Mary Rose by Baker - scale 1/50 - "Your Noblest Shippe"

[tartane]

Patric, I like your fine detailed work and I am looking forward to the continuation of this fantastic  project!

Succes

Constant

 

[Louie da fly]

On 4/8/2024 at 9:45 PM, Snug Harbor Johnny said:

or a favorite of mine - "turned my head like a one eyed dog in a meat factory".

That sounds almost Australian. I might steal it.

 

Then there's the old "pollaxed" (NOT pole-axed - a poll axe was a real thing, with poll meaning head.)

I think being hit by one of these would certainly discombobulate you . . .

 

Steven

Edited April 9 by Louie da fly

[Old Collingwood]

That  has really surprised  me  with  the  rear  outer upper  planks  being fitted  in a  Featheredge  way  by over lapping.

 

OC.

[Baker]

17 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

think being hit by one of these would certainly discombobulate you . . .

In Flanders we call something like this "goedendag" or  "good day" ... bang... 

 

15 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

That  has really surprised  me  with  the  rear  outer upper  planks  being fitted  in a  Featheredge  way  by over lapping.

 

OC.

Me too  

 

The cannon deck has been cleaned up a bit.

Not as it once was, but a bit cleaner if someone later looked in through any openings.

Before I can continue, I first have to determine the base of the fore castle.
So first now thinking, searching, testing and try out 

 

 

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

20 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

That sounds almost Australian. I might steal it.

Steven

  You're welcome to it, mate.  Another one, when I've f...ed something up is that I feel "lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut."

 

Speaking of modern 'wagons', there is something I learned today about Outback conveyances like the one pictured below ...

 

[Louie da fly]

When I lived in Port Hedland (NW coast) the iron ore trains were 3 km (2 miles) long. One broke down in the middle of nowhere and a repair engine was sent to get it going again. Unfortunately, the location he was given was the far end of the train, so he slammed into it going umpty ump miles an hour, 3 km too early.

 

Steven

 

PS: Probably enough Australiana - back to our scheduled programme.

[Louie da fly]

On 4/11/2024 at 3:17 AM, Baker said:

In Flanders we call something like this "goedendag" or  "good day" ... bang..

That's interesting - the goedendag is mentioned as being one of the most common weapons of the victorious Flemish army at the Battle of Courtrai (also known as the battle of the Golden Spurs because of the huge number of golden spurs looted from dead French knights), but a wooden chest commemorating the battle shows them like this:

 

And remnants have been found of the real thing: https://www.military-history.org/feature/medieval/the-goedendag-medieval-weaponry.htm

 

Of course Flemish re-enactors have adopted this nasty thing (though only for display purposes - much too nasty to really fight with)

 

 

 

Steven

[Baker]

1 hour ago, Louie da fly said:

That's interesting - the goedendag is mentioned as being one of the most common weapons of the victorious Flemish army at the Battle of Courtrai (also known as the battle of the Golden Spurs because of the huge number of golden spurs looted from dead French knights), but a wooden chest commemorating the battle shows them like this:

 

And remnants have been found of the real thing: https://www.military-history.org/feature/medieval/the-goedendag-medieval-weaponry.htm

 

Of course Flemish re-enactors have adopted this nasty thing (though only for display purposes - much too nasty to really fight with)

 

 

 

Steven

The Flemish army in 1302 consisted largely of volunteers from various Flemish cities.
Most members had to pay for their own weaponry. The most price-conscious item is a large piece of iron on a sturdy wooden stick.
The iron can have all the shapes of a thick pin, Into a ball full of small iron pins, whether or not attached to the wooden stick via a chain.

The intention is simple:
Get as close to the opponent as possible, give him a good whack and say hello (while staying safely away from his weapons...)

 

In our modern times:
try to shoot at the opponent without getting shot yourself. 

Difference??? It is as dangerous as it was 700 years ago..

Edited April 13 by Baker

[Baker]

Back to Mary.

 

The fore castle.

How do you start building something that doesn't have a clear example of it?

First I enlarge the drawing from the books from 1/100th to 1/50th. This drawing is placed on the model at approximately the "correct" position.

About the right height compared with the deck of the rear castle
And the base starts at about the right distance from cannon port M3

And then we continue building in cardboard

There's a cardboard front castle, with a happy assistant on the top deck.

Of course I don't know if this form is correct. But the idea is to roughly recreate the ship on the cover of the book.

 

[tartane]

What I yhink very curious is the enormous height of the fore castle. I can't imagine that a shipbuilder dared to go that high and indeed the ship seems to have tilted as a result.

It also catches a huge amount of wind.

Isn't the drawing that exists of it a very exaggerated representation of reality? That was often the custom at that time.

Wouldn't it be advisable to reconstruct the height to the human scale? So the deck heights do not exceed 170 cm, then with those three decks you get to a height of 510 cm plus the beam thicknesses that were still in between. Then it will be at most 60 cm higher. I would never go higher than 510 cm. But maybe that's also the height you calculated yourself because I don't know the scale exactly.

Constant

 

[Stevinne]

23 minutes ago, tartane said:

What I yhink very curious is the enormous height of the fore castle. I can't imagine that a shipbuilder dared to go that high and indeed the ship seems to have tilted as a result.

It also catches a huge amount of wind.

Isn't the drawing that exists of it a very exaggerated representation of reality? That was often the custom at that time.

Wouldn't it be advisable to reconstruct the height to the human scale? So the deck heights do not exceed 170 cm, then with those three decks you get to a height of 510 cm plus the beam thicknesses that were still in between. Then it will be at most 60 cm higher. I would never go higher than 510 cm. But maybe that's also the height you calculated yourself because I don't know the scale exactly.

Constant

 

Back when MR was first constructed, that was the way warships were built. Cannon, being hard to aim and slow to load, the tactics were to fire a broadside, get close and board and generally, having the highest "castle" at the fore or stern helped you win. It wasn't until the Armada that the English pioneered fighting in lower and more maneuverable ships. That change came along with the change in tactics that called for fighting artillery duels instead of hand-to-hand combat. One of the debates about MR is whether or not they cut her down during the course of her career as they rebuilt her and increased her compliment of heavier guns. 

[Louie da fly]

I agree with Patrick and Stevinne. This was a very common size for forecastles at this time - see https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/great-carracksnaos/ - beginning as a quite low structure the forecastle got bigger and bigger and more unwieldy, presumably to give advantage in boarding/deterring boarding. It probably made the ships very crank, and this plus the adoption of big guns which made boarding a less vital part of normal tactics, probably led to the adoption of the lower sleeker galleon.

 

Of course I could be biased. Here's the forecastle of my own Great Harry, Mary Rose's big sister.

Steven

Edited April 14 by Louie da fly

[tartane]

All those images don't convince me. We will have to wait until a wreck is excavated where the fore castle is still visible.

At the time that these images were made, it was customary to depict everything more proudly and it was unimportant whether it was correct. See also, for example, the Mataro ship in Rotterdam, where it has been established that it could not sail in that form at all.

Constant

[Baker]

The whole idea of building the castle in cardboard first is to see if this setup is realistic.

Taking into account the tactics at the time (boarding), this high structure is logical.
And the aft and fore castle are of a lighter construction than the hull, so the center of gravity remains good

The first intention is to determine where the fore castle starts. Let's say the foundation of the castle.
Otherwise I cannot continue with further construction of the front hull.

[Baker]

2 hours ago, tartane said:

We will have to wait until a wreck is excavated where the fore castle is still visible.

I don't think I'll live long enough to experience an event like this 😇

[Stevinne]

5 hours ago, Baker said:

I don't think I'll live long enough to experience an event like this 😇

I remember reading somewhere, maybe in response to questions on a Facebook post by the MR museum, that there are currently no plans to uncover and raise more of the remaining parts of the ship. I think the last thing they raised was what remained of the stem post, but that was decades ago. It is a shame, since it might settle the debates about what the ship looked like in the end once and for all.

[tartane]

Patric,

To find out as much as possible, I think you have to divide the images that exist into two categories.

The first is the collection of images depicting the ships actually sailing around, i.e. in the 16th century.

The second is the collection of images that were made after the ships disappeared. So those drawings are based on the drawings that were already there and if they were not right, the imagination went further and further.

So you shouldn't take that second category seriously

 

I have experienced this clearly in my long-term research on the chebec, a Latin-rigged ship that sailed in the Mediterranean from about the year 1700 to about 1840. The drawings that were made at that time were very correct, and were made by a few draughtsmen who had also sailed on them.  But after 1840 there are fanciful depictions of painters who were not familiar with these ships but who sketched a romantic and very exaggerated picture from the existing drawings. This was the reason why models of these ships were suddenly made long after 1840, which also ended up in the maritime museum in Paris. Those models were wrong and can still be seen there. There are curious flaws in it. Unfortunately, manufacturers of construction kits then started measuring those models, so that there are now construction kits on the market that give a completely wrong picture of those ships.  There are a lot of things wrong and I never understand why the builders themselves don't see this.

This also came up again and again in my research into the cog.

 

If you wish, I would like to help you in this search. I admire your work in details.

 

Constant

[Baker]

17 hours ago, Stevinne said:

I remember reading somewhere, maybe in response to questions on a Facebook post by the MR museum, that there are currently no plans to uncover and raise more of the remaining parts of the ship. I think the last thing they raised was what remained of the stem post, but that was decades ago. It is a shame, since it might settle the debates about what the ship looked like in the end once and for all.

The last piece raised was indeed the remaines  of the stempost.

The MR museum website has a contact page.

You can ask all what you want to know,  they don't answer....

[Baker]

1 hour ago, tartane said:

Patric,

To find out as much as possible, I think you have to divide the images that exist into two categories.

The first is the collection of images depicting the ships actually sailing around, i.e. in the 16th century.

The second is the collection of images that were made after the ships disappeared. So those drawings are based on the drawings that were already there and if they were not right, the imagination went further and further.

So you shouldn't take that second category seriously

 

I have experienced this clearly in my long-term research on the chebec, a Latin-rigged ship that sailed in the Mediterranean from about the year 1700 to about 1840. The drawings that were made at that time were very correct, and were made by a few draughtsmen who had also sailed on them.  But after 1840 there are fanciful depictions of painters who were not familiar with these ships but who sketched a romantic and very exaggerated picture from the existing drawings. This was the reason why models of these ships were suddenly made long after 1840, which also ended up in the maritime museum in Paris. Those models were wrong and can still be seen there. There are curious flaws in it. Unfortunately, manufacturers of construction kits then started measuring those models, so that there are now construction kits on the market that give a completely wrong picture of those ships.  There are a lot of things wrong and I never understand why the builders themselves don't see this.

This also came up again and again in my research into the cog.

 

If you wish, I would like to help you in this search. I admire your work in details.

 

Constant

Thanks. All help is welcome. 

 

Remember the cardboard setup is just a test for the  moment.

Indeed. Building my previous model, i discovered that a lot of info and paintings are incorrect.

 

 

[tartane]

 

If you look for images from the 15th century, you will also come across this. There the bow is considerably lower and that seems logical to me in many respects. The captain and the helmsman now have a good view forward, which seems to me to be very useful in a naval battle. The bow now catches less wind.

The excessively high bow of the MR seems to me very clumsy when boarding an enemy. The soldiers have to jump from very high to get on the deck of the other ship, I think I would break my legs.

The highest guns have to shoot down, which seems to me to be rather impossible with the primitive cannons of the time.

 

 

Constant

[tartane]

correction,

Those images  from the mid 16th century and earlier,

Constant

[Baker]

I've seen these images before. 

This isn’t a carrack.

Carracks from mr. Breugel with high castles.

 

And a wel know image of a typical Carrack 

In the MR book there is an inventory (from the year 1514) of the cannons and their position on the decks in several ships. 

All the large ships (4 of them) have at least 2 decks in the fore castle 

Edited April 17 by Baker

[Alvb]

Do the inventory lists say anything about what type of guns in the bow fort were?

In many contemporary images of carracks, the gun barrels look as if they could be rotating bases, i.e. cannons mounted in fork mounts. such would allow downward shots.

I also think that the longbow was the far more effective weapon in this era, and an elevated shooting position was an advantage.

Should boarding the enemy over the shrouds be reconsidered instead of jumping into the depths?

 

...but I'm not a warrior.

[GrandpaPhil]

Or, dropping a rope and sliding down.

[Stevinne]

I'd think the forecastle guns were either swivels or what were known as hailshot pieces - light cannon almost like large guns that the shooter would hold while resting the front of the barrel on the rail. This would make sense since some hailshot pieces were found on the wreck. The Anthony Roll and this painting of Henry's court heading to France for the Field of Cloth of Gold show the ports on the focsle, but don't have any guns protruding from them.

Edited April 17 by Stevinne

[Baker]

Since I'm starting the fore castle earlier than planned, I haven't looked at this properly yet.

According to what I have read briefly, it should look like it is drawn on the cover of the MR book.
2 light cannons and all the are rest swivels, or hail shot pieces 

Edited April 17 by Baker

[Baker]

In the meantime, i continued with the fore castle basis.

 

This time I checked in time whether any problems will arise with the schrouds.

So yes, my cardboard structure was much too wide at the top. Error corrected just in time.

The base starts at an angle of 45° following the (few) remains of the fore castle. And then with a curve upwards. As always too high or too long, shortening later is easier than lengthening.

Applying the second was a little more challenging.

Additional temporary supports were then installed. And i continued with finishing the waist. 

Gluing done on starboard side, now on to port side. Sanding is for later.

[Louie da fly]

Beautiful work, Patrick! You're making good progress.

 

Steven

[Baker]

On 4/17/2024 at 3:26 PM, Alvb said:

Do the inventory lists say anything about what type of guns in the bow fort were?

In many contemporary images of carracks, the gun barrels look as if they could be rotating bases, i.e. cannons mounted in fork mounts. such would allow downward shots.

I also think that the longbow was the far more effective weapon in this era, and an elevated shooting position was an advantage.

Should boarding the enemy over the shrouds be reconsidered instead of jumping into the depths?

 

...but I'm not a warrior.

There is an inventory on wikisource.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anthony_Roll

 

In three parts.

Part one, Carracks 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anthony_Roll/First_roll

[Baker]

Well, that's where we are at the moment.

I think the books have some errors...
Standard 81T0833

This arrangement is therefore not correct at all.

And is shamelessly copied in the next book.

And this is what it actually looks like in the drawing.

A channel or rigging rail a little bit lower.

The Calderkraft model also follows this arrangement. Thanks @Mr Pleasant 
 

 

And so does our Russian colleague.

https://www.shipmodeling.ru/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=71379  thanks @firdajan

next
horizontal planking or curved straight
Most from this period seem to go for horizontal.
The curved straight ones are starting to become a bit old-fashioned in this period, it seems to me

Thanks for following