Carlings

[Don Case]

What purpose do carlings serve? Once the decking goes on the carlings are redundant aren't they?

Are they the same thickness as the deck beams?

[druxey]

Please read Longridge's Anatomy of Nelson's Ships or Goodwin's Sailing Man of War, Don. Either will inform you more comprehensively than any brief answer here. However, briefly; every timber on a ship had a structural purpose. The beams of a ship need a lot of reinforcement that planking alone simply would not supply.

[allanyed]

Go with Druxey's advice Don.

To answer your question on size, the carlings do not have the same scantlings as the beams and they run fore and aft rather than athwartships.   They may have different dimensions for each deck in most cases depending on the size of the beams which would vary as well and the number of tiers (rows) of carlings varies as well.   For Discovery there were probably two tiers port and two tiers starboard and in the neighborhood of 6 inches broad and 5 inches deep.   There were also rows of ledges between the carlings which were probably about 3.5" broad by 3" deep.  There is more to this, so again, follow Druxey's advice and read up on these in the books he mentions.   I must say it is a pleasure to see you take such an interest in the details!!!

Allan 

[Don Case]

I looked in Longridge. The index has one entry page 26. It says "Short solid timbers called "carlings" were fixed in the fore and aft direction between the beams, and "ledges" of lighter stuff ran between the carlings parallel with the beams. (Fig. 15.) "

I'm not terribly impressed with Longridge so far. Maybe I got the Readers Digest version. My book has 21 pages on how ships were constructed. I'm only about a third of the way into the book but the rest of it seems to be how he made short cuts around the hard parts of building. Hopefully it will get better.

 

Sorry. Rant mode off. I guess I'll limit my 'why" questions.

[jlefever]

To your first question, hatches and other deck openings are, like windows and doors in buildings, a point of weakness. It is typical to add extra structure around such openings to replace the strength lost when holes in the decking are needed, especially large holes.

 

Not a bad question at all and knowing why elements are there improves the likelihood that they will be modeled accurately.

[Don Case]

Thank you, that explains it somewhat. It's funny that they didn't use diagonals. Maybe they weren't invented yet😉😉