There is a lot of good material around on scratch building ship models in wood. Far less on doing it in plastic or other materials. If you are willing to work with wood, There are books and many articles available. The magazine "Ships in Scale", which has been around for many years, often has articles on scratch ship projects. I have written several for them myself. There is even a wood kit available for a whaling bark, but it is in plank on bulkhead.
I am a big proponent of the "bread and butter" hull construction method, where the hull is laminated with several planks of wood, each cut to planform. This method greatly reduces the amount of carving needed. One nice thing about modeling whaling ships- they tended to be quite full-bodied, tubs that do not have fancy curves and sleak streamlined lines.