Hatch cover lift rings

[grsjax]

Maybe a dumb question.  Model kits show hatches with rings for lifting hatch boards.  Every kit I have seen has lift rings that look huge on the model.  How large were these lift rings in actual practice.

[druxey]

Just big enough to slip a hand through. Some rings were round, others triangular. Not a 'dumb question' at all!

[grsjax]

Thanks druxey.  So about 5 or 6 inches inside diameter?

[jud]

 Depends on the hatch board and the intended method of lifting. The most common mistake made by modelers when creating lifting hardware for hatchboards, is that they an not made to rest flush  with the surface of the board. Hatches are battened down after covering with an old tarp or two or three, then the top weatherproof cover is put in place and battened down, don't want lumps to trip over or to wear a hole in the tarps, so flush with the lifting hardware, regardless of type.

 

[allanyed]

Jud,  Can you post a photo or drawing of how this is done?  What you wrote makes total good sense, but how was this done?  I am thinking 18th century and  I envision  pockets cut into the board for the rings to rest when laying down.    

Thanks!

Allan

[jud]

I do have some photos but they are of a WW2 vessel delivering Ammo and Grub to us on a River in the Delta in 1967.

 

[wefalck]

Such rings would only be needed, if the covers actually sit completey inside the hatches. It they are designed to overlap the coamings, one can lift them off by just reaching under the edge. I seem to have seen this design at least in the second half of the 19th century. This would not prevent the tarpauline to be battened down smoothly.

[jud]

Not Hatch Boards, but a common way to cover smaller hatch combings, done this way aboard the Salmon Troller Cape Race and the Junks. Standing on our Hatch Cover showing off my big fish, the Halibut I caught using a jig from the Cape Race in SE Alaska 1965, rode her from Bellingham up to SE Alaska, fished the season and brought her back to Bellingham, we jigged for halibut when the King Salmon wern't biting. The other photo was 1967 on the Bassac river, This boat is smaller than the Junks used by the RVN Navy to patrol. This one is a Popular Forces boat, they were alongside to collect empty 40MM cans for bunker construction, put them in place, full with mud and secure the lid, we usually had to throw them overboard because we had no more room to store them, happy these found a home.

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[druxey]

I believe that only modern (i.e. late 19th century on) rings are recessed. The earlier contemporary English models do not show this feature.

[mtaylor]

With the lifting "rings" on hatch covers, not all were done the same way.  On my current build,  some covers have two per board (one a each end), some have them only on every other board, and a few have them only on the "outside" boards which would two of those boards per hatch.   But I tend to believe that every country and even every shipyard had their own ideas.