Linberg's Captain Kidd - Wappen Von Hamburg FINAL

The image links have been restored - sorry about that !  I had made some changes late last night (trying to organized my images) - should have left well enough alone.

At anyrate, please enjoy now !

You might want to "refresh" your browser (if you don't see anything) . I checked to make sure everything was working this morning.

Donnie

 

Looking good Donnie.  It looks like your ready to tackle the masts/rigging now. 

*wolf whistle*  Yowza !  That is looking incredible !  Glad you got those images up, I knew I was missing something good...

 

                 

Donnie takes a bow - thank you very much
The next thing to tackle is the Rudder, then off to putting the Belaying Pin deck pieces on there (also deciding about the color on that too)

I bow before your talent donnie, magnificent work. But, pardon me, I think I saw a rather serious misfit in the "cage" of the beakhead. İt looks like that the parts are not touching the beakhead ! This must be caused by the distorted and misproduced parts. I think you shall look for a way to fix that. Otherwise everything is going smoothly. Congratulations again !

Ok, I will be honest here. Right now I do not know what the beakhead is YIKES !!!  How can a ship modeler not know what that is ---

Well, I am just going by the instructions and doing the best that I can -

Donnie
ps I will look up beakhead later - now I am at work close to the end of the day.

Donnie,

I have been following your build since I am working on the same model and you have done a great job! I also had trouble with this part at the front of the ship. I had to press down on this "cage" part before gluing with superglue so that it would contact the stempost (this is what I thought that projection was called, but maybe beakhead is correct). The parts are not molded quite right and I used a lot of glue and four letter words to make them obey. I glued the front portions to both sides of the stempost at the top just behind the decorative animal holding the shield. I did this first which enabled me to glue down the lower parts later. I checked with some of the websites with pictures of the wood model to get an idea where this belongs. The only trouble I have had is that the pressure of the lower parts of this cage makes the scrolls at the sides of the forecastle pull off a bit. Hope this helps. I can't wait to see your finished build.

It is good to know that someone is getting some usefullness of this thread. I guess I took the simple route and I just could not figure out how the part should go. It seemed more natural fit to go the route I did.
The instructions are not too great. Wait until you get to the upper rails (that has the Belaying Pins). Those do not fit well either and I have done a considerable amount of filing to make it fit right.
This model was not as good of fit like the Le Flore "Jolly Roger" Lindberg.  It is taking me more time to do this one.
Thanks for your response

Donnie

I will be posting images soon. The main thing that I want to say here is that this model has been a real challenge to make the model worth any realism. What I mean is that I have done more sanding, scraping, filing, etc. than I did on the Jolly R (La Flore) - both my Lindberg.
If any aspiring modeler should try something else before attemping this ship. I am glad that I did not start with this one first. I still think that the Jolly Roger was a good first one (for me). Alot of the parts do not fit good on the Captain Kidd (Wappen Von Hamburg).
Now let me say that I have REALLY enjoyed building the WVH, becuase I guess I do like trying to make the most out of what I have in hand. Maybe I am expecting too much- not sure. One thing right off is that I notice that where the "Part" mates with the sprue, it is thick and hard. You really have to carve the part off the sprue and sometimes it is a guess as to figure out where the part ends and where the sprue starts and vise versa.
I have had a time with trying to get the upper railings (with the belaying pins) to fit correctly. Everyone of the railings had to be filed and sanded down in height before they would fit up against the bulwark and the inside of deck.
I was and am determined to get those parts to fit like they are supposed to and I am almost finished with installing the upper railings.
I did not have this problem with the Linbergs JR kit becuase the JR is does not have a stepped deck. The deck is all on one level, whereas the WVH kit, the deck is like (I can't remember now) is like 2 or 3 decks and the railings must have that Step as well. In order for the railings to seamlessly follow the stepping of the deck, then one must talent and skill to make the railings fit good. Mine is not perfect, but I have done the best that I can - this work is satisfactory to me.
There is just so much a person can do with a kit like this. Now let me say again, that I have a great fondness of this ship and I would not trade in my efforts on it - becuase it is the challege of the project that stirs me. It is still enjoyable and I still look forward to sitting down with this vessel of the sea and as I build it - I enjoy the imaginations of what it would have been like with:

"...sail on her, and plunging into the swells of that restless sea,
riding on a mysterious unmanned ship pointed to the horizon,
of which land you can not see.
You come upon a fog and you think you are in a dream,
as i look around on that unmanned ship,
I wander what it was like as a gleam"

by Donnie



Thanks for tuning in
Donnie

Very interesting observations.  I've always had the impression (though I don't have any hard information to back this up) that the Wappen von Hamburg and La Flore kits were designed by the same people.  (They sure have a lot of features in common - most prominently the crew figures.)  My vague (very vague) recollection is that the Wappen von Hamburg was released a year or two (maybe longer) before La Flore.  Sounds like the designers learned something from experience.  (That's not uncommon.  If you took a look at all the old Revell sailing ship kits side-by-side, you could almost figure out the sequence in which they were released just by looking at the way the details were handled.  Same goes for the Airfix line and, to some extent, the massive Heller one.  When Heller started producing sailing ships its designers had only the vaguest notion of what a sailing ship looked like.  They learned.  Unfortunately, at just about the time when they were starting to produce some really outstanding kits, Heller got out of the sailing ship business.)

I think another big part of the problem is the simple one of age.  Those molds are about forty years old now.  Having long since passed that age myself, I can testify from experience that forty years is a long time.  I also have the impression that Lindberg's quality control isn't what it should be.

Anyway, it's obvious that this is going to be a mighty nice model.  Only you - and those who've been following this thread - will know how much work it took to get it that way, but you should be able to derive a great deal of satisfaction from the finished product.

Donnie is right about the difficulty with the sprues. I have actually broken three hobby knife blades trying to cut the parts off. The filing and fitting of the rails was definitely a challenge too but I think the end result will be worth the effort. My ship now sits with bare masts as I await the shipment of my ship rigging books! I am sure I will learn a lot from this next step and I appreciate all the great photos everyone has posted since I am just a ground-pounder and need all the help I can get. As a toy-soldier caster and painter I have thoroughly enjoyed this excursion into plastic modelling. I have actually bought the Jolly Roger/La Flore as my next build so my soldiers will just have to wait!

I also have some questions about the Wappen von Hamburg for some of the experts out there. Are the crew figures in this kit actually to scale? At either end of the bridge between the forecastle and the quarterdeck are those vaulted galleries. It seems like my figures would have to stoop and squeeze to make it through these openings. I am trying to imagine how crowded the ship must have been if they really are! I was also noticing how close to the breech of the cannon the ship's boat is on the main deck. Wouldn't the cannon need room to recoil? It looks like it might have struck the side of the boat. How would the crew have hoisted the boat out of the way? It seems the bridge section is very close to the top of the boat. Would the bridge have moved out of the way? I spent a lot of time on the inside of the boat before I realized this bridge would cover it! At least I will know how nicely it is painted.

Devin

It seems that we are at the same building stage. As soon as I get those rails done. There are some other small items to do on the deck before I move into the mast building. Stay tuned and I will be glad to help and I will be posting images so that some may follow.

Donnie

LAV driver wrote:

I also have some questions about the Wappen von Hamburg for some of the experts out there. Are the crew figures in this kit actually to scale? At either end of the bridge between the forecastle and the quarterdeck are those vaulted galleries. It seems like my figures would have to stoop and squeeze to make it through these openings. I am trying to imagine how crowded the ship must have been if they really are! I was also noticing how close to the breech of the cannon the ship's boat is on the main deck. Wouldn't the cannon need room to recoil? It looks like it might have struck the side of the boat. How would the crew have hoisted the boat out of the way? It seems the bridge section is very close to the top of the boat. Would the bridge have moved out of the way? I spent a lot of time on the inside of the boat before I realized this bridge would cover it! At least I will know how nicely it is painted.

Devin,

this brings up two interesting questions. First of all one probably has to admit that, though the Wappen von Hamburg is immensely popular in my corner of the world, apart from a few vague paintings and some information about the WvH's successor of the same name virtually nothing is known. There are a few sets of plans out there which are pretty good, but these are simply reconstructions based on what is known about the WvH's sistership, Leopoldus Primus, the WvH 2 and contemporary Dutch building practice. As far as I know, what is currently available as plans goes back to a reconstruction by W. Quinger which was published in about 1980; they are based on older work by Hoeckel from the late 1930s - the kit is probably based on the latter.

When comparing these plans (which are in 1/75) with the kit it's important to keep in mind that the plans are in many cases really only a suggestion how WvH might have looked like - we simply don't know enough. I haven't as yet compared the kit's masts and spares to the plan (which I'll probably only do when I eventually start building it, in the next millenium or so...), but I did so with the hull, which comes out as quite close to the plans.

What is highly interesting is that the 'flying bridge' above the boat on the main hatch is shown in the plan (the railing differs slightly from the way it's done in the kit), and it is shown without any indication on how it was removed. Neither is there any arrangement evident from the rigging plan suggesting a way to get the boat removed from under this bridge. Strange. What's more, in the book accompanying his plans, Quinger shows pictures of his own model which he built according to his plans. While he doesn't say anything about the boat, in one picture it is perfectly clear that in his model he put the boat atop such a 'flying bridge', slightly offset to port. This contradicts with the plans (which doesn't have to mean a lot) and - to me at least - looks slightly odd (which in this case would be much more important to me)

In the absence of any plausible way to remove it, my suggestion would be to leave this 'flying bridge' off entirely. I certainly will do so when getting to the point of having to make this decision.

On the other hand I would use the figures, as I think they are quite suitable for the following reasons:

As for the galleries, here it is fairly simple - at least again according to the plans. These were not galleries in the proper sense of the word, but just protrusions for the windows occuying perhaps two-thirds at most of the available deck height. Think of it as some kind of recessed windows.
 
The guns are another problem - personally I believe the deck guns are a little too long, their rear end protruding too much beyond the carriage; I will probably shorten them a bit or replace them with pieces from the spares box. Even though, there seems to have been little space between the guns and the boat in the first place, judging again from the plan. One has to take into account that in combat the boat would probably not have been there, though.

I hope that helped in some way.

Jorit

Greetings,

Mr. Jorit, you seem to have a real deep knowledge about that particular warship. I always wondered in which historical context (battle/war/campaign) was WvH was built and for which authority. As far as I know, the hanseatic league was long defunct when WvH and he sisters built; Baltic was a swedish lake and the northern waters were peaceful after the devastation of thirty years war. So for which purpose did the Hamburg city comissioned a series of SoLs ? I should be glad if you would clear me.

Best Regards

kapudan_emir_effendi wrote:

I always wondered in which historical context (battle/war/campaign) was WvH was built and for which authority. As far as I know, the hanseatic league was long defunct when WvH and he sisters built; Baltic was a swedish lake and the northern waters were peaceful after the devastation of thirty years war. So for which purpose did the Hamburg city comissioned a series of SoLs ? I should be glad if you would clear me.

First of all I have to say that there are probably much more knowledgeable people on the board who'll probably be able to give you a much more detailed account. I'll just try to give you a very general account.

Generally the maritime trade of the German coastal towns began to suffer when piracy spread during the second half of the 16th century beyond the confines of the Mediterranean. This resulted not only in the loss of valuable ships and loads but also in extra expenses for the trading towns as they quite often had to buy back seamen held for ransom (we have sources indicating the sums paid for a seaman at the beginning of the 17th century - they are considerable).

Now, smaller towns could do fairly little about it (apart from trying to find other trade options), but Hamburg with a trading fleet of about 200 ships thought otherwise and therefore in the early 1660s decided to build a number of convoy escorts (which is the correct term for the WvH, by the way - Konvoischiff, or convoy escort). Both ships (WvH and her sister Leopoldus Primus; incidentally, she could probably make a good model out of the WvH kit, as the two ships are said to have been virtually identical apart from the stern decoration, which in the case of the latter was a huge statue of emperor Leopold I.) were built between 1667 and 1668, and they served on yearly convoys to various destinations (like Malaga, Cadiz, Lisbon as well as Spitzbergen and Archangelsk).

On several accounts were the two ships successful in beating back Pirates - in 1673 against French corsairs in the North Sea, in 1674 against turkish Pirates off Cape St Vincent or 1678 against French corsairs from Dunkirk off the Elbe estuary. In 1686 the Leopoldus Primus played an important part in defending Hamburg against Danish attacks. WvH was lost to a fire in 1683 in Cadiz, while Leopoldus Primus was broken up in 1705.

Both ships had perhaps not a really long history, but surely an eventful one.

Jorit

Thank you Jorit for sharing your knowledge of  this ship! You have been a great help. I have become very interested in the history of ships and have been reading as many books as I can. I have another question about the name of the ship. I just finished reading a book about the mutiny on the Batavia and noticed that the author translated the Dutch "Wapen" as "Weapon". It appears other cities sponsored convoy escorts also. I saw other references to "Wappen" on the internet as meaning "arms", as in coat-of-arms or emblem. Does the title in reference to a ship in Germanic languages imply the ship is a weapon of the city or a symbol of the city?

Also, what would a Turkish pirate ship have looked like during the period? It would be nice to pair my model with a model of one of her adversaries! I built a small Life-Like model of a felucca called the "Barbary Pirate". Would this be a good representation of a Turkish pirate?

Devin

LAV driver wrote:

Thank you Jorit for sharing your knowledge of  this ship! You have been a great help. I have become very interested in the history of ships and have been reading as many books as I can. I have another question about the name of the ship. I just finished reading a book about the mutiny on the Batavia and noticed that the author translated the Dutch "Wapen" as "Weapon". It appears other cities sponsored convoy escorts also. I saw other references to "Wappen" on the internet as meaning "arms", as in coat-of-arms or emblem. Does the title in reference to a ship in Germanic languages imply the ship is a weapon of the city or a symbol of the city?

Well, the Dutch "wapen" indeed means weapon (at least my very meagre recollection of Dutch says so). "Wappen" as in WvH however is German and means only "coat of arms" - it refers to the walled city that's on the flag of Hamburg and which was also among the decorations of the ship.

Also, what would a Turkish pirate ship have looked like during the period? It would be nice to pair my model with a model of one of her adversaries! I built a small Life-Like model of a felucca called the "Barbary Pirate". Would this be a good representation of a Turkish pirate?

That is indeed an excellent idea! I don't know the Life-Like kit, but I could imagine that this might well fit; if it's a smallish, lateen-rigged ship it's definitely a nice visual contrast. Unfortunately my knowledge of mediterranean pirates during these centuries is very slim, perhaps someone else knows more here and can add some details.

You could also try to depict a Dutch or French privateer, perhaps based on the Revell Batavia kit (which on the other hand might also serve as a Hamburg merchant). What is interesting in this context is that the RN captured a number of Algerian privateers in around 1680, five of which where taken into RN service as fourth rates. There's a Van de Velde drawing commonly thought to represent one, and - to my surprise when I saw it for the first time - it looks pretty similar to Western ships, though the stern decoration and the galleries have a more "oriental", so to say, look. Incidentally, while speaking of fourth rates, if I were much more adventurous than I am (and if I had more time at my disposal) I'd probably try to turn a WvH into a late 17th-century 50 gun ship. One day I'll have to look closer into this.

A very versatile kit indeed.

Jorit

The LifeLike chebec (or xebec, or whatever) came up in the Forum some time ago.  I haven't seen the kit, but somebody posted some pictures of it.  It's extremely old (a reissue of an ancient Pyro product, I think) and pretty crude - clearly intended primarily for the kids' market.  (It has injection-molded "sails," for example, and, if I remember, a total of one or two dozen parts.)  The basic shape of the hull looked reasonable, though, and it might well be on about the right scale.  With the addition of considerable effort, it probably could form the basis for a decent model.

I found the thread relevant to the felucca:

http://www.finescale.com/FSM/CS/forums/538028/ShowPost.aspx

However, apparently I'm utterly incompetent in using the modelingmadness website. I can't find the review mentioned there. Or could it be that they have taken it from their server?

Edit: Finally I found it (though I still didn't manage to access it from the start page):

http://modelingmadness.com/scotts/misc/ships/barbarypreview.htm

Seems really basic; on the other hand, I could imagine a nice diorama with the WvH in the centre surrounded by three of these. One thing though - who came up with these butter-knife oars? They surely look strange.

Jorit

LAV driver wrote:

Thank you Jorit for sharing your knowledge of  this ship! You have been a great help. I have become very interested in the history of ships and have been reading as many books as I can. I have another question about the name of the ship. I just finished reading a book about the mutiny on the Batavia and noticed that the author translated the Dutch "Wapen" as "Weapon". It appears other cities sponsored convoy escorts also. I saw other references to "Wappen" on the internet as meaning "arms", as in coat-of-arms or emblem. Does the title in reference to a ship in Germanic languages imply the ship is a weapon of the city or a symbol of the city? Also, what would a Turkish pirate ship have looked like during the period? It would be nice to pair my model with a model of one of her adversaries! I built a small Life-Like model of a felucca called the "Barbary Pirate". Would this be a good representation of a Turkish pirate? Devin

 

Devin, since the early 17th century north african (not turkish there were many turks among them but most were north african or renegade european) corsairs were using square rigged warships, just the same ones with dutch and spanish designs. Tradition says that it was Simon Danser, a.k.a the terrible Diablo Rais was the man who introduced sailing warships into the algerian navy in 1630s. European style ships were rather used by the most powerful corsair chiefs; more modest ones were using chebecs.

Jorit, the Van de Velde drawing you mention is of supreme importance for my studies ! How can I obtain it ?

kapudan_emir_effendi wrote:

Jorit, the Van de Velde drawing you mention is of supreme importance for my studies ! How can I obtain it ?

These are all in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. I just looked it up in Winfield's The 50 Gun Ship (which is quite a good book), and according to that (p. 20) the drawing I thought of is VV 492.

Jorit

jorit, do you have the possibilty to scan and e-mail that picture to me ?

thanks in advance !

Here are the latest pics of the Wappen Von Hamburg's hull. There are a few small things that I want to do before I press on. I will say that this ship has been something else to get done. I think I said that in another post about the kit being not so well. But, at anyrate, this has really been fun and a challenge. I am sure that the trained eyes here can see my mistakes. I still do not like the front of the ship with that piece that does not fit right. I might take it off and redo it. I am talking about the Gold piece that extends from the Front Bulkhead out to the Figurehead. (sorry - don't know the tech name)

















Thanks everyone for tuning in to this build - I hope that someone out there can benefit from these pics and documentation.

Donnie

Donnie,

The ship looks fantastic and the photos are wonderful! Thanks!

The ill-fitting parts on the bow represent an assembly of parts on the real ship, best described collectively as the head rails.  I don't blame you for being upset about the way they fit.  It looks like Lindberg really screwed up this part of the model - surprising, in that the company really did a pretty good job on the rest of it.  The vertical segments of the headrail assembly are supposed to be secured to the knee of the head - the big, projecting assembly of timbers that sticks out of the bow (and was molded as part of the hull halves).  It looks like the knee of the head is shaped about right; the problem seems to be in the headrails.  If you take them off you may find that it's possible to bend them a little bit so they fit right - but I doubt it.  Some tricky surgery in the form of plastic strip might be necessary to solve the problem.  Just the sort of thing one buys a kit in order to avoid.  Put this one down as a major mark against Lindberg.

Otherwise the model looks great.  I particularly like the color scheme; it's attractive but subtle, with just the right variations of color to be interesting and believable, without being garish.  What brand of gold paint did you use?  It looks excellent.

Donnie,

Your ship looks great! I hope mine will turn out half as nice as that. I also like the gold paint you used. My Testors gold seems to dull over time but I have never found a solution. I have even tried gold leaf but it also dulls. jtilley is right about the headrails section. They can be bent to fit. I actually had to clamp the lower rails onto the bow and superglue them to make it work but I managed. I used some small vice grips to achieve a strong enough clamp near the figurehead. How barbaric.

I love looking at all the different colors ship modellers use. Since I have a red/green color deficiency, my modelling and toy soldier painting hobby has always provided a particular challenge, especially when dealing with uniform and flag coloring which is often very specific. It seems ship modelling is forgiving in that regard. I have learned a lot reading your posts and seeing your photographs. For instance, I realize now that I didn't think to color my belaying pins like you did and now I have to do the same after seeing how much interest it adds to the rails. Your posts have been very helpful. Thanks!

Devin

Unless Testors puts out more than one Gold paint, I only used a Gold paint from Testors in that tiny bottle that they have. I am not at home, so I do not know what the stock number on that paint is. I will get that later for everybody. Well, what I do is that I shake the bottle of Gold everytime I get ready for it. The Gold 'flakes' settle down to the bottom within what seems only hours of not using it. So I keep the bottle shaken up 'during' my painting to make sure that all of the Gold flakes are going to be mixed in right.
Thanks everybody for your kind words. I guess I will get enough (whatever it takes) to tackle that bow dressing. You know, I guess I am a tad bit lazy and don't want to fool with that part of the ship, but I guess I should cut it off and try to refit it.
I will try to get a list of all the paint I used if people are interested.

Donnie
BTW - on my SONY camera, I set the f stop to f8.0 and I set the exposure to like 1.3 seconds. I only had light available in my room. It was at nighttime, so I only had the light from incadescent in the room and from my Bench. I did not go thru any special method other than this. I did tack up on the wall a white paper background. I just didn't feel like getting more involved in taking the pictures. I did use a tripod. This is absolutely a must if you are using timed exposure. Also, I used the SELF timer on the camera to make sure that I would not bump the camera while I was taking the picture.

Donnie

  Most fantastic !  Those colours are absolutely perfect, and it looks too good to be a Lindberg ship...I'm really looking forward to you tackling the Revell Constitution !

 

    Hats off, my friend !

                  greg

Donnie ,

Excellent build of this very ornate ship . The muted  hull and deck colors make it look  quite "wood like" . It looks great the way it is , a very interesting display model. I would not go back and change a thing.

Thanks for the excellent pictures,  RG Williams

Donnie,

at the risk of duplicating what has already been said, the model really looks fine. It's as much a testimony to your abilities as to the potential this old kit still has.

Jorit