What is the origin of the bright hull, black trim, and red bulwarks and furniture style?

[Tim Holt]

I see this style very frequently here, and I’m curious about the origin of the style.  

[druxey]

Hmm. Good question. The easy answer is 'tradition'. I assume you are referring to historical English ships. The early 'Navy Board' models of the later 1600's were painted in this style, also reflected in paintings of the period. This was apparently standard on ships of the day. 'Bright' wood was originally oiled, later painted ochre, to protect it. Deck furniture, bulwarks, etc, were red ochre. Again, this was for protection and ochre (earth) colors were inexpensive. The idea that would hide blood was, we now think, simply coincidental. 

 

Later models were not elaborately framed, and solid hull models showed a white or cream underwater body. This replicated  'white stuff', tallow and sulphur based, to deter underwater marine organisms and growth.

 

The black rails and hatch coamings were painted black, I believe, not only as charcoal black was cheap, but because it stood out in sharp contrast to the decks for higher visibility at night as a safety measure.

 

The black wales were not painted black, but coated with pitch for protection.

 

Gold decorative carving is more controversial. Thinking today is that the carved work was picked out in yellow and varnished. Only models were gilded. Of course, there were exceptions for 'prestige' vessels where decorative work was gilded, sometimes with an ultramarine blue background (ultramarine being a very expensive pigment) or a greenish blue called smalt; a much less expensive substitute.

Edited July 18, 2021 by druxey

[Tim Holt]

Thanks for the detailed reply @druxey   It seems quite common with the Winchelsea and Cheerful builds.  It looks extremely clean and almost stylized in some respects.  
 

I like it very much, but I’d be curious to see a build done in the style but aged, weathered and used for a realistic appearance.  Even a ship out of the shipyard wouldn’t look that perfect.  

 

Perhaps someone will get brave and do an “aged Winchelsea” build just to buck the trend

Edited July 18, 2021 by Tim Holt

[Mark P]

Good Morning Tim;

 

To expand further on one aspect of Druxey's reply above, the use of actual gold rather than yellow ochre paint was continued for longer than might be expected.

 

Contracts for ships built as late as the end of the 17th century, in the reign of William and Mary, specify that the royal arms on the stern are to be gilded with real gold. 

 

Mary Harrison's contract for painting the ships at Portsmouth, dated 1703 (Queen Anne's reign) states that the painters will apply 3 coats of primer, & one topcoat 'of a fair colour' to the carved wreaths of the gunports, for 1 shilling and three pence each.

 

Gilding of carved work is more expensive, at 4 shillings & 5 pence per square foot. 

 

Interestingly, the same lady's contract dating from 1676, much earlier, specifies a price for the same work for the carved ports of 1 shilling and 6 pence each. There is no price given here for gilding though, so a comparison of that cannot be made.

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

 

[wefalck]

One has to distinguish also between what a real ship would have looked like at the time and how we today depict them.

 

Fashion has always been an important factor, but also technological constraints.

 

'druxey' gave already a comprehensive overview to which I would like to add a couple of point:

 

- The price of pigment is determined by the raw material and the cost of converting this into a pigment ready for use; most pigments used outdoors and on ships are minerals, which had to be refined and ground to a very fine powder; It was not until the later 17th when pigment mills driven by water-wheel or windmill (in the Netherlands) came into use, allowing larger quantities of good quality pigment to be produced, bringing down the cost of paints; as a consequence, larger areas of ships become painted since then.

 

- Soot as a black pigment does not need to be ground down, so has been available for a long time.

 

- Paint seems to have appeared on warships first, were cost is of less concern (at least to those, who ordered them, but perhaps not the tax payers ...), than on merchant vessels; merchant vessels begin to be painted all over only from the second quarter or the 19th century on.

 

- The fashion of painting merchant vessels (I am talking only about northern Europe here) in the 19th century seems to evolved from painting the wales (mainly black, but also white, green or blue) and some thicker planks only, with the rest scraped and oiled/coated in Stockholm tar to the inverse, where only one or more of the wales is scraped and oiled. In the later 19th hulls were mainly black, sometimes green and very occassionally white (requires a lot of maintenance, due to the dirty harbour waters).

 

So, not painting ship models, or only their wales and inside bulwarks, is basically a fashion among modellers. Perhaps it came about to show off their craftsmanship in woodworking, but it is certainly not what real ships would have looked like in the 18th and 19th century. In any case, accentuating different parts (wales, coamings, stanchions, etc.) by using different coloured woods is entirely artisanal and has nothing to do with how the ships looked like (though different types of wood were used, of course, for different structural parts).