How to handle ships rigging related to battle damaged sails

[mvtrappett]

Hello everyone. 

 

I am in the process of building a paper model of the Disney version of the Flying Dutchman.  My question is, how would the crew handle sails that had been damaged due to maybe cannon balls ripping off pieces of the sail, maybe completely losing clews, or other rigging required features?  Would they just take the lines that were flailing around and tie them down? Or maybe remove the associated rigging completely until the sail could be replaced?  I am not sure how to handle this scenario on the model I am building.  Its painfully difficult when I fit a sail and find all the rigging I put in place can't be utilized because the sail is incomplete.

 

Thank you in advance.

Mark

[allanyed]

Welcome to MSW Mark, glad to have you on board.   Hopefully some member will have gone through this kind of scenario and can help.   Have you researched   paintings by Aldous, Turner, Crepin,  et al that show this kind of thing?  Not sure they would be much help, but maybe.....    With the ships fighting and sailing, lines that parted would be flapping in the breeze along with the sail and very hard to depict on a model.  I hope you succeed as I for one would love to see such a model.

 

Where in Southern Cal are you?   I had the pleasure of living in Orange County back in the day.   

 

Allan

[Morgan]

Hi Mark,

 

You should Google HMS Victory Fore Topsail.  It is the only surviving battle damaged sail that I am aware of.  It is a good starting reference for how sails reacted to cannon and small arms fire.  This is the sail that took the combined fire of the French and Spanish at Trafalgar as Victory bore down on them at right angles, and then in the pell-mell fighting that followed.

 

Gary

[Dave_E]

Hi Mark, welcome. Go to the new member area and introduce yourself and meet the crew. You’ve come to the right place for… just about everything and anything ship, plastic, paper or wood. 👍

[Dziadeczek]

8 hours ago, allanyed said:

Welcome to MSW Mark, glad to have you on board.   Hopefully some member will have gone through this kind of scenario and can help.   Have you researched   paintings by Aldous, Turner, Crepin,  et al that show this kind of thing?  Not sure they would be much help, but maybe.....   

 

 

I have this one by Crepin.

[catopower]

Hi Mark,

 

Interesting question.

 

I think Allan has it right. During battle, there's not much you can do. Everyone is busy in the fight, which is why I suppose they went to Battle Sail, reducing sail by brailing up the lower sails and such, which also reduces the amount of damage that the sails might take from cannon fire. I think it's only after battle that there's time to splice parted lines. And if there's one thing those sailors knew how to do, it was to splice ropes. 

 

Of course it's the Flying Dutchman. So, it doesn't actually need the sails to travel on the seas and send his victims to Davey Jones' Locker. 

 

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

 

 

[Wawona59]

I Mark, welcome to Model Ship World. I'm relatively new to MSW but I visit the site almost every day for ideas and inspiration.  Everyone is GREAT, friendly and helpful. Here is a photo of the Victory Sail from Trafalgar.  I assume most of the damages was done by bar shot, chain shot and star shot.

 

 

I hope this gives you some inspiration for your build.

 

Wawona59