Mayflower kit as a base

[MIR]

Being new here had a question about the Mayflower, it is my understanding that the ship was a Dutch Cargo Fluyt......so can other types of Dutch Fluyt ships be built from a Mayflower kit such as from the Revell,Imai,Trumpeter offerings.....anyone know? 

Is there any links to the Dutch type Fluyt ships of the 17 century?

[Jaager]

Almost nothing is known about what the original Mayflower looked like and there are certainly no plans of it.  There may well have never been any plans as we think of them.

Kits that purport to be the Mayflower are pretty much imaginative fabrications created from thin air.

Kits based on the reproduction Mayflower II are based on a design of Wm Baker,   He made assumptions and choices that probably reflect nothing that actually existed in the past.  A kit would only a model of his creation.

 

The reliable way would be to use

 

17th CENTURY DUTCH MERCHANT SHIPS
Text, Photos and Plans for the Ship Modeler
by Ab Hoving

 

and scratch build.   It might be wise to start with a boat that was a part of the equipment,  then do one or two of the smaller vessels.

 

If you do not have a copy already,  I would advise that you do so as soon as possible.   Pier Books migrated to SeaWatch Books  but I would not count on SeaWatch migrating to a successor. 

 

@Ab Hoving Perhaps  Ab might have a much more authoritative suggestion.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Jaager

[Ab Hoving]

In itself the idea of picking a sort-like ship as the one you are trying to replicate is not a bad idea. But according to my sources the Mayflower was an English ship and was built on a shipyard belonging to 'the legendary Darley family' (source: Wikipedia).

That means the ship was definitely not a fluit. It must have been a simple English freighter. Perhaps you can find an example of such a vessel somewhere?

 

As jaager suggested Mayflower kits have very little to do with the actual ship. They just (educated) guesses. If you consider building a fluit, there are better ways to get draughts. Kits are only seldom the starting point for a good model...

Ab

[MIR]

Thanks for the information, that first clears up my ignorance of what the Mayflower was, I just did a search to see what type of  ship it was and most if not all the search engines said it was a Dutch built Fluyt......so it for sure helps to ask questions towards people who know because the internet has proven to be wrong on many occasions..........I learned that when I did research building a piece of armor many years ago, i rarely built anything out of the box----and like ships, there simply is not a record of every tank or ship and especially how it was marked or painted.....and I would expect that the further you go back the less likely it is that you can find records,plans etc on every ship made, there aint no way.........

 

Thanks for the wealth of information guys..... 

[rcweir]

9 hours ago, Jaager said:

Kits based on the reproduction Mayflower II are based on a design of Wm Baker,   He made assumptions and choices that probably reflect nothing that actually existed in the past. 

That's all quite true but it would be a mistake to leave readers with the impression that Mr. Baker was just an imaginative enthusiast. He was both an  experienced naval architect and an historian and he has described in detail the way he arrived at his design for Mayflower II.  In his writing I think he's been clear regarding the cases where modern necessities forced him away from what he understood to be 17th century practice.  Two of his books,  The New Mayflower (Barre 1958) and The Mayflower and Other Colonial Vessels (Conway 1983) are both pretty easy to find from online used book dealers and they describe the bases for his design and the various decisions he had to make to produce a real ship.  Plus, for those interested,  The New Mayflower came with 1/8":1' scale plans for a version of Mayflower II that omit the adjustments he made to the 20th century replica.