Sao Paulo 1441 by Ferrus Manus - FINISHED - Heller - 1/75 - Theoretical Reconstruction

[Ferrus Manus]

44 minutes ago, Louie da fly said:

6 inches square at the tip seems a little extreme - how do you get your hand around that?

This is why i decided to add the tackles. The reason i know (or at least highly suspect) tiller tackles were used on carracks is due to their massive size- controlling the rudder without them would be impossible. I guess if there's one part of the ship that won't be destroyed in a storm, it's the tiller. 

 

Also, owing to the Mediterranean tradition of brightly painting ships (that still exists today!), you'd think that the idea of at least some caravels being brightly painted is plausible. 

This is the steering tackle:

I also rigged the preventer for the rudder:

It would be nice if that stayed on the ship. 

[Ferrus Manus]

Alright, today i finished the deck fittings for the Sao Paulo. 

The scratch-built pieces on the deck are the main halyard knight, the windlass, and the pumps. If you are wondering about the reasoning behind me using a block for the mizzen halyard instead of a knight, this is because a knight would have to extend all the way down to at least the main deck, and that isn't possible as anything extending down past the level of the quarterdeck aft of the mast would foul the tiller. 

This is the mechanism that was used on ships in the 16th century. On the ship is a more realistic solution for the 15th century handle. 

 

Now the next issue. Neither mast is properly stepped. For this reason, i can choose any rake i want for both. The mainmast is stepped considerably aft of what i think is reasonable, but i have a solution. 

Almost all the caravels in this map from 1513 show the mainmast raked significantly forward. This is likely following a tradition in earlier caravels, and the even earlier Mediterranean tradition of 12th-13th century fore-and-aft rigs. 

 

Edited January 11 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

The lower shroud blocks are made up of a loop tied around the block, then tied to the rail. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The structure of the shrouds are, from top to bottom, the shroud line itself, the toggle with a loop around it, the upper block with a loop slightly bigger, the lanyard, and the looped lower block. 

[Ferrus Manus]

These are the rest of the components for the shrouds: 

If you think you'll ever find a painting of any medieval ship that's accurate and detailed, just throw in the towel and go home. However, we think we know how late medieval shrouds were attached to the mast. 

This is a picture painted by our wonderful friend Vittore Carpaccio in 1490. Look at the top of the mizzen mast of the first carrack closest to us. It seems as though the shrouds were attached the normal way, then wrapped with lashings around the mast, probably as preventers. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The mainmast shrouds are complete. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The mizzen mast is stepped and rigged. 

Where's Steven? 

Edited January 12 by Ferrus Manus

[Louie da fly]

Looking good, mate. Perhaps the lanyards (the ropes between the hearts/deadeyes) could have been a tiny bit tighter, but setting up these things is pretty difficult. Practice is really the only solution, and I'm sure you'll get better at it as time goes on.

 

BTW, there are various remedies for "hairy rope" - I think these include rubbing with beeswax, or passing the rope (very carefully) over a naked flame.

 

I do like the toggles you have between the top hearts and the shrouds themselves - a very common thing in the Mediterranean in particular, dating right back to the year dot.

 

Steven

[Ferrus Manus]

9 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

could have been a tiny bit tighter, but setting up these things is pretty difficult.

For being the most complex shrouds i have ever rigged (looks can be deceiving!) I like the overall appearance. I agree with your assessment, however, from a distance it isn't really seen.

9 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

dating right back to the year dot.

1441 exactly?

The open flame technique worked miserably on the Golden Hinde, breaking several lines, and i never tried it again. I am open to the waxing technique though, i bought several pots of finger-apply lip balm just for this. I have never used it as lip balm. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I also plan to use toggles on the vangs and braces for both sails, 8 lines in total. 

[GrandpaPhil]

I have a block of beeswax that I got at a hardware store that I use for treating rigging.

[Ferrus Manus]

Now that the rigging of masts is complete, we can start in on the yards. 

Yes, you saw right. The main yard is 1.5x the LOA of THE SHIP. Each individual one of the spars that are tied together to make the yard are individually as long as the distance between the bottom of the keel and the top of the flagpole. 

It also might be an issue that i'm not using the plastic kit-provided "sails", because the mizzen yard is the second or third flimsiest yard i've ever received in a kit. I just got done painting the rest of the blocks and will begin stropping them at some point today. 

[Louie da fly]

7 hours ago, Ferrus Manus said:

the mizzen yard is the second or third flimsiest yard i've ever received in a kit.

Can I suggest you get rid of it entirely and replace it with a wooden one? And while you're at it, consider replacing the mainyard as well? I think this is an area where plastic ship model kits really fall down badly - plastic is just not suitable for anything long and thin - it always seems to warp or bend, and has none of the inherent resistance to sideways forces that timber has.

 

It's also a gentle lead-in to building a whole ship in timber . . . 

 

Steven

[Ferrus Manus]

47 minutes ago, Louie da fly said:

And while you're at it, consider replacing the mainyard as well?

Too late. 

[Ferrus Manus]

50 minutes ago, Louie da fly said:

It's also a gentle lead-in to building a whole ship in timber

Oh, stop! You really are that persistent, are you? Don't think i don't notice. For now, it's good to watch you build Medieval ships. You already know my first wood ship will be the S.F. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I've made a flimsier yard work, so there's no reason for this one not to. I just have to be gentle. Maybe the next kit will involve the replacement of yards. 

 

...What i'm thinking is a generic English galleon rechristened the Queen Elizabeth, for a friend of mine. Obviously with historically accurate fittings. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The yard has been set using the halyard and most of the blocks are on the toggles. 

Edited January 13 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

Let me finish off this sail by telling you guys that i'm using Heller blocks, which almost pass for medieval blocks, but are damn near unusable. I also was not provided any kind of kit string, but that's typical for Heller. IF they give you any line whatsoever, it's going to be worthless and model-ruining. The same goes for Revell kits pre-1990. 

I also have a solution for the bendy mizzen yard, and it's sitting right in front of you. My idea is that the mainsail is perfectly sufficient to propel the ship, and knowing Medieval sailing techniques, the mizzen sail was likely used more as directional trim; a "wind rudder" more than actual propulsion. Because of the toggled blocks, i would have to just include the toggles and tyes, and the halyard. No blocks or lines, just the furled sail. 

This is the box art. 

The box art does a pretty good job of depicting the proportions of the actual model, and that includes the yards. The mizzen yard is shown inboard the shrouds and parallel (kind of) to the keel. They are either raising or lowering sail, because the blocks are still attached to the yard. They probably would have taken those off to clear up the deck when the sail wasn't being used. The artist also depicted the men on the ship as significantly smaller than 1/75, more like 1/96. 

Multiple historical images also depict caravels sailing with only the main, although the mizzen sail is basically always depicted as being furled aloft rather than on the deck. These images are, however, all significantly later than 1441. 

[GrandpaPhil]

On the subject of yards and masts, a couple years ago, I ended up with a case of bamboo kitchen skewers.

 

They make most excellent yards and the thinner masts.

 

I have used them in several models now, without problems.

 

It cuts easily and the grain is dense enough that you don’t have some of the issues that you run into with dowel rods.

 

I have made cannon and other smaller parts from the skewers too.

 

The only thing to watch out for is that bamboo has joints in it, since it grows in a segmented fashion, which are equivalent to carving a knot on regular wood.

 

One must be careful carving across them on longer pieces.

[Ferrus Manus]

The mizzen sail was very easy to make. 

One of the reasons i love silkspan is that it's so scale-accurate. I have not cut anything down, that's the entire sail. 

After that i made the anchors, which were very easy to rig. 

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking good!

[Ferrus Manus]

I would like @Louie da fly to come and check if, other than the flags, anything else is needed that i missed in my research. I don't want to end up leaving anything out that should be there. Granted, i did more in the way of detail work than i usually do. 

[Ferrus Manus]

There is little evidence of what flags were flown on Portuguese ships. This image shows the Portuguese caravels and carracks in port. The ships are likely from the mid-late 1400's, looking at the forecastles of the carracks. Look at the caravel on the center-right.

This caravel is flying a Portuguese flag on the main truck, and multiple streamers on the lateen yard peaks. 

For this reason, I will decide to fly a Portuguese flag on the main truck and a streamer on the main yard. 

[Ferrus Manus]

Would you look at that, Steven! Look at the upper works of the aforementioned caravel as well as some of the vessels in the foreground. The upper works of the caravel i just got done referencing have red, blue, and yellow paint, and the entirety of some of the foreground boats are painted as well, some even having designs. So, my paint job is historically accurate, or at least plausible. 

[Ferrus Manus]

And look even closer! That carrack on the left is basically an enlarged Mataro carrack. I might use this image as a reference for the Senora Fielden. This image just keeps on giving! 

[Ferrus Manus]

The flags are on, and the ship is nearing completion. 

However, i have a theory. 

Some Medieval lateeners in the Mediterranean were known to use oars as an auxiliary (galleys, some roundships, and, i assume, early hulks). Now, in 1441 the caravel would not have existed in its most developed form. This implies that caravels before the 16th century may have had oars, owing to the fact that the Mediterranean conditions involve being without wind as often as having it. I propose that the Sao Paulo, which is more a medieval ship than anything else, might have had auxiliary oars for use when the sea was calm. This is a theoretical reconstruction, after all, and my goal is to create a ship that a sailor from Medieval Iberia would instantly recognize as a caravel. 

 

I also got this idea from the Occidental-turned-Zvezda kit, which includes auxiliary oars for the ship. 

Edited January 19 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

Early September, 1492

The words of the evening Mass still ring in your ears. You curl up in a ball underneath the small forecastle of the wooden cradle that will rock you to sleep tonight. For now, the sea is calm and the winds are gentle. You can just barely see the stars through the rigging of the tiny ship you and 17 other men will call home for the next five weeks. There's a long road ahead of you. Captain Columbus is probably drawing up charts right now, but your only responsibility at the moment is getting to sleep. Many thoughts race through your head, but one of them seems to outshine the rest. This tiny little caravel you call home will brave the Green Sea of Darkness. 

You silently thank God and the Portuguese for developing a ship that will always be there for you, even when the sea gets rough. 

 

I have tied down the auxiliary oars, and with that, the Sao Paulo is finished. 

 

 

Thank you all (especially you Steven) for helping me with this (albeit small) project. 

 

Until next time, fair winds and calm seas. 

[GrandpaPhil]

Very nicely done Ferrus!

[Knocklouder]

Looks great my friend, congratulations  on yet another fine build. It was fun tagging along. Well done  

[Louie da fly]

A nice piece of work, mate!

 

Steven