Papegojan 1623 by Metaspace (Roman Benesch) - Scale 1:26.6 - RADIO - wood, RC sailing, reefing, functional cannons

[Metaspace]

Hi all,

 

after the original forum, where I started posting our build log, has become very silent, I hope to find a more interested audience here!

 

I have been persuaded by my son, then 8, to build a wooden model ship (he had been inspired by seeing a wooden model of a Minoan galley, shown in a excavation museum found on the Greek island of Paros - a reconstruction based on murals 3800 years old).

As we were reading a book on Francis Drake at the time, it had to be a sailing ship of roughly that area, of course remote controlled, of course with functioning cannons, and reefing sails was also a desired feature.

 

A good friend of ours builds cardboard models, he gave me a cardbord model kit for the Papegojan from 1624, scale 1:98 - the plans of which I stretched by 320% (such it will just fit into the trunk of our car - and the bigger, the better for real sailing).

Our model measures ~1200mm from stern to tip of the bowsprit, and displaces 9.6 kg.

 

Also, we changed the name to "Zeta", and made some minor modifications to the original, as preferred by my son.

Apart from that, we have tried to stick as much as possible to historical correctness as possible - with some small compromises to allow radio controlled sailing - I will point these out.

 

For sailing, all sails will be contolled as in the original, with the help of bracing winches (I hope this it the correct English term).

Sails also allow reefing, not fully historically acurate, for reasons of mechanical implementation, but more or less close to it.

Cannons can be fired remotely, and are also planned to allow running in and out of the ship, gun ports opening and closing respectively.

 

At this time, the hull and all details are complete, so is the rigging - what is missing are the bracing/reefing reels to complete the sail steering unit; the mechanical and software part for cannon control, and the lead ballast.

 

Here are some teaser pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

if you are interested in a detailed build log (we learned a lot on our journey), let me know, and I will translate the original log (in German) and continue posting here!

(As this is our first model, and there were many things we did not initially know about model making as well as about historical sailing ships, we have created a comprehensive log with a lot of explanations, as I felt the relevant information did not exist in a single place elsewhere.)

 

Greetings from Vienna, Austria,

 

-Roman

Edited September 13, 2022 by Metaspace

[Waldemar]

 

Hello Roman,

 

What a coincidence! You built a ship that took part in a battle in which the flagship was the ship I am currently reconstructing (Polish/German Sankt Georg). An account of this reconstruction can be found on this forum.

 

It is probably too late for this now, as you have already built your model, but in the course of my historical research I also found in the archives in Stockholm quite a few source documents concerning the Papegojan. Amongst other things, these documents contain information on the ship's dimensions, number of sails, armament and crew numbers in the various years of the ship's service.

 

I would follow the 'sea' trials of your Papegojan with the utmost interest.

 

 

[Metaspace]

Hi Waldemar, 

 

thank you for your interest! What a coincidence, indeed 🙂

I'm fascinated with your research. 

Would you like (and are able) to share the documents concerning the Papegojan?

 

I just had a look at your build log, the CAD renderings are splendid. I had my first go at CAD for the sail and cannon control units, using the free 123D design software - pretty frustrating, as it had trouble coping with the complexity of my design (a few thousand objects).

 

In any case I am looking forward to see more of your ship!

 

[Waldemar]

 

13 hours ago, Metaspace said:

Would you like (and are able) to share the documents concerning the Papegojan?

 

Yes, it's entirely possible, albeit somewhat unpractical. Firstly, most of the data on this ship is scattered in many documents concerning the entire fleet, and secondly, you may not have any use of them as they require extremely difficult transcription and translation. It would be more convenient for me to provide ready-made information that I have already derived of these documents and published more than ten years ago.

 

As an example, I include a copy (both in low and high resolution as PDF) of a document dated 4 May 1624, just after the purchase of the ship and its delivery to Götheborg from Netherlands (Inventarium oppå det skeppet Papegoian, Riksarkivet, Stockholm).

 

There you can read, among other things, that the Papegoian was simply referred to as a square-tuck/transom ship (spegell skipp, or in German Spiegelschiff), that it was then one year old, had one boat (referred to as a galley), length between posts of 86 feet, depth in hold of 11 1/4 feet, an upper deck (bognet, or in Dutch bovenet) 5 feet above the main deck, 14 gun carriages, sails: mainsail with bonnet, foresail with bonnet, spritsail, mizzen sail, main topsail, fore topsail, sprit topsail (blindhe krÿtz segell), (main) topgallant sail. And some other, supposedly less important information (like length of cables and ropes, size of flags etc.).

 

So, if you need just the ready data, I can provide them quite fast, but if you need original documents, it will take much longer to locate and gather them from a set of hundreds of scans.

 

Inventarium Papegoian 1624.pdf

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Waldemar

[Metaspace]

Hi Waldermar, 

 

many thanks! I defnitely do not want to create work for you, my intent was to enrich our "collection" on the ship.

Where did you publish your findings (the ones you refer to, 10 years ago)?

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Metaspace

[Waldemar]

 

Voilà, I sent you by PM copies of my publications on the Swedish ship division from Götheborg, which included Papegojan. But honestly, I don't think you'll get much practical use out of them either (although you'll find a lot of tables and graphics in them, especially on the Swedish artillery), because the information about Papegojan is also very scattered there, and they are written in Polish. 

 

However, these publications may be good just to enrich your private collection related to your model. If that is not enough, below are most data on Papegojan already filtered:

 

1623 built in the Netherlands and sold, 1624 transferred to Sweden, 1644 sunk in battle.

 

Armament:

1625 (requirement, not actual!): 12 x 3-pdr iron long guns, 2 x 24-pdr bronze assault guns (Schrotstucke), 2 x 'mershakar' (a type of swivel gun),
until May 1626 (actual): 4 x 6-pdr iron long guns, 6 x 3-pdr iron long guns,
until autumn 1626 (actual): as above plus 4 x 3-pdr bronze long guns and 2 x 24-pdr bronze assault guns (Schrotstucke),
1627 (actual): 4 x 3-pdr bronze long guns (heavily under-armed due to service as supply ship in this campaign).

 

I have ignored the following years as they were outside the scope of my study; see my first and fourth papers for the appearance of the Swedish guns and carriages.

 

Crew:

1625 (requirement): 27 sailors, 5 gunners,
May 1626 (actual): 20 sailors, 1 gunner (the ship was heavily undermanned due to general lack of manpower),
1628 (requirement and/or actual according to various documents): 48 sailors, 60/50/60/35 troops.

 

 

Papegojan payroll of 20 sailors from May 1626 (Riksarkivet, Stockholm):

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Waldemar

[Metaspace]

Thank you!!

 

It is for our collection only. Still very interesting, I am baffled about the lack of manpower, so few gunners...I really expected 2-4 men per gun pair available, a single gunner for a broadside of 5 pieces in May 1626? 😮

 

How come you researched this, if I may ask?

 

Best,

 

-Roman

 

[Waldemar]

 

🙂

 

By 1625 part of the Swedish fleet was at peace footing, so crew shortages were not a problem and even an advantage (money!), until mobilisation in 1626 for a massive sea-borne invasion of the southern Baltic coast.

 

I have found these documents, some 12-13 years ago, while looking for information on the Solen, the Swedish ship originally in the same group with the Papegojan, based in Götheborg. Just went to archives in Stockholm (Krigsarkivet and Riksarkivet), and bingo! Unknown and previously unpublished material.

 

 🙂

Edited September 15, 2022 by Waldemar

[Waldemar]

 

In May 1626, the under-armed and undermanned Western Squadron from Götheborg was redeployed to the main fleet base in Stockholm, where ships were prepared for the coming war.

 

 

[Metaspace]

Thanks for your insight! Fascinating! 🙂

[Metaspace]

I have added the flags - bought at http://www.schiffsmodellflaggen.de. I'm quite happy with the quality, waterproof (this being a remote controlled model), and a thin fabric, which flows even with light winds.

Instructions came with the flags how to cut them out, and glue them - had been quite a while, since I had a pressing iron in my hand 😄

 

The flags come in different sizes, not for all flagpoles was I able to get the precise historic size to scale - this is due to our unusual scale of 1:26.67, I assume. Still, I'm happy with the results!

 

 

[Waldemar]

 

Roman, when do you expect the first sailing trials? Next year season?

 

 

[Metaspace]

8 minutes ago, Waldemar said:

Roman, when do you expect the first sailing trials? Next year season?

 

Hard to say, the sailing control unit with its 24 bracing winches, plus 24 gear transmission winches will take some time - then the cannons have to be fitted, the mechanism to open the gun ports and deploy them, retract them will be another major effort!

 

Smaller things will be creating the lead ballast, and the Arduino cannon firing software.

Next year is likely the earliest manageable 🙂

[Metaspace]

It's been a while!

 

Which doesn't mean I wasn't working on the Zeta - just that I did not find as much time, due to some personal matters, and changing jobs. Also, admittedly, the current work on the ship isn't the most exciting, and quite tedious.

 

In order to complete our sail steering unit, I had to measure the precise sheet rope movement distances for all sail bracing positions. This data is necessary to correctly dimension the bracing winches later.

 

My measurement approach is as follows

• all sails were brought into default position (in right angle to keel; except mizzen sail, I'll discuss this later).
• sheet ropes are (temporarily) led out of the hull, to a reference point (in our case, the edge of the table on which the ship resides - the ship being secured against moving)
• sheet rope ends attached to weights, to assure ropes are taut
• ropes are marked at the reference point (sails in default positions; "zero-point")
• now, yards, outhauls are braced in 10° steps (and eased off respectively on the other side of the ship)
• made sure the ropes are all taut
• the difference between reference point and zero-point is measured

For measuring the correct angles, I used cardboard half-discs with respective markings.

Now I had to take the needed 286 measurements (22 sheet ropes, 9 sail positions) - and this takes a while! When I was done, it turned out that there were some discrepancies between starboard and portside, which were hard to explain by the slight imprecision of the hand-built rigging. Also, some measurement sequences of single sheet ropes from 0°, 10°, 20°, ..., 60°) were not harmonious for my taste.

 

It took several attempts to eliminate (hopefully!) all measurements errors:

• The angle measurement half-discs need to fixed well, horizontally and vertically
• sheet ropes must not be confused - marking them, as well as their reference points, helps
• the weights for keeping the sheet ropes taut must not be too heavy - otherwise, they might draw additional rope out of the ship unnoticed before the measurement is taken (ropes with a pulley being especially susceptible)
• As our parrels mount the yard relatively loosely on the mast (to allow sufficient rotation of the yard, up to 60°, for remote controlled sailing), the correct, right angle between yard and mast must be assured
• As outhauls are controlled by sheet rope and tack, it must be assured that the sail hangs vertically to the ground, fully stretched, to allow correct measurements. Since the sails warp easily, and normally are not taut, I had to build temporary wooden frames for sails with outhauls (all except topsails), and attach them to the sails to assure the correct shape, and thus, outhaul positioning

The above learnings came at a stiff price - I ended up with taking all measurements 2.5 times. Each time, it means adjusting 8 ropes, cheking tautness, angels, re-adjusting until everything fits properly, and then measuring and taking down the numbers. Only after the last pass I'm fairly confident on the numbers 🙂

The topsail yards were especially tricky - the ropes controlling them come from below in a quite steep angle - getting the yard position right, without deforming the relatively thin yard was challenging.

 

I was quite happy that sails, yards can be well rotated from -60° to +60°, and also the friction of the ropes in their piping is pleasantly low.

Here a few pictures from the measurement process:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mizzen sail is handled differently. For this, we only control its outhaul - for the mizzen rod, we forgot to lay piping back in the days. But that is not too bad, as the mizzen sail has very limited movement, and is not really relevant for powering the ship. According to the experts, it was used to create rudder pressure, as well as (together with the spritsail) trim the ship.

 

Under wind from abaft, the mizzen sail will be allowed to take one of two positions - the rear end of the mizzen rod may be fully veered to either portside or starboard (depending on the previous maneuver).

When the ship luffs, the mizzen sail outhaul is braced more and more, until it's fully tight. On the lee side, we do not want to further add sheet rope, i.e., veer, as this rope is in fully veered state already.

 

 

This means, the pair of brace winches for the respective side of the ship will pull in rope for the windward side, while adding as little as possible for the leeward side, i.e., that winch will not consist of more than the axle itself.

 

And here the measurements:

 

 

 

 

[Waldemar]

 

It's great that you're getting back to your preparations as the sailing season is near 🙂. You are rather on your own in technical matters, but what about adding one or two loooooong vanes (Flügel) on the mast's tops? They add so much charm to old sailing ships. And the best thing is that they don't need any additional control systems, as is the case with sails.

 

🙂