Monogram's 1/225 USF Constitution

Thanks, JT, you are certainly the person I wanted to hear from on this one.

Admittedly, wasn't sure if it was Monogram who made a wee President (probably got a memory confused there), but I do remember the United States.

I'm really leaning towards her appearance in the 1840's - 1850's (possibly replete with the Andrew Jackson figurehead). Deck layout would be a mystery. Actually need to pick up HI Chappelle's "History of the American Sailing Navy" for the reference library anyway. I suspect that there are a few more books out there on the subject. While the Bounty was supposed to be my "fun" project, it evolved into something else. This one might simply be the fun project. Oh, make no mistake; the ratlines are going to have to go, and not a sail raised. 

I need to take a photo of the bow and post it, and compare it to the overhaul image, plus the one painting from the same period. At least it's a start.

I remember those kits fairly well; I was working in a hobby shop when they were originally released.  I only remember three of them, though:  the Cutty Sark, Constitution, and United States.  (To the best of my knowledge - and I'm more than willing to be corrected - no manufacturer has ever issued a kit labeled President.  That's a little ironic, in that she's the only one of the three for which we have a contemporary set of plans establishing her War of 1812 configuration.  The Monogram United States, is, if I remember correctly, bogus in that it doesn't have the raised "roundhouse" that the real ship did.)

There's lots of controversy about the various changes in her ornamentation over the years.  Apparently her transom has, at various times, had eight, six, five, and three windows in it.  (The famous "Isaac Hull model" in Salem, which is generally regarded as the best piece of evidence about her 1812 configuration, has six - with their muntons painted indigo blue.)  I don't pretend to have any insights about when the transom configuration changed, but I have the impression that there were three windows in it during her last several active commissions - and her first several decades as a museum ship.

The Consitution's headrails were boarded up for many years, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century.  (An 1858 photo I have in front of me shows her bow in that configuration - with the second of the two notorious Andrew Jackson figureheads attached.)  During the 1920s she underwent a major restoration.  (That was when the Navy started taking her seriously as a "museum ship."  For some time prior to that time she'd had an incredibly awkward-looking roof built over her spar deck, dating from her days as a receiving ship.)  The restoration was most definitely not carried out according to the standards of the conservation professions today - but it did save her for future generations. 

In conjunction with that project the Navy published a set of plans, which showed how she looked when Lieutenant Lord (the officer in charge) and his contractors got through with her.  Those plans were for many years regarded as "the official plans" of the ship.  (It appears to have been in 1949, when Howard I. Chapelle published his History of the American Sailing Navy, that people started waking up to the fact that her appearance had changed a great deal since her construction.)  Those post-restoration plans show the transom with three windows.

Most early wood Constitution kits (Marine Models, A.J. Fisher, Scientific, etc.) seem to have been based on those plans.  So was the first Revell kit (the 1956 one, on 1/192 scale).  Like the wood kits, it showed the ship as visitors to Boston saw her - with one big exception.  For some reason the Revell designers included a nicely-rendered miniature version of the first Andrew Jackson figurehead.

I think (though I'm not sure; I haven't laid eyes on the kit itself for years) the little Monogram kit was also based on those Navy plans.  If so, it more-or-less accurately represents her as she looked in the early twentieth century (though not when she was in active service). 

We've discussed this kit a couple of times before here in the Forum.  It certainly does have its limitations - many of them due to the fact that it was designed as a beginners' kit.  At that time (the late seventies) American kit manufacturers were trying all sorts of desperate measures to attract new folks to the hobby; this was one of Monogram's answers to the problem.  (It didn't work:  it wasn't long after that the Mattel Corporation took over the direct management of Monogram, and the company stopped making serious scale models for several years.)  It's a simple kit, but in many ways a remarkably ingenious one.  Just how the designers managed to make a one-piece, hollow hull with at least a semblance of the real ship's tumble-home is something of a mystery.

Chapelle's books will only help a little regarding the Constitution's War of 1812 configuration.  He did a tracing of the Admiralty draft of the President - which drawing is, as I mentioned, the only measured drawing that shows any of the American 44-gun frigates as they looked at that time.  What Chapelle drew is, I think, reliable, but the drawing doesn't contain much detail - and only shows the hull and decks.

There are two good, comprehensive, non-contemporary sets of plans that do attempt to show how she looked in her glory days.  One is the set drawn by George Campbell for the Smithsonian, when it was commissioning a model of her back in (I think) the early sixties.  It's available via the Smithsonian.  (We had a discussion recently of the rather elaborate procedure for ordering Smithsonian ship plans:  /forums/1168958/ShowPost.aspx .  The Campbell plans also were the basis for the Revell 1/96 kit.)  The other option is the set prepared for the Bluejacket kit by a math professor named Lawrence Arnot in (I think) the 1980s.  Arnot wasn't a professional draftsman (like Campbell), but he did a great deal of research; in terms of detail his drawings probably are at least as reliable as Campbell's.  Unfortunately they're also pretty expensive:  in the neighborhood of $60.00, I believe.

 

Well, considering what I've done with the old Pyro/Life-Like Bounty, shouldn't be too hard. I used to do a lot of scratchbuilding, 1/384 (1/32" = 1'), though the eyes have aged a bit. Leaning towards simple at this point. I'll post when I begin.

Vagabond_Astronomer wrote:

Mark wrote...  RedCorvette wrote: I got as far as cleaning up & priming the hull before I lost enthusiasm for the kit last year. It's definitely a beginners kit and would take tons of work to make it anywhere close to an 1812 version of the ship.  I'll probably just finish it out of the box as decorative shelf piece one of these days...or maybe give it away. Lots of work? I'm your man here, yessir... has me written all over it. Found an image of her during an overhaul just prior to the American Civil War; looked very austere, but yes, the bow is definitely later. This makes me wonder; how difficult would it be to back date the similarly scaled Revell kit to its 1812 appearance? Picking up some books on the subject (namely Chappelle) tomorrow at the local bookmine, hopefully this will help.

Anything's possible, but get ready to do a lot of scratch-building.  I'd use the big 1/96 kit as a pattern - it's based on some pretty good research.

Actually they're currently backdating the real Constitution to something close to it's 1812 configuration.

I was actually toying with idea of painting the small kit with the white hull and red stripe that was used during part of its circumnavigation.  Would definitely be different...

Mark

Mark wrote...

RedCorvette wrote:

I got as far as cleaning up & priming the hull before I lost enthusiasm for the kit last year. It's definitely a beginners kit and would take tons of work to make it anywhere close to an 1812 version of the ship.  I'll probably just finish it out of the box as decorative shelf piece one of these days...or maybe give it away.

Lots of work? I'm your man here, yessir... has me written all over it.

Found an image of her during an overhaul just prior to the American Civil War; looked very austere, but yes, the bow is definitely later. This makes me wonder; how difficult would it be to back date the similarly scaled Revell kit to its 1812 appearance? Picking up some books on the subject (namely Chappelle) tomorrow at the local bookmine, hopefully this will help.

I've got the "United States" boxing of this kit that was advertised as 1/150(?) scale on the box.

I posted some photos of it on my bench next to its 1/196 'big brother' in a thread a year or so.  I'll try to find them again later this evening.

Although it has some enhancements, it is obviously based on the larger 1/196 kit, which in turn was patterned after the restored Constitution, not the 1812 configuration represented by the big classic 1/96 kit.  Even so, the stern is an odd configuration with three windows, and two gun ports, but curves out rather than being flat as on the restored ship. Kind of an odd hybrid version.

A lot of the details are simplified and out-of-scale, some of it having to do with the molding of the single-piece hull.

The single-piece spar deck is molded with nice crown to it, but the molded hatches and carronade carriages are way out of scale - the carronades would be about six feet off the deck.

The masts are all one-piece affairs and are molded with raised yards, meaning that you need to use the vacuum formed sails or cut them off and lower them if you're not using the sails.

I got as far as cleaning up & priming the hull before I lost enthusiasm for the kit last year. It's definitely a beginners kit and would take tons of work to make it anywhere close to an 1812 version of the ship.  I'll probably just finish it out of the box as decorative shelf piece one of these days...or maybe give it away.

Mark