Ringle by Homebrew - Artesania Latina - Scale 1:50 - kit-bashed Harvey

[Homebrew]

I started this AL Kit of the Harvey about over 20 years ago.
I put it aside to start another kit then never returned to finish her. She was my first attempt at ship modelling so I have made a number of mistakes.

 

It is time to finish her off.

 

She is not in bad condition - most of the pieces seem to be present with only a few broken bits.

The Hull is fully planked, all of the deck structures are complete, the cannons are build (of course), and two of the masts are built along with most of the yards.

 

I usually play audiobooks of Patrick O'Brian while in the ship yard so in honour of the great man I am going to call this Baltimore Clipper "The Ringle".

 

I dusted off the hull, then added a coat of Tung Oil

 

The masts and deck furniture are in good condition.

 

It's surprising that not more was broken, but fortunately there is very little damage.

 

[Tony Hunt]

Nice idea - the hull is pretty much what I imagine the Ringle would have looked like.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Tony Hunt

[Spellapeaka]

Very nice! I am at about the same place on my Harvey. Looking forward to watching the build!

[Homebrew]

On 9/15/2021 at 9:53 PM, Spellapeaka said:

Very nice! I am at about the same place on my Harvey. Looking forward to watching the build!

I had a look at your build. Nice work!
Also our kits seem a little different, it looks like AL updated the kit. The deck furniture is different and the instructions now have pictures are are more than 11 pages long

[Homebrew]

I was off crock today so I did some research on the Ringle

 

From Wikipedia:

The Ringle is named after Ken Ringle, a Washington Post journalist who sent a book about Baltimore clippers to Patrick O'Brian in 1992 just before he wrote the final chapters of The Wine-Dark Sea. O'Brian was so grateful that he introduced the Ringle into the books and named it after the man who had introduced him to the type^[2].

She is used by Aubrey as a tender to his 74-gun ship HMS Bellona in The Commodore and The Yellow Admiral. The Ringle also appears in The Hundred Days and Blue at the Mizzen.^[1].

 

I have all of the Aubrey-Mateurin novels so I flicked thru these four books. They didn’t state the full armament of guns, or the crew compliment.

From the Commodore, p120, “He trundled along until he came upon one of the Ringles carronades.” which means the Ringle definitely had carronades rather than long guns.

 

From The ships of Jack Aubrey website (https://www.ctbasses.com/misc/BruceTrinque/aubrey3a.html)

 

 

 

 

More from Wikipedia:

A full scale sailing replica of this schooner, the tall ship Lynx, was built at Rockport, Maine in 2001 by Woods Maritime under President Woodson K Woods, and then operated in California. Her home is now Nanntucket, Ma transferring from port of registry previously Portsmouth, N.H. Lynx now sails the eastcoast from Maine to St Petersburg, Fl frequenting ports of Boothbay Harbor, Maine - Nantucket, Ma - Martha's Vineyard - Annapolis, MD - St Simons Island, Ga - and Tall Ship Event ports of call.

A model of the schooner as HMS Musquidobit is on display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 

The Lynx replica was built from the British Admiralty Lines measured from captured American Baltimore clippers  (https://tallshiplynx.com/)

This is a trailer of a documentary about the Lynx. It’s worth watching because it shows so much detail on the boat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNWdRGAAjfM

Screenshot from the video shows that the Lynx had rear gunports:

 

It also has a couple of nice images of carronades

 

 

This was time well spent. The Lynx site has detailed information on the ship that was most likely the source for the Ringle. I’ll definitely be replaying the video when I work on the rigging.

 

It makes sense that she has carronades because they are lighter, require fewer men, and have a much smaller footprint on the deck.  Aubrey would have wanted her light and fast rather than as a pure fighting ship.  Ringle has 8 gunports on the sides and two at the stern.

 

So….here is my question.
from The Commodore p131 “Mould was held with 3 turns around the tiller”.
The stern ones are interesting because Ringle has a tiller, however a fully rigged Tiller doesn’t leave room for guns at the stern.

 

Is it likely that the stern ports were used only when necessary and didn’t have a permanent cannon at the gunports?

[Spellapeaka]

1 hour ago, Homebrew said:

I had a look at your build. Nice work!
Also our kits seem a little different, it looks like AL updated the kit. The deck furniture is different and the instructions now have pictures are are more than 11 pages long

Yes, they did update the kit quite a bit. The deck furniture was prefab by AL, and it was all unusable. It was fun remaking it all though, and at the least, the prefab stuff was a nice guide for re-creating it. I think I purchased the kit around 2000, I'm not entirely sure what year they changed it. 

[Homebrew]

The book "The Search for Speed under Sail" by Howard L. Chapelle has a hull plan on page 217 and a sail plan on page 219 for the Lynx.

 

Chapelle also mentions on page 214 that "Privateers as a rule showed many more ports than they had guns".

 

Given this information I am going to add two gunports at the stern as they appear on the plans, and also in the replica.

As for armament - after a bit of thought (what would Jack do?) - I am going to keep the number of guns to 6, but replace 4 of the long guns with carronades. The carronades will be on pivot mounts, but the long guns will be on standard 4 wheeled carriages which means they are mobile enough that they could be moved to any gunport as required.

 

[Homebrew]

The only modelling I have done is the occasional work on making the Carronades.  I found a few differing designs, so I picked one that I thought might be straight forward to make. I carved two then plaster cast four to reduce the individual variation.

Next I put together some of the slide carriages. It looks like I am going to have to remake one of them.

 

 

They look a little small in situ, however 3 beer me reminded sober me that they are only 6 pounders and the gunports on the model are larger than standard gun ports. I'll also need to adjust the carriage because it doesn't look right.

 

 

Next step will be the construction of the long guns.

[Homebrew]

It's probably been a year since I have done anything on the model.

It felt good to get back into it.

 

Today I tried to put in some deadeyes.

In this photo the alligator clips hold the thread wound above the deadeyes until I can put on the glue.

[Homebrew]

I got the hang of it now.

 

I managed to rig 6 deadeyes and run some of the shroud rigging. It took me an embarrassing amount of time, but it is starting to come back to me.