Attaching boarding nets - moved by moderator

[kennethkbradford]

I am building a scratch model of the USS Essex.  I have come to the point where I want to attache the boarding nets to the boarding net brackets but I cannot figure out how the bottow rope is attached.  Any ideas?

[uss frolick]

There is an 1802 watercolour of the flush-decked Ship Jason of Boston by Antoine Roux showing her with her boarding nettings rigged. They appear to be secured somehow to the outer, lower level of the hammock cranes. They do not appear to extend down far enough to cover over the gun ports.

 

Midshipman James Fenimore Cooper described the boarding nettings fitted to the Constellation in 1813:

 

"The boarding nettings were made of  twenty-one thread ratlin stuff, that had been boiled in half made pitch, which rendered it so hard as almost to defy the knife. To give greater security, nail rods and small chains were secured to the netting, in lines about three feet apart. Instead of tricing to the rigging,  this netting was spread outboard, towards the yard arms, rising about twenty five feet above the deck. To the outer rope, or ridge line of the netting, were secured pieces of kentledge, with the idea that by cutting the tricing lines when the enemy should get along side, his boats and men might be caught beneath, by the fall of the weights."

 

See, "Boarders Away with Steel, Volume 1, Edged Weapons and Pole Arms", by William Gilkerson, Andrew Mobray Publishing, page 53.

[uss frolick]

I would imagine that there were different ways to rig the netting, depending upon the type of expected attack: whether by an enemy frigate of by a flotilla of armed enemy boats.