Mary Rose by djford - Caldercraft - 1:80

[djford]

Hello! And welcome to my third build log. Today I'll be sharing some of my initial progress on the Mary Rose kit by Caldercraft.

 

Introduction

I lived in Portsmouth for a few years, and was very keen to build one of the historic dockyard ships - HMS Victory of course being the most famous. Caldercraft also produce a kit for the Victory, but it is prohibitively expensive for a relatively novice builder. The Mary Rose was the next obvious choice.

 

Mostly made famous for her tragic sinking in the Solent in 1545, the Mary Rose saw active service for over 30 years of Henry VIII's reign. In the early 1970s, she was rediscovered, and many will remember the live broadcast of her being brought back to the surface in 1982; you can watch this on YouTube here, alongside a very young King Charles.

I visited the Mary Rose museum as a child, during which time the remains of the hull were being sprayed with preservative chemicals. I've since visited now that she's dry and on proper display, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it if you're ever down in the city. I can recommend some good bars too.

 

Caldercraft's model was designed in conjunction with the Mary Rose trust. This, you would think, guarantees historical accuracy. You would think. Here's a stock image of the completed kit:

 

If you're reading this, you might already be aware of the problem, but for the uninitiated here is the only contemporary picture of the Mary Rose, from the Anthony Roll, an inventory of the Tudor fleet:

 

Compare the two photos and the issues will be very clear; Caldercraft's kit is based on a 17th century galleon, and the Mary Rose was a carrack, with high castles fore and aft. Caldercraft also has far less cannon than the Anthony Roll depicts, and as we know, the more cannons the better. Incidentally, this was one of the factors that lead to the original ship's sinking, as her open gunports sank beneath the water of the Solent. I digress.

 

I would really rather make a kit that resembles the original ship, and though there is very little of her remaining above the gunwales, the historical evidence for the high castles appears to be very convincing. As such, my intention is to build the kit - but to add a number of decks to each castle and make a few other amendments to bring the finished product more in line with the historic original.

 

References

Other than the above image, there are a number of references I'll be using for this build alongside the instructions for the base kit.

 

If you're a regular broswer of ModelShipWorld, you may have come across @Baker's fantastic (ongoing at time of writing) scratch build of the Mary Rose, which was a huge inspiration behind my thinking about editing the kit. I'm certainly not ready to scratch build my own version, but his build is a masterclass in both building and research. I'll certainly be referring to parts of this throughout.

 

I also had a brief chat with @Louie da fly, who was extremely helpful with both advice and some recommendations. Thanks Steven! I'm still not sure how to make those deadeyes

 

There are two key books I'll be using: Douglas McElvogue's Anatomy of the Ship: Tudor Warship Mary Rose, and Peter Marsden's 1545: Who Sank the Mary Rose? 

 

McElvogue's book is a fabulous resource, full of his own fully scaled drawings of his interpretation of the ship. It's likely a lot of it is made up, but it does follow the majority of the archaological evidence, and I'll be using his measurements throughout. After all, we'll never know exactly what she looked like - this is my interpretation.

 

Marsden's previous book Mary Rose, Your Noblest Shippe was my original port of call, but unfortunately it appears to be nearly unobtainable in the UK. I emailed the author, and he recommended 1545 instead, as this is a more recent version of his research - one which corroborates the extra decks in both fore and sterncastle. As a note, Peter Marsden is a well-established maritime archaeologist, and alongside his work on the Mary Rose he's also partly responsible for the UK's protection of wrecks act. Fascinating!

 

On to the build.

 

First Steps

Caldercraft's kit packaging is first class. The instructions are pretty detailed, and printed on massive sheets of paper in full scale - really useful.

 

Here's my first look at my expensive purchase:

 

A look inside:

 

And beneath the instructions:

That's a lot of dowel!

 

You'll have all seen the basics of kit building before, so I won't go into much detail, but here's a nice little indication I'm on the right path with my alteration ideas:

This illustration is from McElvogue's book, and is in 1:96 scale. The 1:80 transom piece is obviously missized, but the general shape matches up - all I'll need to do is add a few decks. Simple.

 

The bulkheads from Caldercraft's kit match up pretty well to those in both McElvogue and Marsden's books. I expected this - the hull is the best preserved part of the ship, after all, and it'll remain mostly the same in my build. Here it is dry-fit.

I've only worked with laser-cut bulkheads before, and Caldercraft's are CNC'd 5mm ply. It cuts nicely with just a Stanley blade, but the sawdust was something else. Probably not one to do on the kitchen table again.

 

Glueing the keel on:

 

And the lower main gun deck in place, with false backs for the main guns:

N.b. I may move these false blocks around later, or just add some more blanks for the missing cannon. I figured I'd slot them in place for now as they provide some structure to the next deck. I've emailed Caldercraft's parent company Jokita and am in discussion with them about getting some extra cannons shipped over - if that falls through I'm going to have to learn some new skills!

 

Here are the two top decks provided with the kit dry fit on the bulkheads. I'll be using the sterncastle piece, but the forecastle is completely the wrong shape.

 

And here's the upper deck glued in place:

You can see that this has a big crack in it in the photo. To get it into place below the forecastle supports you have to bend this piece nearly in half - I don't think it would have ever survived the process even if I were more careful. It's going to be planked over anyway, so no huge issue, but a weird design choice. 

 

Laying in some first deck planks:

McElvogue's book has these all at the same length on this deck, which works out to 45mm in 1:80 scale. The wood is also excellent, with a lovely grain that I think will come up nicely.

 

I did the classic trick of edging each plank with a soft pencil to simulate caulking.

 

And here's the sterncastle planked:

I've only planked up to this point as the front of the sterncastle is going to divide the deck at this point. I also realised midway through that with my additional decks above, this is going to be near-invisible, but I carried on for completion's sake. There will be an open doorway and a number of gunports allowing a view inside, so I don't think it's wasted time.

 

And on the subject of extra decks, here they are:

Excuse the various paraphernalia I've used to space these out!

 

Except for the first sterncastle deck, which is Caldercraft's original, these are all 0.8mm ply cut to the shapes laid out in McElvogue's book. Both McElvogue and Marsden agree that there were likely three decks on both castles, with another small half deck atop the forecastle, just behind the foremast. The forecastle here will be slightly further forward - I need to cut some slots in so that it can fit within the bulkheads.

 

I'm glad I took the time to cut these to shape now - I wasn't entirely confident in my plans, but seeing this rough mockup has filled me with a possibly unearned feeling that this is actually achievable with my skills.

 

Obviously there's a long way to go, but I can actually visualise this looking 'correct' - and that's a start.

 

Thanks for checking this out, and please do follow along! Any input is more than welcome.

 

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 06:36 PM by djford
Accidental extra photo!

[Louie da fly]

Off to a good beginning! One thing I'd recommend is that you see if you can find out how many gunports survive on the wreck and if you can extrapolate from there how many she actually would have had. I think it's pretty well accepted that Anthony Anthony exaggerated the number of guns in his picture. More guns is not necessarily better, if you want to duplicate as well as possible the way she was. But also check the Anthony Roll for the number of guns the text below the picture says Mary Rose has.

 

Yes, McElvogue did definitely make some things up - for example, there was no boat found with the wreck, but he has drawn one. Just be aware of that and use your best judgment as to whether to believe him, and check his book for actual evidence he's based his stuff on. I'm talking from experience - I went with some of his ideas and found to  my regret they were speculation rather than evidence-based.

 

And if you don't already have it, I'd recommend R.C. Anderson's The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast for when you get to the rigging. Yes, it relates to ships from a later date - his book starts at 1600 - but it's possible to extrapolate backwards and get a fair idea of what would have been already in use in 1545. And also refer to the two contemporary pictures that show Henry VIII's ships - the Anthony Roll and the painting  The Embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover for the Field of the Cloth of Gold - for more details of rigging. For example, the latter one (despite its faults, and it does have them) shows sailors working on the yards without footropes - they were a later invention. And also other contemporary images from around the same time. See in particular my collection of 'Great Carracks' at https://au.pinterest.com/lowe1847/great-carracksnaos/

 

Interesting that Marsden is also thinking in terms of three decks for forecastle and aftercastle. McElvogue seems to think that's maybe taking it a bit far, but I think it's best to just use your judgment (and cardboard mock-ups) to see what you think. It's all speculation past a certain point, and your guess may be as good as anybody else's.

 

Looking good, mate.

 

Steven 

[Stevinne]

There is a very nice Mary Rose build log on another site by a member named Graham who also bashed the kit to bring it more into line with the Anthony Roll. He is nearly complete with his and it is looking very nice. 

[Baker]

Great start, and good luck with Mary 👍

 

I also have the book "Anatomy of the Ship: Tudor Warship Mary Rose" a very interesting book.
But, I sometimes wonder how they get the detailed drawings of a parts of the ship of which nothing remains.

Be careful with the information from this book.

3 decks in the castles is quite high. I am curious what the result will be.

 

 

 

[djford]

On 10/29/2024 at 1:26 AM, Louie da fly said:

Off to a good beginning! One thing I'd recommend is that you see if you can find out how many gunports survive on the wreck and if you can extrapolate from there how many she actually would have had. I think it's pretty well accepted that Anthony Anthony exaggerated the number of guns in his picture. More guns is not necessarily better, if you want to duplicate as well as possible the way she was. But also check the Anthony Roll for the number of guns the text below the picture says Mary Rose has.

 

Yes, I'd noticed the extra gun deck and wasn't going to include that. Certainly the Caldercraft model doesn't include any rear-facing cannon on the transom or in the fore or sterncastle decks - those I'll be adding in for sure. I think at this scale any of the smaller anti-personnel guns are too small to include, but I've got my eye on a few additions - stay tuned!

 

I've picked up a copy of The Rigging of Ships, thank you for the suggestion.

 

On 10/29/2024 at 8:23 AM, Baker said:

Great start, and good luck with Mary 👍

 

I also have the book "Anatomy of the Ship: Tudor Warship Mary Rose" a very interesting book.
But, I sometimes wonder how they get the detailed drawings of a parts of the ship of which nothing remains.

Be careful with the information from this book.

3 decks in the castles is quite high. I am curious what the result will be.

 

Thank you very much! Yes, I'd agree - McElvogue is very free with his interpretation. Ultimately my model will have to be my own interpretation as well.

 

To both of you - yes, I'm interested to see how three castles looks when fully mocked up. Note that the forecastle will also have a small 'half deck' just behind the foremast - I'm certain that it will seem very top-heavy, but it would also appear that that's how the carracks were designed. I'll update with progress soon!

 

Thanks for the kind words.

[Louie da fly]

3 hours ago, djford said:

yes, I'm interested to see how three castles looks when fully mocked up.

Me too. Looking forward to that stage of the build. Oh, and the rest of the build!

 

Steven