Blackened Yards?

[Tyrnac]

Hello all,

 

As I reach the time to shape the masts and yards on my first vessel, I come to a question of blackening.  I'm no nautical authority, but I recall reading about "properly blackened yards" frequently in Patrick O'Brian.  Can anyone give me any background on this?  Were most yards blackened?  My vessel is a British man of war.  

 

Thanks,

Tony

Edited March 4, 2014 by Tyrnac

[Richard Griffith]

Many yards were painted black.  What year is your ship?  What is its name?

 

Duff

[Tyrnac]

I'm building the Mantua Racehorse, theoretically a bomb vessel from 1754 but really more of a platonic ideal or conglomeration of mid-18th century bomb vessel characteristics.  I'm only painting a thin section of the hull, between the wales, and finishing the lower hull with tung oil, but I thought blackening the yards might make for a nice contrast.

[S.Coleman]

I know it is quite common for yards to be painted black with the tips of them white. I myself paint the yards but blackening them I'm not sure. Is this like some sort of stain for the wood?

[Stockholm tar]

Although I don't know of any written evidence I believe the yards of 18th/19th cent warships, British ones at least, were usually painted black. However, I have never read or heard of the yard ends being painted white. To me, that sounds more like 19th cent. merchant practice. Stun sail booms on the yard arms however, if fitted, were often left natural (see the Victory).

 

I think the yards of the Racehorse would have been black.

[gregs1234]

The instructions for my Bluejacket Jefferson Davis indicate that the US Revenue Service would have painted white: deck furniture, ends of all spars, bowsprit, mast doublings, mast below spider bands, bulwarks and bulkheads. I have pictures of other models of JD and they all have the ends, doublings, and the bottom of the masts painted white. (Even one model that is otherwise stained wood). JD was built around 1853.

[S.Coleman]

I'm not sure of other kits but Mamoli for some reason instruct you to paint the ends of the yards white. But it's ok. That's an easy fix

[Stockholm tar]

The vessel in question here is the Racehorse, a small RN bomb ketch/sloop. I somehow doubt that either money, or time, would have been spent in decoration beyond the practical – especially in the work she was engaged in, and unless there was a very good reason for it. White-tipped yards, bowsprit ends, etc., may have been usual across the pond, ie. in America, but I'm not sure that would have been the case here at that time. I have no idea where the manufacturers obtained their information (I suspect it’s a whim on their part) but I would paint the yards all black.

 

I can find very little information about painting yards although, as I said, black seems to have been the usual colour in the RN. Former curator of the Victory, Peter Goodwin, mentions in his Victory ’manual’ that the black was usually a mixture of paint and some form of preservative, such as varnish, which would seem logical.

 

Btw, the manufacturers’ blurb often contains the mis-information that a certain young Horatio Nelson served aboard the Racehorse, presumably with an eye to selling the kit. Although the vessel was part of the same expedition to the Arctic in 1773 in which midshipman Nelson took part, he was actually on the books of a similar sloop, the Carcass.