HMS Victory 1765 by Doc Watson - Scale 1: 64 - POF - in 'The Old Single Dock' Chatham

[Doc Watson]

'Even a journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step'

 

About 16 years ago I started drawing up plans for a 1/64 scale POF Victory and after a few years on other projects have resurrected the plans (from an old computer) and decided to create a build log of my glacial progress. I have John McKay's 'Anatomy of the Ship' for reference and have scanned and scaled the images and drawn some of the ship in 'Corel Draw' and have started work on the keel and stem and stern. After looking at the official web site for Victory I saw that they will sell 'old wood' taken off the ship when repairing and renovating various parts. If you want some of the wood you have to 'request ' it by stating how much you want and what it will be used for. So after writing to the Naval officer in charge and explaining I wanted to build this model he agreed and a few blocks of wood arrived (not cheap!) and included certificates of authenticity signed by the acting Naval officer. I have enough for the keel, stem and stern and most of the dead wood. The keel wood came in a block which need to be ripped into approximately 10mm x 10mm lengths and after using a saw (no progress on 200 year old oak) then trying a hacksaw (still little or no progress) I asked a colleague who teaches woodworking at a local college where I now work to cut it using a bandsaw. He came back a day later with the wood cut down but then asked what wood it was as the bandsaw usually lasted a month before sharpening the blade and only just managed to cut the pieces before being re-sharpened, good job I didn't tell him before he cut it! I was then worried about how I could cut the scarph joints in the keel so bought a small milling machine which will hopefully do the job!!!

 

I still have a relatively large pieces of oak left which seems to have the ochre paint and some 'red lead' paint on it and might have come from one of the gun ports. I will post some pictures of the pieces I have later this week. I also want to build the model sitting in 'The Old Dry Dock' so the build will hopefully be a diorama of the ship as the keel and frames are built up. 

 

One or two questions if I may...

1) Has anybody got any information on what the Chatham 'Old Dry Dock' looked like in 1765?

2) I have been sourcing wood for the frames and have found some Swiss Pear of the correct thickness (a few thou under 7/32") is this a good choice for the frames?

 

Andy

[Doc Watson]

A few pictures of the 'old oak' and some workmen on the job... the final picture is the only reference I have for Chatham dockyard around the time of Victory's build. If memory serves its a model of the dockyard in Greenwich Maritime Museum.

[Sailor1234567890]

I can't answer your questions but I have one of my own. Since you're asking about the dock at the time of her launch, are you building her as launched? I wish more people would build her as launched. I feel she looked much better as launched than the typical post-Trafalgar version that most people build. 

[Doc Watson]

Yes I will be building her as she was launched, I'm going to also have her built up as she was in the dock so it will be a kind of moving diorama as with my speed of building I will be staring at it more than working on it. 

 

I will initially put the keel on blocks and found similar models shown, also attached is the 'Sutherland' diagram for building and supporting a ship as its constructed. A link to the book is here...

 

https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/library/AE4UUGBR/pageimg&start=51&pn=56&mode=imagepath

 

If you can get passed the fact that an 's' was printed as a 'f' its an interesting read...

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Doc Watson

[Old Collingwood]

I'm looking forward to this  - the idea of a Dio-est type build is facinating.

 

OC.

[dvm27]

Building the Wooden Walls by Brian Lavery has a nice chapter entitled "Chatham Dockyard and its Men". As well  Building the Wooden Ship by Jean Dodds & James Moore has a chapter on a dockyard of this period. Both deal with the building of a 74 gun ship.

[Doc Watson]

Many thanks for the information Greg, two books ordered and on their way to me.

[Edwardkenway]

Looks like gave yourself a bit of an uphill climb! 

Nice touch to have the keel made from oak from Victory herself 🙂

Best of luck with your project, I'll keep popping in!

Edited December 18, 2020 by Edwardkenway

[Doc Watson]

So what did the 'old single dock' look like? well to start I found this plaque by no. 2 dock at Chatham.

 

 

And presently has HMS Cavalier in the dock, so a quick look on google earth gave me this....

Outlined on red is No 2 Dock with HMS Cavalier in situ. Note that the dock lines up with the left of the clock tower building.

 

 

Now we come to the model of Chatham from 1772-1774 only a few years after the Launch of HMS Victory. Notice the clocktower building and which dock lines up with it.

 

 

Another angle of this model with 'the old single dock' being on the left.

 

 

Now there is also a map of Chatham from 1774 and you can identify the drydock in question. It also contains a scale and using this I cropped the image and scaled it to my drawing of HMS Victory and using my drawing package of choice (Coreldraw) copied the outline of the dock and then compared it with my current drawing of Victory.

 

 

The cropped image is shown and interestingly shows the ropery on the left which is still there. The 'old single dock' is the leftmost on this image

 

 

And here is the outline of the dock to the correct scale... copied, rotated and put next to the ship.

 

 

And an image of the dock against the ship, its a tight fit!

 

So the basic size is set now for the question of construction, first how many steps on the inner walls....

 

 

This close up of the dock shows 3 steps and also some detail of the stairs at the front of the dock for the shipwrights. The dock was made from Elm as it resisted rot, also notice the 4 capstans (red lead colour) and the position of possible bollards along the edges of the dock. I say possible as they could be short posts in lieu of the longer poles (the name escapes me) which were used as scaffold as the ship was being built.

 

So I have ordered the wood for the base and for reference the rectangle around the dock in the last drawing is 1200mm x 440mm.

 

So we now come to construction of the walls and the best reference for this was found from contemporary oil paintings principally from John Cleveley the Elder who was a retired shipwright turned artist. The next two images show detail of the wood around various docks. Also the first image gives some detail of the dock gate and how it was supported internally from the pressure of water at anything but low tide.

 

 

 

 

Finally, I found a picture of a dig of a slipway from Depford and it shows the base of the slipway with with the beams of wood striding the sides of the dock. The above paintings include 'damaged' to areas of the dock walls but gives a look at the vertical wood piles I assume which were driven into the ground behind the horizontal walls. 

 

 

Another interesting point are the hollow square brick 'bases' around the slipway which as they are regularly spaced along the sides of the slip (or drydock!?) would have been used to put the scaffolding poles or moorings. I have also found that the maximum tide range at Depford is about 6m and the depth of the drydocks was around 25 feet which is 7.6m. With the above information I can finalise the drydock dimensions and make a start on constructing it. Then I can lay the blocks that the keel will sit on and start the build proper.

 

I have a drawing of a slipway from 1789 showing the 'scaffolding poles' does anybody know the real name for these? which from previous evidence could be slotted into the square bases seen in the Depford dig or possibly replaced with shorter 'mooring' posts. From the look of this drawing the poles had wedged steps added up the length of the poles (possible at set heights) to allow ramps to be easily attached to help construction. I dont think they were carved from a solid log as this would have wasted most of the log. Any opinions???

 

 

I had some additional information from Brian which tells the story of how the gate sides had to be removed as the ship was calculated to be 9 inches wider than the thinnest part of the drydock (the area around the gate). This included a copy of the original report by the dockyard worker in charge of floating out Victory.

 

Sorry for the rambling but I wanted to show the background behind what I think the 'old single dock' looked like and how I came to get the final dimensions of the dock from contemporary sources, draw the basic dimensions and hopefully make a start on the dock soon.

 

Andy

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by Doc Watson

[Roberts Orca]

I am deeply fascinated with your adventure. Having just started with my very first ship model, I'm drawn to the history of how this and other ships were born. Following with great interest. 

[druxey]

It a appears that a series of cleats are attached to the vertical staging posts.

[Sailor1234567890]

There's a youtube video about deptford Hard, Tom Cunliffe takes us on a tour of his old stomping ground and there's some discussion about how those docks were built. I think I recall that slipways were built one on top of another periodically. As the support sunk into the mud, they'd just build another slipway on top of the old one. Have a look for the video and I'm sure you'll find some useful info about how docks were built. Or maybe not. Either way, it was an interesting time spent watching it. 

Cheers,
Daniel

[Sailor1234567890]

Sorry, it was Buckler's Hard and not Deptford Hard. 

About 11 minutes into it they talk of this.

 

 

[Doc Watson]

Thanks for posting the video! it was interesting to note that as the slipway 'sunk' as a ship was built they just added a new set of timbers onto the old ones, and who wanted the job of sawing in the pit!!!

 

Again thanks for posting this.

 

Andy