from three separate pieces as shown.  The bilge radius along the parallel middle body was cut with a router bit.

 

I still remember being surprised to learn in my introductory Naval Architecture course that in the real world the bilge radius was set by the diameter of the shipyard’s plate rolls.  I was disappointed to learn that there was not some rigorous analysis made.

 

Once shaped, the hull was coated with two coats of two part epoxy tank lining paint left over from a boatbuilding project.  I used this because I intended to plate the hull with sheet brass secured with two sided transfer tape and wanted a smooth impervious surface.  I have abandoned that idea and I hope that this coating will not interfere with the system that I choose to simulate plating.

 

Here are the finished hull halves.  My next post will discuss marking out the hull for the plating.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Roger Pellett

[Jim Lad]

Nice job on the hull halves, Roger.

 

John

[Michael_A]

Roger,

Those hull halves look very nice. Would you be willing to post a photo of the hull plating expansion drawing? I have read about those; but not seen them before. Are the black lines on the upper hull simulating the actual plates?
Michael

[Roger Pellett]

Michael,

 

Plating expansion and plate marking out are in my next post.

Stay tuned !

 

Roger

[CW_Tom]

Roger,

 

Just stumbled across your log today.  Needless to say, I'm interested and, as they say, I'm pulling up my virtual chair.

 

Thank you for the history brief on the ship as well as the information on Lake Superior.  My wife and I had our honeymoon in Duluth and I definitely made sure I went down to the museum they have there.  I absolutely enjoyed it.  I enjoyed the old town as well.  Duluth has a unique blend of history with shipping and railroading that intersects a couple of my interests.

 

Looking forward to seeing the state of things on your build.

 

Regards,

 

Tom

[Cathead]

Just found this and looking forward to following it. With a family history in northern Minnesota iron mining, and an upbringing along Lake Ontario, lake freighters are certainly of interest to me.

[Roger Pellett]

CHAPTER 5. Marking Out the Plating.

 

Unfortunately, with their full lines and slab sided hulls, models of Great Lakes ships can look just like what they are: a block of wood.   Before beginning this project many years ago, I decided that the model must include an accurate depiction of hull plating, both to add interest and accuracy.  The need for this has interrupted progress on the model several times  while I tried out and abandoned different ideas and plating materials.  I now think, or rather hope, that I have found a solution and will cover this in a future chapter.  Before beginning actual plating, however, the hull must be Marked Out.

 

Marking Out was the ship design office’s name for arranging the individual hull plates on the plating model.  That’s right, I said model.  BC (Before CAD) a half model was carved and the individual plates inked to scale on the surface.  A Takeoff of the plates could then be made and a bill of material created to allow the steel to be ordered.  One contemporary author has written that the draftsman’s skill was judged by the amount of scrap created in building the ship compared to his bill of material.

 

From the plating model a Plating Expansion Drawing was also created for use in the shipyard.  The plating expansion drawing shows the true location of each frame and vertical plating joint on the X (horizontal) axis but the GIRTH of the hull at each frame location on the Y (vertical) axis.  It, therefore, shows the same information as the plating model but in a two dimensional format.

 

Here is my copy of the bow section of the original plating expansion drawing for. Benjamin Noble:

 

 

The vertical stem is not distorted as it’s “girth” is equal to its vertical height but as we move aft it bulges upward as its girth increases.

 

In marking out the hull for my model, I am going to reverse the process used by the ship’s designer.  Rather than use the model to create a planking expansion drawing, I will use the drawing to mark the plates on the model.  It is highly unlikely that my model will exactly match in all three dimensions that carved for the ship over 100 years ago.  First, I used digital information, a table of offsets, to create a lines drawing then I used the lines drawing to carve a hull. Regardless of my skill or that of the original designers our results will differ however slightly.   With this in mind the plating expansion drawing becomes a guide, not an exact design document.

 

I started the process using a homemade arbor, an inverted U, to mark selected frame locations; more closely spaced at the ends than in the middle body.  Here the two half models worked to my advantage as I could lay the centerline surface of the hull on a flat surface.

 

I then used Tick Strips, narrow strips of paper to record the girth dimension of each strake of plating at each of my selected frame locations and these were transferred to the model.

 

From my canoe restoration days I had saved several long strips of clear grained spruce.  These were ripped into battens with a cross section of 1/8in x 1/4in  From another project I had a drawer full of 3/8” very fine steel nails. The idea was to tack the battens along the hull at each frame location and mark out the strakes.  My collection of tools for doing this is shown in the first photo.

 

For the most part, my system worked well and I gained confidence as I proceeded.  As you can see, the plating makes a sharp turn near the stern and I broke several battens.  While some points didn’t line up, in general things followed the drawing.  I was also pleased to see that a number of surfaces that appeared difficult to plate worked out quite nicely in 3D.

 

It was not necessary to mark individual plates within a strake as almost all are a standard 24ft long, 3in to scale, so once the registration of each strake is determined one plate follows the next.

 

Roger

 

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Roger Pellett

[Jim Lad]

Very nice plating diagram, Roger.

 

John

[Michael_A]

Roger,

I find this fascinating! For the last few weeks I have been reading C. V. Waine's wonderful books on British Steam Coasters and am anxious to hear about both how you will plate this model; and what methods have been discarded as impractical. Please share as much as you can! Your posts are an inspiration for my next model which may well be a steel plated craft.
Michael

[Roger Pellett]

Michael,

 

More on the way down the road!

 

C. V. Waine’s books are classics.  His organization has also published a book by P.N. Thomas titled British Ocean Tramps.  Also worthwhile.

 

Roger