Tackling the copper sheathing weathering on French Ironclad

[Shipific]

Hi all! Wanted to ask if today we have a consensus on how to accurately depict weathered (few years?) copper sheathing on the ships bottom.

 

For a project (a French ironclad frigate) I need to get some very basic things right, and Im not good with chemistry, so perhaps you can help me.

The ships bottom is sheathed in copper. The ship is shown weathered, and it is important to get right the demarcation between how copper looks below water, and how it looks up on the hull above water.

 

Would this be a rather good reference point (copper above with some bleed in green) and very light green below water:

 

 

In a way, this kind of appearance works well for this photographic evidence of an ironclad Atalante in dry dock where below water she looks light, and above water she is dark.  And yet it is entirely possible what we are looking at is a brown or green upper section, and the part below water is just heavily fowled with barnicles and growth and looks almost white or beige/gray here as they do in real life. Just this lifeless greyish color. Does not have to be green!

 

 

Of course, I can make first image BW - result will be very similar to Atalante. 

 

So dark brown with greenish spots above water, green below water. This image also confirms. Dark above, green below (or at least green where water is).  

 

 

So based on the above, is this the right approach - to leave the part of copper sheathing that is above water in darker duller brown, yet for the bit below water one can go same and darker, or if time spent long - more than a year say - go green? Feels accurate right? You kind of end up with red boot topping and green lower hull, very similar to how French painted their ships below water around turn of the 19th century. 

 

Am I correct in thinking doing the paint this way? Or am I missing something key and may be ship should have it opposit - green above water and darker brown below?

 

I know that when new, it is very bright and shiny, reflective almost. But Im not doing new ship, Im doing a ship thats weathered.

 

Here is the ship I am building, by the way, note the dull copper sheathing sticking out, again confirming that the dark is brown, not green. 

 

Your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

[Bob Cleek]

 

If you are asking what a ship with a copper-sheathed hull looks like, the answer has to be, "It depends." In the water? Out of the water? Fouled or clean? These pictures and explanations below should help. When building a model, one has to consider what is known as the "scale viewing distance." There are details one knows are present but including them may run the risk of adding over-scale details. Coppered bottoms frequently occasion this flaw and, regrettably, it seems to be exacerbated by some model kit manufacturers who feel compelled to advertise that their kits contain "real detailed copper plates" that they expect the builder to tediously apply one at a time. The "scale viewing distance" is simply "what you would see if you were viewing the real ship from the same real distance as you are looking at the model in scale distance. For example, if you are looking at a 1:48 scale (1/4"=1") model from three feet away, you should only see the details you would be able to see on the real ship if you were standing 144 feet away from it. If you are not so completely familiar with what ships look like from a distance, photographs are an excellent way to judge what a scale viewing distance actually looks like. The same phenomenon applies to the colors one sees and these are affected as well by the ambient lighting. At a distance, colors will be flat and somewhat darker. A model with intense glossy paint and over-scale detail will appear like a toy, and defeat the "compelling impression of reality in miniature" that a good model is about. (Unless, of course, it's a toy boat one intends to produce.) From most scale viewing distances, a model should have no glossy finishes and no shiny metal parts. (Unless, of course, one is building a particular style of "builder's model" that at one time was fashionable. These would often be unpainted, relying on the different appearances of contrasting wood species and bright brass metal fittings.) Certainly, at 1:96 scale (1/8"=1'), the scale of many kit sailing models these days, from a normal three-foot model viewing distance, a "scale viewing distance of 288 feet, almost the length of a football field, copper-plating details such as tacks, and even plate overlaps, are not going to be visible. Only subtle variations in color will be perceptible. When seeking to realistically portray a copper-sheathed hull, trust the camera's eye rather than your mind's eye and avoid "overstating the obvious." Our "mind's eye" provides the details in such instances, causing a viewer to "see" things that aren't there, or merely very subtly suggested. As counterintuitive as it may be, in this fashion, it's what's not there that makes a model look "real." 

 

 

 

 

Above are photos of the usual appearance of a copper sheathed hull. If anything, the oxidized copper above the waterline in the top picture is a bit too "reddish" and would be a bit "browner." I can't say whether this is simply an artifact of the computer screen I'm looking at, or a digital camera color intensity setting, or perhaps the variables of the exact copper used. The more common color in this respect is the color of a used copper coin, such as a US penny. The turquoise green color at the waterline in the photos is often referred to as "verdigris."  Best described, these two colors are called "verdigris" and "copper penny." They can be somewhat mottled and vary in shade or intensity a bit in real life.

 

 

The verdigris green color, which is copper sulfate, occurs when copper oxidizes in the presence of a sufficient amount sulfur in the surrounding environment. Copper oxidizes rather quickly upon exposure to the air. Where there is a high level of sulfur in the air, such as in the days when sulphureous coal was burned, copper exposed to the air will quickly produce verdigris colored copper sulfate on its surface, such as is seen on bronze statues, copper roofing materials, and, famously, the Statue of Liberty. Absent a sufficient level of sulfur, the copper will form a "copper penny brown" colored oxide coating that serves as a shield that prevents further oxidation and the creation of verdigris green copper sulfate. There are sufficient sulfates in seawater to support the formation of verdigris green copper sulfate where sufficient oxygen is also present. When the friction of water movement wears away the brown copper oxide, notably at the "splash zone" above the waterline where there is also sufficient oxygen, copper bottom sheathing will develop green copper sulfate on its surface but will not tend to do so where the seawater is not as regularly in contact with the copper sheathing well above the waterline. (This is my own causation theory. It's at least accurate as to what happens, but perhaps not exactly correct as to why it happens. If one of the resident metallurgists on this forum has a better explanation, I welcome their correction! ) In any event, the color of a copper sheathed hull bottom is "copper penny brown" with a "verdigris" band around the waterline as pictured in the first two photos above (or more accurately, perhaps, between the top of the copper sheathing and the waterline.)

 

That said, if a coppered bottom is hauled out for cleaning, and particularly if it is well scrubbed upon hauling, a verdigris-colored patina will very quickly develop. Below is a coppered hull that has been apparently dry-docked and her copper has quickly produced a copper sulfate verdigris colored patina, in this case, for whatever reason, a somewhat less intense and more pale shade. This is a very clean bottom which has been brushed, power washed, or the like, removing some of the usual "penny brown" copper oxidation along with the usual fouling growth, and washed down with salt seawater. it is customary to scrub a bottom down immediately upon it's leaving the water (or the water leaving the dock, as the case may be) while the marine growth on the bottom is more easily removed. Once a fouled bottom dries, scraping clean it becomes a much more difficult job. For this reason, if a model of a ship having a coppered bottom is depicted out of the water, coloring it as is seen in the picture below would be correct. 

 

 

 

Below the waterline, before a hull is scrubbed clean of fouling growth, it will appear in a variety of ways, depending upon the length of time the hull has been submerged, the growing environment of the area where the hull was located, and the types of flora and fauna that are prevalent in the area. Basically, the color of marine fouling is a mottled, dirty dark green and/or dark brown.

 

When a hull is first hauled or dry-docked after having been in the water for any significant length of time, it can appear as the hull pictured below "in the slings" and just hauling out.  Obviously, this is something of an extreme example, but not unheard of in areas where the environment favors the growth of particular flora and fauna, particularly in the warm tropics.  A hull that has been regularly sailing will generally accumulate less fouling material than one that sits still for periods of time. 

 

 

 

Below is the appearance of a fouled hull which appears somewhat dry.

 

 

 

Below is a barge hull with significant barnacle fouling.

 

 

Photo below of modern sailboat hull with average fouling. 

 

 

In my experience, portraying a coppered bottom on a model is an opportunity for restrained creative "weathering" and airbrush work.

 

 

 

[allanyed]

Shipfic

A warm welcome to MSW.  It would be nice if you posted a little intro in the new member forum with a little about yourself.

Again. welcome to this motely crew.

Allan

[Roger Pellett]

During many years of model building I have built many more models in my head than on the workbench.  A result of one of my mental exercises:

 

It seems to me that coppering a hull with real copper is a weak link in the modeling process.  Gluing copper over a wood substrate is problematic as both  Rubber cements and pressure sensitive adhesives have doubtful longevity.  Nothing is more discouraging for corners of plates on a tediously coppered hull to begin lifting up.  Then as Bob Cleek points out there is the scale factor.  If you are building at a scale of 1:100 scale thickness of the copper could be .001in or less thick.

 

I would suggest that you instead use plates cut from thin paper.  These can be glued on with any good wood glue including PVA.  You can paint the plated hull as needed.  An airbrush would work well for simulating different weathering effects.

 

Roger

[Shipific]

Great points raised here!

I did post now on the new members forum, thanks for the welcome!

 

I am doing my project in 1:700 scale, so of course Im heavily considering this as part of my build - the atmospheric effect (lighter colors) so a bit washed out, less contrast, not black but dark grey, that sort of thing. I most certainly paint the hull in copper, I do not even plan to do it with plates due to tiny scale. My goal is to get the overall look correct.  

 

My ship is going to be shown not in repairs in dry dock, where they copper bottom is scrubbed and it very quickly oxidises in green, verdigris. What Im building is a subject plucked out of water at the time of deployment in France in 1884, before being sent to China on station for 5 years. The ship has black hull, and copper sheathed bottom. This should make for a striking model.

 

What I want is just some worn weathered copper bottom look, and especially get right the weathering above and below water. As I see it there are 4 options: 

 

1) all brown

2) all green

3) green above water and brown below

4) or brown above water and green below

 

And thats where Im at.

 

I spoke a bit with Marijn Van Gils on his Victory-Redoutable diorama, and he has most wonderful looking hull bottoms there on the ships, with beatiful patina to catch the eye. But we agreed his approach is for the mostly above water paint, not below as below will be covered by the "sea" base. So I have to figure out the effect right all the way down. In his opinion it would be greenish above water due to contact with air and water that is constant (something you wont get on museum ship). And I do find pictures of hull plates being VERY "splattery" in bw imagery, indicating some oxydation. The bit below eludes me. Copper will go green once out of water, that seems a fact, but while below?.. hard to tell.

Edited February 7 by Shipific

[Roger Pellett]

Smart choice!  At 1:700 scale skip the plating and simulate with paint.

 

Roger

[Shipific]

Yeah, in 1:700 less is more. 

My progress is shown thus far. Im going for bit of fowling on the copper hull.

Here I am mainly experimenting with pigments. this is one look I had in mind... 

Not final version.

May try to give it an all greenish looking area above water next, but I do like the sheen just a little bit copper gives. (this is just metallic orange paint btw).

[wefalck]

I think Bob above with his reasoning is right. I would expect the copper to be a dullish penny-brown below the water line, some verdigris (i.e. copper sulphate-oxide) around the waterline and again some more penny-brown higher up, depending on how much above the waterline the coppering goes. Incidentally, the bronze ram and stern-post should retain a more yellowish colour, perhaps with a hint of brownish green - the tin in the bronze doesn't really form sulfates in seawater conditions.

[Bob Cleek]

18 hours ago, Shipific said:

I do like the sheen just a little bit copper gives. (this is just metallic orange paint btw).

It's your model and you are certainly entitled to color it to your own taste, but if it's realism that you are about, there's no "copper sheen" or "shiny brass" look whatsoever to a coppered hull bottom. In real life, it all turns flat "penny brown" in short order as soon as it's exposed to the elements.'

[Shipific]

 

 

15 hours ago, Bob Cleek said:

It's your model and you are certainly entitled to color it to your own taste, but if it's realism that you are about, there's no "copper sheen" or "shiny brass" look whatsoever to a coppered hull bottom. In real life, it all turns flat "penny brown" in short order as soon as it's exposed to the elements.'

 

The darker penny brown is good for weathered suggestion with some green here and there, esp around water line.

 

If it helps, here is the picture of Turenne  and Bayard ironclads (which Im building). Take a closer look at bows.

 

One shows what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows (they usually stuck out up a bit, rode low in stern). So you see a clear patina there on a ship thats made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station. 

 

And second image is the sheen I talked about. Look how reflective it in the sun. It is not small. Ship is also painted for China station but in Brest in 1880, shortly after launch. Fresh copper is shiny.

 

Oh, the bronze ram - you can see on first and last photo (another ironclad) how bronze plating on top all the way up in different color, contrasting well.  I reckon this is a good image for the contrast also.

 

 

 

Edited February 9 by Shipific

[wefalck]

This is an image of the replica-brig TRE KRONOR in Stockholm:

 

She has been prepared for the winter and has not moved for several months, as the picture was taken in early April 2015. The Baltic sea around Stockholm has a rather low salinity, about half the mean ocean salinity. This may be reflected by the absense of verdigris, but I don't have data for the sulfate content of Baltic seawater at the tip of my fingers.

 

One should start a research project and make some experiments by suspending some copper-sheets, produced the same way as in the old days, in different types of seawater under different climatic conditions in order to see what happens.

 

Edited February 9 by wefalck

[Shipific]

12 minutes ago, wefalck said:

This is an image of the replica-brig TRE KRONOR in Stockholm:

 

 

She has been prepared for the winter and has not moved for several months, as the picture was taken in early April 2015. The Baltic sea around Stockholm has a rather low salinity, about half the mean ocean salinity. This may be reflected by the absense of verdigris, but I don't have data for the sulfate content of Baltic seawater at the tip of my fingers.

 

One should start a research project and make some experiments by suspending some copper-sheets, produced the same way as in the old days, in different types of seawater under different climatic conditions in order to see what happens.

 

she seems very rusty below water, rusty orange color I mean. Based on whats seen. But remember - this is a ship sitting still, and the upper part does not get much water spray, something thats much more common on a moving ship. So if antyhing, the bit above water will look closer to the bit below on a real ship. Useful picture though!

[Bob Cleek]

17 hours ago, Shipific said:

he darker penny brown is good for weathered suggestion with some green here and there, esp around water line.

 

If it helps, here is the picture of Turenne  and Bayard ironclads (which Im building). Take a closer look at bows.

 

One shows what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows (they usually stuck out up a bit, rode low in stern). So you see a clear patina there on a ship thats made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station. 

 

And second image is the sheen I talked about. Look how reflective it in the sun. It is not small. Ship is also painted for China station but in Brest in 1880, shortly after launch. Fresh copper is shiny.

There's really no substitute for careful research, and I must admit with chagrin that there's no substitute for carefully double-checking somebody else's research before posting an answer to any question posed, especially when I'm not readily familiar with the vessel in question!  

 

The repeated reference to these two French naval vessels, Turenne and Bayard, as "ironclads" kept niggling at me because it appeared to me that they were built later than the so called "ironclad" period and were of a style similarly advanced beyond the "ironclad" period. So I finally spent a moment to see if I could find anything on line about either of them and, sure enough, there were Wikipedia pages for both vessels and their named "Bayard class." (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Turenne ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Bayard )

 

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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad

 

Unlike several of their French predecessors, the Bayard-class ships disposed with iron hulls and reverted to wooden hulls, which were sheathed in copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available. This may have been the result of British reports of hull corrosion with their iron-hulled vessels.

…

The ships were protected with wrought iron armor; their belt was 250 mm (9.8 in) thick amidships, where it protected the ships' propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. The belt extended for the entire length of the hull, but toward the bow it reduced in thickness to 180 mm (7.1 in), and at the stern, it was reduced to 150 mm (5.9 in). The belt extended from 0.91 m (3 ft) above the waterline to 1.99 m (6 ft 6 in) below.

 

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Note for openers that these wooden-hulled ships "...were sheathed with copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available." We should recognize from the outset then that the converse is also true: they weren't sheathed with copper when not on an extended voyage overseas where shipyard facilities were available. The fact that these French wooden ironclads weren't always copper-sheathed is confirmed by what we know of Atalante, discussed hereafter. Apparently, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. If one is modeling a particular such vessel at a particular time in its service life, at least a serious attempt to ascertain whether or not she was copper-sheathed at that time is required. Is there a log, diary, or maintenance report or receipt in a dusty file somewhere? If not, what's the "best estimate" one can make? If depicted when the vessel was on station in French Indochina, there's at least evidence to support your assuming she was not being coppered at that place in time in the absence of contrary evidence. (Just sayin'.  )

 

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These vessels carried a ten inch thick wrought iron armor belt which extended 3 feet above the waterline and 6.5 feet below the waterline. Considering the mechanical and galvanic issues attendant to sheathing wrought iron with copper plate, we can conclude that these vessels were only metal-sheathed to protect the wooden hull exposed below the waterline, i.e., from six and a half feet below the waterline on down. There isn't ever going to be any verdigris color at the waterline of any of these wooden vessels with nine and a half foot wide belts of wrought iron around their waterlines.

 

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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntz_metal:

 

(Muntz metal's) original application was as a replacement for copper sheathing on the bottom of boats, as it maintained the anti-fouling abilities of the pure copper at around two thirds of the price. It became the material of choice for this application and Muntz made his fortune. It was found that copper would gradually leach from the alloy in sea water, poisoning any organism that attempted to attach itself to a hull sheathed in the metal.

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Muntz metal, was patented in 1832 in England, and England and France were allies at the time of the Bayard class' service. Pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that the "copper sheathing" on these vessels was actually Muntz metal, rather than pure copper. This would result in a "yellow metal" that would be somewhat "yellower" than pure copper.

 

Below: Newly ("virgin") Muntz metal sheathed hull of Cutty Sark following her recent restoration and isolation from the elements in her new partially covered dry dock display building: 

 

By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19898346

 

While metal sheathing provides an effective mechanical barrier to marine borers, it is not as effective at preventing the growth of vegetative fouling which attaches itself to submerged surfaces. Additionally, with the advent of iron-hulled ships which could not be sheathed with copper-based metals due to difficulties with attaching such sheathing and, more significantly, the galvanic dissimilarities between iron and copper which caused severe electrolytic corrosion, a large number of anti-fouling paints and other coatings were developed in the late 19th century and were widely in use by the time of the Bayard class' service. The most successful, and therefore most widely used, of these anti-fouling paints had the now-familiar "bottom paint red" color owing to the copper they contained. Again pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that at least the nine and a half foot wide wrought iron armor plate armor belt at the waterline of the two Bayard class vessels was painted with anti-fouling paint of a color common at the time. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fouling_paint and https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling )

 

A review of related contemporary black and white photographs, colored paintings, colored contemporary postcards, and color photographs of contemporary museum models available online appears to confirm that French iron and wooden warships of the Bayard-class' time, at least to the bottoms of their iron armor belts, were apparently painted with anti-fouling paint and that if they were wooden, were, in some cases when at sea for long periods and away from dry-docking facilities, sheathed in Muntz metal (or possibly zinc plate) which may, or may not have been also painted with anti-fouling coating of a "bottom paint red" (or possibly a light grey color. A copper sulfate anti-fouling coating called "Italian Moravian" was also highly regarded at the time of the Bayard-class. It was reputed to be expensive and difficult to apply. I do not know its color. Here again, more research is required.  Some brief experimentation was also conducted with sheet zinc plating instead of copper or Muntz metal over iron, owing to zinc's greater compatibility with iron on the galvanic scale. Zinc sheet metal would appear as a flat silver-grey ("galvanized") color. Some colored contemporary postcards do clearly show a bottoms of such color. See: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling  

 

For visual data, search Google images: "French Bayard Class ironclads." Some excerpts below. Englarge the photographs to see greater detail:

 

Two photos below: Contemporary hand colored photographs of French ironclads:

 

 

 

Below: Watercolor painting of contemporary iron French naval vessels:

 

Below: From a presumably well-researched modern Eastern European modeling source:

 

 

Below:  Model of Alma-class Jeanne d'Arc on display at the Musee de la Marine in Paris. She was a contemporary of the Bayard-class ships and of identical French ironclad wooden construction as Turenne with a wrought iron armor belt at the waterline. Note armor belt above and below white painted waterline which from other contemporary pictorial documentation appears to be a common feature of French naval livery at that time. Note "Muntz metal" brass-colored metal sheathing below the armor plate and similar "bronze" colored ram edge at the bow. (These bronze rams were not merely a metal covering, but actually an integral structural member of the hull.) Bright sheathing color results from model's "new as built" depiction style. (Alternately identified by other sources as sistership Alma-class ironclad Armide.) (Blue color of possibly dark grey topsides is apparently a photographic lighting artifact.)

 

 

 

Below: Black and white contemporary photograph of similar French ironclad naval vessel showing slightly visible top line of armor belt.

 

 

Below: It appears the white waterline accent line  (AKA: "boot stripe") appears again suggesting it was a regulation livery detail.

 

 

Below: Additional French ironclads of the Bayard-class era from a modern Eastern European modeling source indicating standard French navy livery:

 

 

 

Below: 1860's Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante, sister to Jeanne d'Arc, a contemporary "as built" model of which is pictured above.  This class' service period overlapped the wooden Bayard-class', particularly given that the latter was an intentional nearly identical "throwback" to the Alma-class' wooden ironclad construction details.

 

Atalante is here photographed in the Fitzroy Dock, Sidney Harbor in 1873. She spent a large portion of her service life on the French Indo-China Station. She bombarded Vietnamese forts during the Battle of Thuan in 1884 and participated in the Sino-French Indo-China War of 1884–1885. She was reduced to reserve in Saigon, French Indochina, in 1885 and sank there two years later after having been condemned. 

 

Note top of her armor belt at the level of the heads of the workmen standing on the staging platform with approximately the two top feet of the armor belt painted black as are the topsides (i.e., down to the workers' waists) with anti-fouling bottom paint being applied below that line, resulting in bottom paint beginning approximately a foot or two above the waterline and continuing down to cover the the lower part of the armor belt and the rest of the underwater hull below the staging platform. (Enlarge photo for greater detail.) 

 

 

Below: Contemporary colored drawing of Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante from the glass plate negative above, but depicting the appearance of the hull after the bottom painting was done and she was ready for launching! (Quite a lot to discover from these two views on account of that difference!) Note the "bottom paint red" anti-fouling paint being applied from approximately a couple of feet below the top of the armor belt on downwards to cover the submerged part of the armor belt and on down to include the wooden bottom. Note also the white "bootstripe" accent line at the top of the armor belt and the (subtle) lining above and below the armor belt depicting the wooden planking of the topsides and unsheathed bottom of the wooden hull, contrasted with the smooth wrought plates of the armor belt. As this picture confirms, it appears that the not-inconsiderable expense of metal sheathing of her wooden bottom was deemed unnecessary as she had adequate dry-docking facilities available in her station area. 

 

 

 

 

I didn't reach the same conclusion as you when examining the photos you posted. You'll find a clearer version of your photo of Turenne at her Wikipedia entry: See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard-class_ironclad#/media/File:French_ironclad_Turenne_NH_66099.jpg  This photo will enlarge a lot without losing definition. ("Left mouse click once." Love these old glass plate negatives!) For some reason, the French Navy of the period seems to have frequently photographed their ships while they were getting painted. I have no idea why, but it's uncanny when you look at so many of them that have painting details at work. If you enlarge this photo from the Wiki page, and examine the stern quarter, you'll see painters on staging painting the topsides white. If you then examine  the bow area, you'll see that they've just painted the bow area, (including the anchors and chain rodes!) and what you apparently took to be "...what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows..." and "...a clear patina there on a ship that's made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station." Look again. What you're seeing there is the aftermath of a rather sloppy recent paint job. If you had spent time around shipyards, you'd probably have recognized it for what it was as soon as you saw it. Sailors are notoriously sloppy painters. They're painting to protect the metal first and foremost. They really don't care a whole lot what the job looks like from 100 yards, which is as much as most people will ever see. 

 

As for the second picture, we know that's not "shiny copper" because that's where the wrought iron armor belt is and there's no way they're going to copper-sheath wrought iron armor plate. It certainly was tried unsuccessfully at the time iron ships first came into use, trying to separate the dissimilar metals with felt or wooden furring strips, but that was long before the time of the vessel pictured. I believe what we see in that photo is simply an over-exposure "flash" that could sometimes occur with reflected light off the water and onto the white surfaces given the limitations of the photographic technology of those times. 

 

 

By Unknown, Farenholt collection - history.navy.mil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142143958

 

I don't think today's younger modelers who began building ship models in the "Internet Age" can begin to appreciate the value of digital research to the hobby. Before the internet, I doubt there was anything more than possibly a book or three, long out of print and near impossible to obtain, written in French, that would have any information whatsoever about these ships. Obtaining the information posted here would have likely required a trip to France and days of searching museum archives, if they'd allow you to do so and, in the days before digital photography, copying a photograph would be a major undertaking and copying a construction drawing would require days of tedious tracing at a drafting table by a skilled draftsman, again if they'd allow you to touch the original. Now, modeling research is often only "a few clicks away!" On the other hand, such a resource has made it all the more important to conduct meticulous research because errors nobody would ever notice before are so much more easily noticed with the so much more accurate information available today. 

 

Edited February 10 by Bob Cleek

[Shipific]

Bob, I really appreciate how much you put into replying to me, which is always not easy to go through things step by step and post it all and document. All the details you gone into, thats like talking to a very likeminded person, thank you!

 

I have gone through all these images in the past you posted, having read quite a bit about the era. I can draw wrong conclusions, like some of the things you said were very eye opening - like the white paint splotches on the hull of Turenne. I think you are spot on. Same as everyone thought for longest time that Royal Navy warships of WW2 era had red hull bottoms, and it took someone to go into archives and discover they were slate grey on battleships... Anyway...

 

The big question for me - did they NOT add any kind of copper sheathing on top of wrought iron plate because of known issues British had with galvanic reaction.... OR... knowing this, they added a wooden plank on top of the wrought iron plate and then copper on top? I thought and suspected it was wooden plank on top of iron plate. That will nullify the galvanic reaction. Possible?  You seem to think based on Armide that there was armor plate above and below water and a copper below armor belt, unless it was wood. So I am confident you are wrong there when it comes to Turenne!

Armide as a reference is so so, it is an older ship, and as you well aware of this is a yard or builders model. It displays materials without paint. 

 

Turenne closer comparisons are:

 

1) Admiral Duperee, which is the big version of Turenne (and earlier):

 

Builders model of her. Belt on display in full glory.... painted wood under, no copper as you say - she was close to dry docks.. 

 

2) Vauban was another contemporary (as Turenne but two masts instead of 3)- its hull I posted above in previous post, you can see copper sheathing plates clearly. (or Munz metal)...

 

3) ...and perhaps Trident / Colbert which was big and followed on, as last wooden hulled ironclad. Colbert class is a true contemporary of Turenne, and shares construction idea with her, she was just huge, the last of her kind.  And luckly, here is a builders model of the ship done in two ways that shows port and starboard sides differently, one as outside and one / whats under. And you finally see what Im on about / wood over iron plate!

 

Port side, the wood planks goes OVER iron plates in center section, but you see the belt as well, above and below water.

The metal line just above waterline is the one you see in all french ships of the era (its reflection you mistake for white line on Alma class in your post above. They did not paint it then, but much later they added it on steel hulled ships, like the pre/dreadnoughts you show).

 

 

 

And some closeups - look at the waterline again..

:

rudder area and the stern. Sometimes it is uncanny, may be this is how she was actually painted, and not a full builders model. Masts are wooden, check, as they didnt paint them,. They painted metal ones. Hull is black, check. Boats are black outside, wood inside. The railings and funnel confuse me, as they are brass (may be? but should be black) and funnel is not ochre, red, or grey.. just metal... same with davits, they must be painted. So this is builders model.

 

But - this is the same ship as before, Trident. It exhibits all the things you see on a Builders model of Armide you refer to earlier, but with appearance of the ship before paint fully laid down perhaps and with copper sheathing added, as was normal for the time. French were donig their own thing, they were comfortable with more wood in their ships and used their knowledge on ironclads for a while still, even in 1880s.

 

Trident has the armor belt under neath, it has a layer of wood and on top of it all  - plates of copper, munz metal, or anything else its made of, but looks like copper. Is it painted copper or just bare? That we dont know. Looks like all those photos of Turenne if you imagine this is Turenne. Are you not convinced?

 

Now, it does not fully resolved my original question how you actually paint it on a 1:700 model. Does not tell me how to paint the bit above and below water. Does not exactly say how it weathers. But I wanted to bring it back on track with example before we go into the weeds of other eras of french ships and extrapolate too much.

 

So lets assume now we have established the construction method, assume THIS is the one. You posted picture of some ironclads like Kobatsu which is a very early ironclad, built in France, for USA confederates but then sold to Japan (hence, Kobatsu). Not a good contemporary, much earlier and built for someone else.

 

 

The reference you make to the model of Armide in Paris Museum, calling out where white line was, etc - I have very different conclusion. I dont think you can make a call on what exactly youre seeing in terms of colors. This is a Builders model. It displays materials used. The paint went on after. The white line demarcates the waterline may be that is all it does. Colors on these models often faded also over time, Gloire Ironclad (the first) is  also often shown fully painted below waterline, I dont know if reliable. May be then they didnt sheath over belt, just below like you said, but she is much much older also.

 

As for other examples you show like Redoutable, she was all iron hulled. And we have images of her models in museums (and HER true contemporaries, like Courbet and Devastation). This is how they looked in color:

 

Very different, green or red with white. 

French later went to next level - RED 2 metres (may be it was 3? or 1? someone remembers) and below that green paint. Red was on the busy wave area, green below. Why, Im sure there is a reason. Seems to match in color those copper bottoms though as top was dark brown and bottom went green. I dont know, I think this is less relevant for this particular project.

 

As for Eastern European source - these are from Modelist Konstruktor, Russian language site. Many were done in late 80s (not all ofc, some in early 90s, they later followed them up in digital form, reprinting and rescanning old pics), and access back then they had to French Archives is questionable at best. They improvised, imagined, drew own conclusions. Ive seen their work pop up on world war two era ships, very often wrong, for example the red hulls on british capital ships, or just randmobly asuming all were red or green below water. It is not a top source for me, just to be used in conjuction with more modern media.

 

For Turenne actually I found some Russian sourced stuff, which was mega valuable to explain how the rest of the ship looked.

Russians just paint Bayard red below water, no question asked. 

Source for that? Chinese. Because Turenne was in Sino/French wars and Chinese seemed to care a lot more about an obscure french 2nd class ironclad frigate than we do, due to history of it being there (Bayard in particular), as thats why at least there are drawings online.

 

Im sure there is in archives also (I have those but only lower hull in fact, used them to build lower hull).

I also have pics of Bayard on blocks being built. Space for iron belt left, and metal bit goes on top is not there (im sure it has a name):

 

 

Contemporary Bayard images are like this>

 

Perhaps it is in the end, darker brownish hue of copper. 

 

Im building the ship BEFORE she went to Asia. So black hull. Im also building Turenne, the wide more beautiful funnel. 

 

She is for now like this, waits for me to decide how to proceed with painting lower hull further. Thinking to go add more brown above and below waterline to make the demarcation line stand out a bit, using tape to paint it sharply.

 

 

There was variety to how they were all painted below water. This image from the times, demonstrates that even the artist saw that. Some of the antifouling area is orange/brown/brick color, and others are more on the yellowish side. Colbert above discussed is there, and so are some other ships we talked about. There is ample variety.

 

Edited February 10 by Shipific

[wefalck]

Roger, not sure that your conclusions are all correct.

 

There was intermediate period in iron- and armoured-ship development, when they reverted back to composite construction. There were two reasons: one was that in experiments (these are e.g. documented for France  in the Aide mémoire de l’artillerie naval 1873ff) it was found that when armour plates were attached directly to the ships structures, the impact of projectiles weakend these structures; a wooden backing provided a sort of resilient buffer that distributed the stresses. On the other hand, iron hulls fouled fast and it wasn't until 1860 that the Bremen captain Rathjen developed the classical red-oxide coloured anti-fouling paint that contained arsenic and mercury compounds. In the late 1860s already other colours became available. Nevertheless many navies around the world relied on copper- or Munth-metal-sheathing well into the 1890s. For reasons of galvanic corrosion, these could not be attached directly to iron plating, so that iron hulls were first sheathed in wood, onto which the copper or Muntz-metal was applied.

 

I am not aware that zinc sheathing was used on iron ships. I think it would have been eaten away very quickly by galvanic corrosion, if there were any metal parts on the ship exposed to the water. After all, this is way today we put sacrifical zinc anodes onto our ships.

 

The French sources are quite good and one should e.g. scan the Atlas du Genie Maritime etc. for cross-section of hulls of ships of this time  in order to see how they were constructed.

 

A wooden ship stationed in China almost certainly would have to be metal-sheathed, as much of the Chinese waters are sub-tropical.

 

Note: I wrote this while Shipific posted his response.

 

You may also want to have look at my images of builders' models of ships of that period in the museum in Paris: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/paris/frenchironclads.html

 

Edited February 10 by wefalck

[Shipific]

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

Roger, not sure that your conclusions are all correct.

..... . For reasons of galvanic corrosion, these could not be attached directly to iron plating, so that iron hulls were first sheathed in wood, onto which the copper or Muntz-metal was applied. .....

 

Note: I wrote this while Shipific posted his response.

 

Yes, see the builders model of Trident above I posted exactly demonstrating wood on metal construction, like an onion with its layers. I dont think we need to debate with regards to Turenne specifically more. She had copper sheathing of some kind on top of her iron belt, and it is about determining how to paint it correctly. 

 

Of course, then comes the point of what other evidence can be used to determine that, which is difficult of course!

 

EDIT: This is Turenne from Atlas du Genie Maritime , and you can see a layer of wood on top of iron belt armor. Pretty self evident then, thats what was plated with copper later.

Edited February 10 by Shipific

[Bob Cleek]

16 hours ago, Shipific said:

I don't think we need to debate with regards to Turenne specifically more. She had copper sheathing of some kind on top of her iron belt, and it is about determining how to paint it correctly. 

Say no more! Yes, that cross-section confirms the way they addressed it. My doubts that they would have sheathed the armor belt in wood and then run the coppering over it was based on deductions I made after reading https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling   which seemed to indicate that applying a wooden sheathing over iron hulls which were thereafter coppered was found to be unsatisfactory and that fact spurred the development of anti-fouling paint. The timeline for those developments predated the construction of Turenne by a considerable bit and I presumed that nobody was still sheathing metal with wood to permit coppering metal hulls after effective anti-fouling paint came into widespread general use. 

 

I nevertheless found the article on anti-fouling technology in the U.S. Naval Institute's journal, Proceedings very comprehensive and quite interesting.

 

I'm thinking that the white "boot stripe" accent line had to be painted. I can't imagine they'd leave the iron bare. It would rust, or if of wrought iron, at least turn black with oxidation. 

 

17 hours ago, wefalck said:

I am not aware that zinc sheathing was used on iron ships. I think it would have been eaten away very quickly by galvanic corrosion, if there were any metal parts on the ship exposed to the water. After all, this is way today we put sacrificial zinc anodes onto our ships.

I quite agree. I read that zinc was tried in an attempt to find a sheathing metal that was closer to iron on the galvanic scale but wasn't much good and quickly abandoned.

 

17 hours ago, wefalck said:

A wooden ship stationed in China almost certainly would have to be metal-sheathed, as much of the Chinese waters are sub-tropical.

Absolutely. I'd expect the same, although I came across the photo and colored etching I posted above of Atalante in drydock, which was similarly stationed in French Indochina and it sure looks like she was being painted and the colored etching portrays her after the job was finished, rather than while it was in progress in the photograph, and it appears as if she was indeed painted. For Shipific's purposes, though, he can portray it either way and from a scale viewing difference in the scale it appears he's working with, it would be next to impossible to discern whether she was coppered or painted by looking at her. Interestingly, for anybody in this day and age, I expect I've seen more coppered bottoms hauled out "up close and personal" than most, having spent a number of years about four decades back selling classic yachts in a specialty yacht brokerage, and at that they probably didn't total more than about a dozen, but the funny thing is that all the small craft with coppered hulls were also painted with anti-fouling paint. This was commonly done because although the copper provided a mechanical barrier against marine borers, it really doesn't do an awful lot to prevent vegetative fouling. I would expect, however that this isn't as much of a problem in colder climes.

 

Aside from large sailing ships, the only coppered hull I knew that wasn't painted with anti-fouling paint was my late friend Hal Sommer"s pilot schooner, Wander Bird (nee: Elbe 5) (Photos below.) Hal restored her from her sorry existence as a rig-less houseboat, rebuilding her entirely and coppered her bottom in the proper traditional fashion with plates hung over Irish felt. Below is a picture of Hal (in the middle) and "the Bird's" relatively new coppering. 

 

 

Here, Wander Bird is loaded into her transport barge for her trip home to Germany from San Francisco. Her bottom was pressure washed before loading and they blasted the bottom almost back to bare copper, so she showed a greenish tinge below the waterline when she'd been out of the water for a little bit.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 11 by Bob Cleek

[Shipific]

So, looks like one has to decide on which way to go here:

 

1) Did they paint over copper on Turenne much like it was done on the Alma ironclad?

2) Was Turenne just pure copper unpainted?

 

If she was 1) then it is just brownish red hue above and faded below.

If she was 2) then probably green above water and duller green below, with free interpretation of brown mixed in.

 

Trouble is, deciding if she was painted or not is the trick. I’d have thought 2) option more desirable to look at and more likely because I see in photographs such distinct colour differences between the bronze bow -ram section that sticks out next to the copper plating. So I’m thinking she was greenish.

 

And contemporary paintings are showing here with red boot topping. And I think it is possible that contemporary paintings are wrong or display her at “clean” phase. But I really dunno.

 

Most likely to be safe I will end up painting her some dull copper brown colour above water and more greyish brown below to show some fading-fowling. But part of me so wants to green colour haha.

Edited February 12 by Shipific

[GrandpaPhil]

Solferino of 1860 had a band of red above the copper, but below the black of the rest of the ship.

 

I believe that the copper was not painted.

[wefalck]

The picture below is from the large-scale model of her in the Musée de la Marine in Paris, but in the old set-up, she is not currently on display. The model seems to indicate that the sheathing was Muntz-metal not copper.

 

The paint-scheme is not naturalistic, as the armour-belt is modelled in real steel and left unpainted.

[TonyV]

On 2/6/2024 at 8:40 PM, Bob Cleek said:

 

If you are asking what a ship with a copper-sheathed hull looks like, the answer has to be, "It depends." In the water? Out of the water? Fouled or clean? These pictures and explanations below should help. When building a model, one has to consider what is known as the "scale viewing distance." There are details one knows are present but including them may run the risk of adding over-scale details. Coppered bottoms frequently occasion this flaw and, regrettably, it seems to be exacerbated by some model kit manufacturers who feel compelled to advertise that their kits contain "real detailed copper plates" that they expect the builder to tediously apply one at a time. The "scale viewing distance" is simply "what you would see if you were viewing the real ship from the same real distance as you are looking at the model in scale distance. For example, if you are looking at a 1:48 scale (1/4"=1") model from three feet away, you should only see the details you would be able to see on the real ship if you were standing 144 feet away from it. If you are not so completely familiar with what ships look like from a distance, photographs are an excellent way to judge what a scale viewing distance actually looks like. The same phenomenon applies to the colors one sees and these are affected as well by the ambient lighting. At a distance, colors will be flat and somewhat darker. A model with intense glossy paint and over-scale detail will appear like a toy, and defeat the "compelling impression of reality in miniature" that a good model is about. (Unless, of course, it's a toy boat one intends to produce.) From most scale viewing distances, a model should have no glossy finishes and no shiny metal parts. (Unless, of course, one is building a particular style of "builder's model" that at one time was fashionable. These would often be unpainted, relying on the different appearances of contrasting wood species and bright brass metal fittings.) Certainly, at 1:96 scale (1/8"=1'), the scale of many kit sailing models these days, from a normal three-foot model viewing distance, a "scale viewing distance of 288 feet, almost the length of a football field, copper-plating details such as tacks, and even plate overlaps, are not going to be visible. Only subtle variations in color will be perceptible. When seeking to realistically portray a copper-sheathed hull, trust the camera's eye rather than your mind's eye and avoid "overstating the obvious." Our "mind's eye" provides the details in such instances, causing a viewer to "see" things that aren't there, or merely very subtly suggested. As counterintuitive as it may be, in this fashion, it's what's not there that makes a model look "real." 

 

 

 

 

Above are photos of the usual appearance of a copper sheathed hull. If anything, the oxidized copper above the waterline in the top picture is a bit too "reddish" and would be a bit "browner." I can't say whether this is simply an artifact of the computer screen I'm looking at, or a digital camera color intensity setting, or perhaps the variables of the exact copper used. The more common color in this respect is the color of a used copper coin, such as a US penny. The turquoise green color at the waterline in the photos is often referred to as "verdigris."  Best described, these two colors are called "verdigris" and "copper penny." They can be somewhat mottled and vary in shade or intensity a bit in real life.

 

 

The verdigris green color, which is copper sulfate, occurs when copper oxidizes in the presence of a sufficient amount sulfur in the surrounding environment. Copper oxidizes rather quickly upon exposure to the air. Where there is a high level of sulfur in the air, such as in the days when sulphureous coal was burned, copper exposed to the air will quickly produce verdigris colored copper sulfate on its surface, such as is seen on bronze statues, copper roofing materials, and, famously, the Statue of Liberty. Absent a sufficient level of sulfur, the copper will form a "copper penny brown" colored oxide coating that serves as a shield that prevents further oxidation and the creation of verdigris green copper sulfate. There are sufficient sulfates in seawater to support the formation of verdigris green copper sulfate where sufficient oxygen is also present. When the friction of water movement wears away the brown copper oxide, notably at the "splash zone" above the waterline where there is also sufficient oxygen, copper bottom sheathing will develop green copper sulfate on its surface but will not tend to do so where the seawater is not as regularly in contact with the copper sheathing well above the waterline. (This is my own causation theory. It's at least accurate as to what happens, but perhaps not exactly correct as to why it happens. If one of the resident metallurgists on this forum has a better explanation, I welcome their correction! ) In any event, the color of a copper sheathed hull bottom is "copper penny brown" with a "verdigris" band around the waterline as pictured in the first two photos above (or more accurately, perhaps, between the top of the copper sheathing and the waterline.)

 

That said, if a coppered bottom is hauled out for cleaning, and particularly if it is well scrubbed upon hauling, a verdigris-colored patina will very quickly develop. Below is a coppered hull that has been apparently dry-docked and her copper has quickly produced a copper sulfate verdigris colored patina, in this case, for whatever reason, a somewhat less intense and more pale shade. This is a very clean bottom which has been brushed, power washed, or the like, removing some of the usual "penny brown" copper oxidation along with the usual fouling growth, and washed down with salt seawater. it is customary to scrub a bottom down immediately upon it's leaving the water (or the water leaving the dock, as the case may be) while the marine growth on the bottom is more easily removed. Once a fouled bottom dries, scraping clean it becomes a much more difficult job. For this reason, if a model of a ship having a coppered bottom is depicted out of the water, coloring it as is seen in the picture below would be correct. 

 

 

 

Below the waterline, before a hull is scrubbed clean of fouling growth, it will appear in a variety of ways, depending upon the length of time the hull has been submerged, the growing environment of the area where the hull was located, and the types of flora and fauna that are prevalent in the area. Basically, the color of marine fouling is a mottled, dirty dark green and/or dark brown.

 

When a hull is first hauled or dry-docked after having been in the water for any significant length of time, it can appear as the hull pictured below "in the slings" and just hauling out.  Obviously, this is something of an extreme example, but not unheard of in areas where the environment favors the growth of particular flora and fauna, particularly in the warm tropics.  A hull that has been regularly sailing will generally accumulate less fouling material than one that sits still for periods of time. 

 

 

 

Below is the appearance of a fouled hull which appears somewhat dry.

 

 

 

Below is a barge hull with significant barnacle fouling.

 

 

Photo below of modern sailboat hull with average fouling. 

 

 

In my experience, portraying a coppered bottom on a model is an opportunity for restrained creative "weathering" and airbrush work.

 

 

 

 

[TonyV]

I found a great way to weather copper plates on my Flying Fish clipper. Mix one part Miracle Grow plant food to three parts water. Mix until the crystals are dissolved and either brush it on or use Q-tips and wipe it on the sections you want weathered. It only takes a few minutes to start the color change. The longer you leave the solution on the greener it will get. I weathered the top two courses really Statue of Liberty green and kept it lighter down the sides. It looks great. 

[rwiederrich]

On 6/7/2024 at 3:32 PM, TonyV said:

I found a great way to weather copper plates on my Flying Fish clipper. Mix one part Miracle Grow plant food to three parts water. Mix until the crystals are dissolved and either brush it on or use Q-tips and wipe it on the sections you want weathered. It only takes a few minutes to start the color change. The longer you leave the solution on the greener it will get. I weathered the top two courses really Statue of Liberty green and kept it lighter down the sides. It looks great. 

You know what they say, *Without pictures, it didn't happen*.....

 

Rob