Model Boat Mayhem
The Shipyard ( Dry Dock ): Builds & Questions => Navy - Military - Battleships: => Topic started by: Captain Pugwash on December 21, 2015, 04:36:33 pm
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Hi all
With the current project due to launch soon my thoughts are beginning to turn towards the next one. I've always fancied one of the late Victorian battleships - something like HMS Devastation or Thunderer of the early 1870's. I'm reasonably sure Greenwich have some plans for these two but I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows if there are any other plans available. I'd probably build at or 1/72 scale or similar aiming at a hull length around 50"
These ships seem to be full of interest to me but there don't seem to be many models around. I know that Brian King has done a few and I've got a Model Shipwright article from by John Hollis about his 1/48 Devastation but that's all I've found so far. Has anyone any experience building one of these early pre-dreadnoughts?
Many thanks
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I'm doing a small 'Devastation' about 24 inches long currently. Not a scale model as it has elements of 'Thunderer' as well. I only do a bit at a time, so the build is going very slowly. I'm using the NMM plans and would be happy to loan them out.
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See the picture on an "England's Glory" matchbox!
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Hi Captain Pugwash
I'm sure Ballastankian is building a hull for an armoured ram battleship HMS Rupert from roughly the same era of Victorian warship.
I've 2/3 through building a Majestic class pre-dreadnought using the Deans Marine kit but Ron Dean also does a HMS Inflexible- an armoured citadel turret ship
Traplet do plans of HMS Lord Nelson and Inflexible.
For an excellent book see RA Burt's British Battleships 1889 to 1904 which covers the earlier vessels from 1870 onwards too despite the title.
Brian King has a book too called Modelling Late Victorian Battleships which shows his model of Devestation, Magnificent, Victoria, and an Italian battleship whose names escapes me at the moment.
Hope this helps
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I'm doing a small 'Devastation' about 24 inches long currently. Not a scale model as it has elements of 'Thunderer' as well. I only do a bit at a time, so the build is going very slowly. I'm using the NMM plans and would be happy to loan them out.
Thanks Joppy, I'd be interested in taking you up on this kind offer how do we go about it?
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PM sent.
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Hi Captain Pugwash
I'm sure Ballastankian is building a hull for an armoured ram battleship HMS Rupert from roughly the same era of Victorian warship.
I've 2/3 through building a Majestic class pre-dreadnought using the Deans Marine kit but Ron Dean also does a HMS Inflexible- an armoured citadel turret ship
Traplet do plans of HMS Lord Nelson and Inflexible.
For an excellent book see RA Burt's British Battleships 1889 to 1904 which covers the earlier vessels from 1870 onwards too despite the title.
Brian King has a book too called Modelling Late Victorian Battleships which shows his model of Devestation, Magnificent, Victoria, and an Italian battleship whose names escapes me at the moment.
Hope this helps
Thanks raflaunches,
I've got a copy of Mr Burt's book and have managed to find a copy of Brain's book at a sensible price - in California of all places! - and it's on it's way.
The Dean's Marine kit is indeed Magnificent but I've always built from scratch and would prefer to do so again. I'd be interested to hear more about Ballastankian's HMS Rupert too. Maybe we'll all meet on the water one day!
Thanks for your suggestions
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Hi Captain,
You can see the build log for HMS Rupert in the Warships page above this page. I got as far as preparing to plate the hull plug when I decided to get a sailable model (HMS Ready) completed for use (Delays caused by issues with bloomin grub screws:O( .
I have decided to scrap the plug/GRP mould idea as I based the hull design on drawings in Janes, which are not 100% accurate, so will complete her as a semi scale sailing model by glassing the exterior and cladding before hollowing her out and fitting the gizmos.
Early turret ships are quite nice to build because the later ones were built without much top hamper compared with later ships. Indeed some of the ships converted from cut down square riggers would make a good beginners project.
If you are after such a project, then early Janes drawings will give you a basic starting point though havng images of a half model or ships model will help with 3dimentional reference to get the tumblehome and transition from hull to stem and stern quite accurate.
Burts book 'Warrior to Dreadnought is also quite useful and has some good photos to get you on the right track when doing further research.
Another reference to look at for inspiration is Pete Subman's build page 'Semiscale Borodino'. I am now intrigued to see what loveliness you go for :-))
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Hi Ballastian
Thanks for your thoughts - all good tips, much appreciated.
Having nearly finished HMS Vanguard I can empathise with you regarding too much top hamper, just the deck fittings and superstructure have taken nearly two years to do, hence the desire to do something a little different. I normally reckon of between 3-4 years to do a big project like Vanguard but she's taken over 7 years now and I'm looking forward to getting her on the water this summer I hope. Mind you I've moved house twice in this period so that's slowed things down a tad!
I do like the clean looks of Devastation or Thunderer and I've now dug our a copy of Brian King's article in Model Shipwright about the Big D as he calls her and am in awe of his build quality, certainly something to aspire to, I'll have to brush up on my CAD skill for the photo etching though.
With Vanguard marking the end of the big gun battleship it would be nice to do one of these two as they mark the beginning.
I wonder where Brian's model is now? It would be worth going to have a look at for the spatial relationships of the various elements, I found the Vanguard model in the Science Museum really helpful for this.
Incidentally does anyone have an index for the full run of Model Shipwright? I've got the partial ones but it would be really helpful to have an index-able spreadsheet of all of the issues. Also does anyone know if the MS 'annual' is ever going to be published again? I can't get any sense out of Conway now that they've been swallowed by Bloomsbury.
I'll go and have a look at the Rupert build log now
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Which issue of Model Shipwright had Brian King's model Devastation in it? I'd better try get hold of a copy!
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I have the index nos 1-44 sept72 to june 83
Brians model is in issue39 and 40
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Thank you for that, I've already been promised copies of the articles.
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Devastation will be an interesting model with those large turrets at each end and the 'cul de sac' in the stern superstructure.
Watch the freeboard as historically she and those of her ilk were quite low despite being better than Coastal defence monitors and HMS Captain (Capsized:O( I am not sure if brian King's models were for sailing but it might be worth investigating ways to make your model as water resistant as possible perhaps by having access through the breastwork, or installing your battery with a charging port and having the receiver and fuses accessable.
I don't want to discourage you as there are solutions to these issues/problems.
Re the book 'Warrior to Dreadnought', It is by D.K.Brown and not Burt as I wrongly stated.
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Thanks for the ideas ballastankian.
I do like the idea of Devastation, she'd make a nice 'bookend' with Vanguard.
Reading about the ship it does seem that she had an easy motion in a seaway and was a good gun platform. However she was hard to drive against a head gale because of her relative lack of freeboard. She was also reported to be a very wet berth for her crew although, unlike the Captain she was able to get to the Med in safety, probably because she didn't have the top weight of a full rig acting like a pendulum above her decks. As I understand it the problem with the Captain was that her CG had never been properly calculated by Coles or his private builders and was in fact far too high for safety. This seemed to be largely due to Cole's insistence that his craft could carry a fully sparred rig to match than on HMS Monarch, the Navy's own evolutionary turret ship.
At the moment my own thoughts are moving towards the idea of having the fore and aft ends of the main hull as sealed tanks for water ballast - along the lines of John Hollis's 1:48 model. This would leave the central portion free as a mechanical space accessible via a removable hurricane deck. Everything below this level being sealed against the wet.
I'm planning to get up to the Yeovilton show in a few weeks time and will canvas more opinions then.
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Oh yes? Perhaps we can meet up for a cuppa. It is only a few miles from home, so now it is a regular day out for me and my wallet!
Yes, sadly (for some) Coles died on the Captain, so we will never know if, had his career survived the sinking, he would have come up with improved turrets or even gun houses. I think not, as the Navy was reluctant to trust Breechloaders until well into the seventies when improved propellants became available making reliable breech loaders practical.
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Sounds good to me Ballastankian - PM sent.
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Hi Ian and Captain
Have you read the most recent copy of Arthur Hawkey's book 'Black Night Off Finisterre'?
Discovered by the author in the Royal Navy archives were some documents of the court marshal of the crew of the HMS Captain which differed from the official story. Whilst Captain was indeed a design with some serious problems the true loss of the ship was revealed to be what we call today as Human Factors, in particular the term 'Norms'. As I'm sure you both know this was a transition period in Navy history from sail to steam, it was considered the Norm (or the normal) for a ship to be able to maintain station in a formation of ships on sail power alone, it was even considered to look bad upon the crew of said ship if they couldn't. So on that fateful night if they had lowered the sails and switched to their steam engine the ship would have survived but they were to concerned with appearances (and because they had always done this with other ships) than have the common sense to swop propulsion methods. The ship even had narrower working areas for handling the sails which should have indicated that the main propulsion should have been steam.
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New to me Nick but very interesting as Brown doesn't mention this either.
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It was to me too!
Many of my books about the period including DK Brown, Oscar Parkes and Norman Friedman mention that the ship was poorly designed and her stability was not calculated properly if at all, nothing about the resulting court marshal. Suppose it was supposed to stay 'secret'! %)
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Well, I suppose that what with the fact that so many men perished they had good reason to hush it up, and also they did not want the French to think that their ships were weaker than the Republique's.
I am looking forward to seeing Devastation:O)
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Wikipedia goes into this in some detail, including problems during construction which made her 735 tons too heavy and thus nearly 2 feet lower in the water, plus the CofG rose around 10 inches during construction. They had reduced sail considerably as the storm grew to just the fore staysail and fore and main topsails. The Court Marshal is also quoted from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Captain_(1869) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Captain_(1869))
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The story of the building, loss and aftermath relating to HMS Captain is the subject of Arthur Hawkey's book 'Black Night off Finisterre'. Readily available secondhand.
Well worth a read. BTW it Is 'Court Martial'.
Colin
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Well worth a read. BTW it Is 'Court Martial'.
Colin
Damn the 'supposed auto correct' on my iPad! I thought it didn't look right. Thanks Colin.
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Auto correct is a menace Nick!
Colin
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My great grandfather served on Devastation, so I am looking forward to seeing the model on this site or at Wicksteed soon. Believe I may have seen a museum model of her some where, or it may have been a remarkably good picture, but my memory seems to be of a very large number of boats being carried, put me of trying to model her.
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There is what may be an original builder's model of Captain in the NMM reserve collection. This model may now be at Chatham but I don't know. Chatham models can be photographed by making an appointment. Note those massive tripod masts!
These models are often criticised as being 'what should have been', rather than 'what was', and this model appears to show rather more freeboard than we have been led to believe! However, my experience is that the models are generally more reliable than third party renditions such as those in Janes or indeed some popular books. This model is built in exactly the same style as the 1884 model of Esmeralda as a guide to authenticity but obviously may not actually date from 1869.
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For a vessel having to sail in all weathers, you can see straight away her stability problem, same problem as barges, soon as the deck edge goes under the GZ righting lever rapidly disappears, that is why the old wooden walls had such a large tumblehome.. But thanks for the picture it is very interesting.
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That was probably the planned freeboard. But they didn't keep a proper check on the weights going into the ship when building and she actually floated quite a bit lower in the water than intended which was disastrous for her stability. As Dodes says, once the deck edge goes under the ship rapidly becomes unstable.
Colin
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Hi Victorian
Nice to hear from you, thanks for pictures, I've only ever seen the model from the side on the NMM website so it's nice to see some better photos.
In model form I think she works out at approximately 40 inches long in 1/96 scale, the size of a WW2 destroyer!
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Does the candy cane style edge a'top the bulwarks represent the Hammock stowage do you think, or is it a quick way to make the model look pretty for the admiralty?
What a tempting build especially if the model was made to sail as well as run with electric power.
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Yes, I believe the Candy Cane does represent the Hammock storage. Here's the original builder's model of Esmeralda, the first Elswick Cruiser, built 1884: (Photo courtesy of Roberto Paredes). It would be interesting to know why kit was stored like this - protection from small arms fire, less fire risk below decks etc., and was it routine or only when ready for action? I'm someone on here will know!!
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Yes, hammocks were stowed on the bulwarks as additional protection from small arms fire etc. It was a carry over from the days of sail. I think it was also for hygiene reasons to air them. On HMS Warrior at Portsmouth hammock stowage is simulated on the bulwarks and there is a continuous canvas cover over them to keep out the elements.
Hammocks also came in handy for plugging hull leaks!
Colin
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Always thought what a downer it would be
having been stood down from action stations,
Going to collect your Mick and finding it shredded
by enemy fire. <*< <:(
BTW the stowage was called hammock netting.
Ned
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That is quite a neat way of representing hammock stowage and stronger than a mixture of bits and complex framing especially if represented with the cover over the top.
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Another use I was reading the other day for hammocks, was when a square rigger was knocked down, due to wind or sea. The drill was to have a large spar handy on each side of the vessel, where upon the hammocks were attached, then a heavy line attached to each end of the spar and it was then cast into the sea off a quarter. This would act as a sea anchor causeing the vessel to drift stern to wind and allow the vessel to recover. Apparently when the vessel is going down there is nothing the crew can do to remedy the situation, as the shear weight off the wind or sea on the canvas alone will knock her down and keep the sails flat in the sea. Apparently a lot of square riggers met their end this way and the other common way was to be pooped in a heavy sea then the bow dipped under and the vessel would then drive down under head first taking all with her.
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That is interesting as I had heard of the term but never knew the meaning.
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I also think Captain would make an interesting model to build and in model form would be easy enough to make stable. Mind you unless you want to build a huge model to get her to sail under sail may be problematical!
I have an old 1/96 scale model (40 years old) of HMS Nelson from the 1850's - Google her - she was designed with a full ships masts and central battery. Built from very limited plans so not accurate but with two funnels and three masts she does look unusual.
Most "cruiser" type ships of this period retained their masts and spars not because they were backwards in design but because coaling stations were non-existent so for long distance cruising sail was the only way to go with steam used for action only.
Geoff