HMS Agamemnon 1781 by Michael P – scale 1:150 – 64-gun Third Rate - Ardent-class Man-of-War

[druxey]

Not too dissimilar to my Meccano ropewalk! However, mine is powered by a superannuated (and noisy) electric drill.

 

Lovely work on the hull and spars, Michael.

[Gabek]

Gorgeous work, Michael!

And you have my brain humming about making a mini rope walk.  Great idea!

Clear skies and sharp tools,

Gabe

[Michael P]

Lanyards and deadeyes. Some idle thoughts about the rigging, which I have now started (see photo below). I’m using black thread for the standing rigging, even though very dark brown would surely be more accurate. But black looks good, and I’ve got a good amount of it in. One of the issues is the colour of the lanyards for the deadeyes. This is clearly a matter of considerable controversy. I’ve gone for black, on the grounds that it’s unlikely that they needed to be adjusted very often, and they were very exposed to spray, so it surely made sense for them to be well-tarred. The evidence of pictures suggests that the lanyards were dark: they don’t stand out as they would if they were untarred or even lightly tarred. I do, however, know of just one  painting in which it looks as if the lanyards are pale - it’s the one by John Cleveley the Elder, of a Sixth Rate on the Stocks, which I referred to previously. The evidence of models in the National Maritime Museum is difficult as so many were re-rigged in the last century. But the rigging on that of HMS Tartar (1734) is contemporary, and the lanyards are dark. HMS Mars looks to have contemporary rigging, brown with very dark lanyards. At the end of the day, the colour of the lanyards surely has to be a question of individual choice.

Fitting the lanyards is tedious on this 1:150 scale. I bought the deadeyes from the excellent Cornwall Model Boats, which is a bit of a cheat, but never mind. There seems no option for threading them other than stiffening the end of the thread with glue, and pushing it through the holes. The first photo below shows that I’ve just managed so far to fit a pair of shrouds for each mast, along with the burton pendants (and lots of ends to cut off). However, in the mid-years of the last century I did it very differently. I don’t believe that you could buy deadeyes at that time, and I carved balsa rods, and cut the deadeyes from them. Rather than drill holes, I used a needle to thread them. They look to me almost as good as today’s bought ones - I might try the technique again one day. The second photo is of a model I finished in, I think, 1961, and shows the balsa wood deadeyes. Sorry it's a bit fuzzy - that's the effect of the case.

I am intrigued to find that people are making money from old rope - for you can buy small sections of actual eighteenth-century rope , salvaged from the wreck of HMS Invincible, on Ebay. I am so far resisting the temptation. The photos, however, are of some interest.

[Michael P]

Apologies - it’s been a long time since I updated this. Why? Christmas, helping 10 year old grandson with his Airfix Lancaster bomber (he’s much better at the fiddly bits than I am), and most recently getting a new computer. I can’t, incidentally, see much difference between Windows 10 and 11, except that the very old printer won’t work with 11. As for Agamemnon, the shrouds took ages to set up, with lacing the lanyards through the deadeyes proving harder than ever. There was no possibility of my knotting the ratlines on this scale. The knots would have looked too bulky, and would have pushed some of the shrouds out of place. Nor would I have had the patience to do it that way. So the ratlines are glued in place with PVA, darkened with black paint. I was a bit stuck finding a sufficiently thin thread for them, until I unwound some Gutermann sew all. As for the stays, the forestay was a bit of a struggle to fit properly, with an open heart over the jib-boom. Why did they do things in such a complicated way? And I have cheated with the mainstay, by simply lashing the collar under the bowsprit. Running it properly was just beyond me; my attempts looked much too bulky and awkward. I have not attempted to worm, parcel or serve any of the ropes - remember that this is at a scale of 1:50, and to have done so would be difficult and probably pointless. There is, incidentally, an interesting analysis of a stay from HMS Invincible to be found in a Bournemouth University thesis, The Rigging of HMS Invincible, by Tom Cousins. It was formed of four hawsers, with a core of loose yarns, heavily tarred, wormed and parcelled.

[Michael P]

One question about catharpins. I’ve always found them a problem to get looking right, but this query is about lower catharpins (about 1/3 of the way up the shrouds) which seem to be a rarity, though they feature on the National Maritime Museum’s model of HMS Ipswich (1730). They do, however, appear in Loutherbourg’s painting of the Glorious First of June (1794). I’m not inclined to add them, unless anyone comes up with more evidence for their use in the 1790s. They would be fiddly and difficult to get right. In the late 1950s I think I put them on a model of Centurion, but I can’t check as it’s currently languishing in daughter’s attic, having been replaced on display by son-in-law’s Lego Land-Rover.

 

Then there’s the issue of whether to fit a dolphin striker. There was undoubtedly none when Agamemnon was built, but it’s possible that one was installed in the 1790s, for they were officially introduced in 1794. The model of the 74 gun Mars (1794) in the National Maritime Museum has one. The fine model of Agamemnon at https://julianstockwin.com/2017/10/10/agamemnon-the-darch-model/ also features a dolphin striker. But I think I’ll probably take the easy option, and not add one.

 

One regret - I have found the modelships.de website interesting for the many photographs of, for the most part, kit models. But it has now vanished, and I can’t find any explanation.

 

Here's the relevant bit of the very dramatic Loutherbourg painting:

 

[Michael P]

An update is long overdue, not that there is that much to report. Rigging proceeds, all too slowly. The bowsprit presents interesting problems. A few more thoughts on the question of a dolphin striker, for I still don’t understand why this did not make it impossible to set the spritsail.  Longridge has a possible solution in his fold-out rigging plan of Victory, by bringing the martingale backstay close up to the striker. This would surely have made it much less likely that the striker could hold down the jibboom effectively, though making it possible to set the spritsail. In contrast, the NMM model of HMS Mars has such a complexity of ropes from the striker that it would surely have been impossible to set the sail (https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66538). As for a spritsail topsail, none of the  drawings of Agamemnon by Pocock in the National Maritime Museum show one on Agamemnon, and I’ll not fit one.

The main and foretops are just about ready to fit. I’ll need to fit the blocks that go under them, which means deciding just how much running rigging to include. I’ll go for overkill at this stage, as it’s easier to fit the blocks and remove them later if they are not all needed, than to struggle to add them after the tops are in place. One point about stays. I’ve noticed that a number of models on this website have euphroes and crowsfeet. Steel, however, says that these were not fitted to large ships of this period, and I’m not planning to fit them. I found it impossible, incidentally, to lace the stays to the preventer stays by knotting, so as you can see, I have glued the connecting lanyard. It’s a bit of cheat, but alternative methods just did not work at this scale.

Oh - in the photo you can just see the bow of one of the ship’s boats, and a bit of the hull of another. I’ll be reporting on them later, but it’s been interesting to experiment with possible ways of making them.

[Michael P]

Well, as usual I’ve not advanced as fast as I’d hoped. Late medieval English armies have got in the way, among other things. The garden has needed some work, even though most of it is now a swamp (is this the wettest spring since 1316, I wonder?). One question about tops. Steel states that ‘RAILS are made of wood or iron, and fitted across the aftside of tops, to prevent the men from falling’, and he also says that ‘The rail is supported by stantions let into the top, with a netting from side to side; the outside is covered with baize or canvas, and furnished with stoppers, to clap on in case a topmast shroud should be carried away by accident.’ This would fit with earlier eighteenth century models, such as that of HMS Centurion (in the National Maritime Museum), but I’ve not seen evidence for anything so elaborate at the end of the century. I have just fitted wire rails, without netting or covering. I might add netting later. Advice will be gratefully received. Another issue with the tops is how to do the deadeyes. Fitting them properly, with metal strops and slots in the tops, just looked clumsy at this scale. So, I have cheated again, and just tied them to the ends of the futtock shrouds.

 

Now, topmasts. The masts themselves are straightforward, of course. But the trestle-trees and cross-trees are not, and I’ve had problems with them in the past. I wondered about card for this model - it can bend awkwardly, but it won’t snap. Anyway, I  stuck with wood. The Bahia Rosewood I used earlier is very close-grained and tough, so I’ve used that. It even takes drilling holes to take the topgallant shrouds. I have cheated by simply glueing the cross-trees in place without grooving the trestle trees. I don’t think it really shows at this scale, and they were not fitted flush in any case. The picture makes them look rougher and clumsier than I think is the case. Anything slimmer would be very difficult to do at my age, with anything so small. But if anyone has ideas, they will be most welcome.

[Michael P]

Oh dear. No one has complained about this, but the trestle- and cross-trees really were just too big. I looked at the plans in Longridge’s book about HMS Victory, and they are shown as tiny. That’s not right either - I worked out the dimensions using Steel’s figures, and I needed to make them about 2/3 of the present size. That was possible, though the cross-trees are now too small to be drilled for the rigging. Anyway, the revised ones don’t look too bad to me, though of course a photo brings out all the imperfections. Please remember that the maximum dimension is three quarters of an inch. Despite them being small, they seem strong enough, thanks to the Bahia rosewood. I think it’s very important to avoid making things oversize if possible; I’ve seen too many photos of models where this is a fault. The topmasts are not yet fixed in place, but I put them in just for the photo. The view through the window does not, incidentally, reveal just how unbelievably wet the garden is.

On a different topic, I had asked earlier if anyone knew what had happened to the modelships.de site. I found the answer on the web, and it’s a sad one. The owner of the site died, and that meant the end of it.

[Michael P]

Work proceeds, if slowly, on the rigging. Tiny deadeyes are fiendish to thread, but I'm now on the mizzen topmast, so nearly done. I’ll leave photographing until the standing rigging is more-or-less complete - at present there are still too many loose ends etc., and it looks a bit messy.

In between rigging the model, I thought I would have a go at the ship’s boats. Various ways of making them occurred to me . I could approach my eldest grandson, and ask him to make the basic shells with his 3D printer. He’s very clever with it, and has even made a model of a fighter aircraft with folding wings, but I’d rather do the work myself. Milliput might be a possibility. Or I could carve them, but that’s not easy as they need to be so thin. It then occurred to me to try using a balsa wood former to make a papier maché shell. The problem was, of course, that the paper strips, inundated with glue, would stick to the balsa wood. Greasing the mould with some Duckham’s car grease, bought in the 1960s and still usable (the tin alone worth much more now on Ebay than it cost when new and full), made it a bit difficult to get the first layer of newspaper in place, but after that the process went fine. The boat was then cut in half, to make it easier to remove the moulds. The balsa wood came away fairly easily, thanks to the grease. The two half-boats were then glued to the keel (made from card), and I could then proceed to put in ribs, again using card not wood. Then the thwarts were installed. I hope the photos show just how small the scale is - they show a 23 foot boat.

A couple of uncertainties. Do I fit the boats with rudders? It seems to me more likely that the rudders were fitted when the boats were launched, not when they were stored. I could not find an ideal photo on the National Maritime Museum site, but it looked to me from the model of HMS Mars, for example, as if the rudders were not fitted. And I just don’t understand the davits that are shown on some of the plans in the Museum, so I’m not trying to fit them. Adding a windlass, however, should certainly be possible.

[Michael P]

It’s a long time since I updated this blog. No excuse really, but the rigging does take a lot of time, particularly at this small scale. Threading tiny deadeyes is not my idea of fun, but it has to be done. And there are distractions in the summer, such as the garden. This picture of the model goes back a bit, but gives a good general impression.

Now, carronades. Did Nelson have two 68lb carronades on Agamemnon? The website https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/01/20/the-carronade-in-service/  says that he had them from 1793, but the excellent account in https://falkirklocalhistory.club/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/object-9-carronade.pdf , p. 35, has the date as 1798.  I suspect that in the latter case a ‘3’ has been misread as an ‘8’. I found, rather to my amazement, that it is possible to buy very beautiful 3d printed 1/146^th scale model carronades, but they would look out of character with the rest of my model. So, the carronades are simply carved from dowel rod. A bit crude, but all right at this scale. I managed to make breeching loops for the 68 lb ones, but not for the smaller ones. The carriages present more of a problem than the guns themselves. There was, it seems, a good deal of experimentation. There is a 68lb carronade in the Royal Armouries (https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-6134) with a carriage that has two small trucks at the front, and none at the back. It has no evident method of elevation, and there is no slide. It could have been intended for a fortification on land, or might be naval in origin, but it’s probably best ignored. There’s then the question of whether the carriage was fixed with a swivel at the front enabling it to be traversed, or be fitted with four small trucks. I’ve gone for the swivel option. The photo below shows three attempts, with the Royal Armouries type on the left, and a more-or-less final version on the right. The view of the stern shows the six smaller carronades in place. The forward ones would have shot through a gap in the shrouds, as it was not until a little later that the Admiralty forbad this, because of the potential damage to the rigging. The final photo shows one of the two 68 lb carronades in place on the forecastle.  I’ve not tried to fit the tackles that a carronade needed, but I might attempt that later.

[GrandpaPhil]

Looks really good!

[Michael P]

It’s been far too long since I last posted an update. There’s been the Olympics to watch, the garden to deal with, etc. , and progress has as a result been slow. The model won’t make it to this year’s village show, but there’s always next year. The photo shows that the standing rigging is now just about complete. The tiny deadeyes were a particular problem to thread, and the shrouds seemed to take ages. One major difference in appearance from what seems to be the common approach is that I have used black rather than pale thread for the deadeye lanyards. My argument is that it’s unlikely that the lanyards would have been constantly adjusted - it would have made sense, surely, to use tarred rope for them, given their exposure to spray, wind etc. Paintings for the most part do not show light coloured lanyards. An exception is the picture by John Cleveley the Elder of ‘A Sixth Rate on the Stocks’ which does show, on the left, a ship in process of being rigged, with light coloured lanyards, but I suspect that these would have been tarred when the ship went to sea. As for models, some of those in the National Maritime Museum do have light brown lanyards, such as that of Centurion (https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66403), but that was re-rigged in the 1930s.  Steel suggested that lanyards should be ‘well greased’, which is not all that helpful. I think that a dark brown might well have been more accurate, but I like the look of black. Ignore the light-coloured threads in the photo - they are there to facilitate threading the blocks later with the running rigging.

 

There are lots of very fiddly things with a model of this size. One is the hammock cranes.  I experimented with various possibilities, and found it impossible to build them up in situ on the modal. The easiest method was to make the whole unit, complete with netting, and then to put it in place. I don’t do soldering, so relied on twisting wire and fixing it with CA glue (which I hate). The netting was bought for a different model some years ago from Cornwall Model Boats. The final result could, as ever, be neater, but it’s good enough for me, though there's some tidying to do. I've only done one so far, as the second photo shows. The sharp-nosed pliers, incidentally, must be about 65 years old.  

 

  

 

[Michael P]

It’s been far too long since I last posted an update. The model didn’t make it to this year’s village show, but there’s always next year. The photo below shows the current state of play - please excuse all the loose ends etc which will be tidied up in time. The tiny deadeyes were a particular problem, even after stiffening the thread with glue, and sometimes in desperation using a very tiny drill to enlarge the holes. One major difference in appearance from what seems to be the common approach is that I have used black rather than pale thread for the deadeye lanyards. My argument is that it’s unlikely that the lanyards would have been constantly adjusted - it would have made sense, surely, to use tarred rope for them. Steel suggested that lanyards should be ‘well greased’,which is not all that helpful. I don’t think that contemporary paintings show light-coloured lanyards.I think that a dark brown might well have been more accurate, but I like the look of black.

The current state of play

The question of sails or no sails has been on my mind. It seems on the face of it somewhat odd to have a model of a sailing ship with no sails, though obviously there are innumerable precedents for that. I have seen photos of fine models spoiled to my mind by their sails bellied-out, with heavily-marked seams. I have tried various solutions in the past. Some 65 years ago I bought the finest cloth I could find in Elliston & Cavell’s department store in Oxford, to the puzzlement of the sales assistant. I avoided hemming it, for sewn hems look horribly out of scale. Instead, I glued the bolt rope to the edges of the sails, which worked fine, and looks as good now as it did then. The seams for the individual cloths making up the sail were simply marked in pencil, a practice I think some still follow. The trouble is that they do just look like pencil lines, and be warned - it looks from one of my models from the late 1950s as if they  do fade in time. Nor do I think the lines should be dark. Steel says that the twine used to sew them should be of beeswax with a 1/6^th part of turpentine, which suggests to me that they were quite pale.

 

Cloth sails, on a small model built c. 1960

Recently I tried a very different tack, for a very small model of PS Britannia. I used kitchen foil, folded and then unfolded to mark the seams, and then painted. I’d used foil for flags previously, and it worked fine, with the only problems being that the sails have no translucency at all, and of course hang stiffly. I don’t think it would well on anything more than a miniature model.

 

Kitchen foil sails on a tiny model

Then I tried another way for a model of the celebrated ship drawn by Matthew Baker(see photo above), often thought questionably to have been the Revenge, and equally questionably identified as the Elizabeth Jonas by the Science Museum. I’d read about the use of ‘Modelspan’ (which sounds like the tissue I used in the 1950’s for KeilKraft aircraft models), but instead of buying some, I tried the kind of tissue used for nose-blowing. Soaked in a very dilute mixture of paint and glue, this worked reasonably well for furled sails. So, for this Agamemnon model, I considered kitchen foil, but in the end bought some tissue paper intended for model aircraft, coloured it with dilute paint, and used it for furled sails (well, one furled sail so far). Much tidying up to do, of course.

 

[Michael P]

As a break from rigging, I’ve more or less completed four boats - a longboat, a pinnace, a cutter and a jolly boat. They are made as I described earlier. A balsa mould, newspaper and glue for the hull, cut in half when dry. Then the halves are stuck together onto the keel, and card ribs and interior planking are fitted. Thwarts etc are of wood. Sounds easier than it is in practice, but it’s the best method I can manage for such tiny boats. The jolly boat features clinker planking externally. There probably should be more boats - the tables in May’s book on Boats of Men-of-War suggest that a 64 gun ship should have five. I’ll think about that, but it does start to look very overcrowded to have that many. There are elements that I just could not manage at this scale. There are no rowlocks, as everything I tried either looked too big and clumsy, or was just about invisible. Suggestions welcome, and I’ll continue to consider this. The tillers, at least on some of the boats, should be nicely carved - I found a good example at https://www.bada.org/object/19th-century-oak-boat-tiller , but as ever, that would be impossible when they are so tiny.  

[Michael P]

As usual, the rigging is not going as fast as I’d really like, but it is proceeding. I have given up with the model aircraft tissue for the furled sails, as it was proving too hard to fold up. So, it was back to tissues from the supermarket, which though flimsy when split into three sheets, are easier to work with.

 

I have hit an unexpected problem, and would be very grateful for advice. The question is whether it is right to fit a driver-boom (spanker-boom if you prefer). I have done so, but have been wondering if this was in fact correct, even though Longridge has one in his Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships, as does Petersson in his very useful book on Rigging Period Ship Models. There is an obvious difficulty, discussed at length elsewhere on Modelshipworld, in that the driver-boom would hit the flagstaff as the ship went about.The model of HMS Mars in the National Maritime Museum shows the problem, with both boom and flagstaff fitted. This is not an acute difficulty, as presumably the flagstaff could be dismounted, or folded down. I thought that paintings might provide an answer, and Nicolas Pocock’s Ships at Spithead, 1797 (https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/fine-art-prints/Nicholas-Pocock/1503372/Ships-at-Spithead-1797.html) shows three ships with no driver-boom. Equally, his picture of the frigate Triton, built in 1798, does not have one. Pocock’s sketches of Agamemnon are not clear enough to determine the answer, though that showing the engagement with four French frigates in 1793 looks as if there may be no driver-boom. Sorry not to reproduce the pictures, but I’m hesitant to include them given possible copyright issues.

 

Paintings and drawings, of course, are not photographs, and may not be correct. Interestingly, Steel (The Elements and Practice of Rigging And Seamanship, 1794) provides a table of boom-lengths, which shows that 64 gun ships should have no driver-boom, no jackstaff, and no ensign staff. Driver-booms were just for smaller vessels. Surviving ships are not to be trusted, as the rigging is modern, but Trincomalee has driver-boom and flagstaff, as did Victory (not sure of the present position). As for Agamemnon herself, there is no clear clue. The ship was refitted at Leghorn late in 1794, and I suppose it is possible that a driver-boom was installed then. I am inclined to remove the boom, but to leave it for now and ponder the issue further. It may well be correct either way. What does anyone think?  

Please excuse the unfinished ends of rope etc in the photo - all will be tidied up in due course.

[Michael P]

My attention is largely confined to the rigging at present, but here’s a thought about the figurehead. It’s made from Milliput, and I apologise for it - it was the best I could at this scale. Now, I read in the Mariner’s Mirror (May 2018) an article by David Pulvertaft, who knows all there is to know about figureheads, arguing that the majority were painted white, with a fair number polychrome. His evidence was taken from a long period, 1727-1900, and the article made me wonder if I had been right in having a gilded figurehead. One contemporary model, of HMS Mars, in the National Maritime Museum (oddly, not cited in the article), shows a fine white figurehead. As the photograph below shows, I tried an off-white colour - but though it may have been historically correct, it just did not look right. It makes it stand out too much.  Pulvertaft did allow for gilded figureheads, citing the examples of HMS Semiramis (1808), and HMS Conqueror. In the latter case, Captain Pellew petitioned for the replacement of the figurehead lost at Trafalgar by one showing Nelson, ‘gilded in burnished gold’. Pellew and his officers paid for this. Pictorial evidence is surprisingly scant (artists tended to prefer stern views), but Loutherbourg’s picture of the Glorious First of June (available on Wikpedia) shows a French ship with a polychrome figurehead, and an English one with a white one. Nicholas Pocock’s painting of Nelson’s flagships at anchor has Vanguafd with a white figurehead. I think it nevertheless that it would be acceptable to show Agamemnon with a polychrome figurehead, but I don’t have the skill for that at this scale. So, the off-white has gone, and it remains gilded, because that looks best. Gold paint can be a problem, however. The Humbrol I used in the 1950s remains absolutely fine, but some of the gold I used three years or so ago has gone a vile green. What I use now is a gold paste made by Liberon, which seems entirely stable. I just might try silver for the shield and spear, but I’ll leave the figurehead as it is for now.

 

More about the rigging soon, with any luck.