Finished my 1/96 Revell USF Constitution

WadeK,

You certainly have a creditable build!  I certainly could not tell that you are an "amateur".  However, I am curious about why you left "Anatomy of the Ship" in the bookstore; it is a nice reference.

Bill Morrison

Very nice job on a classic kit. 

I would be the last to question your decision to use the kit-supplied ratlines.  You could literally spend years rigging this thing if you tried to represent everything accurately. I would venture to guess that most of these kits sold over the years were never finished for that reason - the builders either got frustrated or bored and gave up.  I think your presentation looks great and captures the 'spirit' of the rigging, if not every last block and line.

Interesting choice to do the 'Bainbridge' version, versus the more popular 'Hull' version.

Congratulations on a job well done.

Mark 

 

 

I don't have as low an opinion of the Anatomy of the Ship volume on the Constitution as some people do, but I do have serious reservations about it.  Some of those reservations, admittedly, don't have much to do with anything that would affect a kit-built model, but they do, in my opinion, seriously lessen the value of the book.

The author, who, I gather, lives in continental Europe, apparently didn't do much of his research in the U.S.  There's little if any evidence in the book that he spent much, if any, time examining the real ship.  And his list of sources has some enormous holes in it.  He apparently didn't consult Tyrone Martin's A Most Fortunate Ship, which is generally regarded as the most authoritative work on the Constitution.  Nor, it seems, did he pay any attention to the famous "Isaac Hull model" at Salem - our best contemporary piece of evidence as to the ship's appearance during the War of 1812.

Just how much difference do those defects in research make to the drawings (which, I suspect, are the biggest reason many modelers buy the books in this series)?  Well, the biggest gaffe in the drawings, to my knowledge, is in the framing plan on pages 60-61.  This diagram posits that she had a mixture of double and single frames.  A glance at the well-known mid-nineteenth-century photo of her in drydock with her planking removed (which photo the author also missed, it seems) establishes that the framing drawing is just plain wrong.  (For that matter, she's had her exterior planking replaced several times during my liftime; the Navy undoubtedly has plenty of photos of the exposed hull framework.) 

Most of the drawings of the deck furniture appear to represent her current configuration - with little or no acknowledgment that various prominent components have - or may have - been altered over the decades.  The drawings of the fiferails, for instance, show the simplified shape of the present ones, rather than the handsome, curved structures that are shown by the Hull model (and the Revell kit).

There's some doubt about the location of the foremast in the drawings.  There's some room for argument there; it appears that the mast may have been moved sometime during the ship's career. 

The book does have its strong points.  I really like the series of drawings of the various transom configurations; it looks like the author did do his homework there.  And though his bibliography has some really disturbing holes in it, it also contains some documentary sources that other writers have missed.

I personally consider it a good book with some serious flaws.  I wish the author and publisher would publish a revised and corrected edition; the ship certainly deserves it.

Personally, I wouldn't base a model on this book unless I augmented it with quite a few other sources. 

Big caveat:  this ship is not  one of my personal favorite subjects, and I don't claim to have kept up with all the criticisms of the book.  I'm typing largely on the basis of what I remember having read about it in this and other forums, and in published reviews.  Writing like that isn't a good idea.  I plead guilty

John,

Thanks for your excellent summation on the merits/demerits of this book.  I am not that familiar with it; it doesn't seem that I should buy a copy.  Thanks for saving me some money!

Bill Morrison

Great model Wade!  Like the era you chose, for the color scheme.

Prof Tilley is right about the Hull model, its a magnificent artifact, very well displayed and cared for at the Peabody Museum in Salem MA.   Some of you may recall my photos of the Hull model Constitution were posted here a while back.    

Question about the Revell 1/96 kit.  The hull shows three recessed planks running along the level of the gun ports, you can make out this detail in Wade's photos.   Why would the planking be thinner along the gunports?  Is it accurate for any time period?    Its always perplexed me.

Dave

I'm in full agreement with all here; great job, Wade.

Outstanding work.....always wanted to do one......rigging always has scared me into staying away.....

Thanks everybody.  I downloaded a good bunch of photos of the Hull model from some forum, may very well have been Uhu's - thanks!  Regarding the Anatomy book, I read a few reviews and comments on message boards and saw some pages that were scanned and posted online.  I shouldn't have implied the book is absolute crap without reading it.  What made me decide to skip it was the fact that I had some good references already, Martin's book and an essay along with the Hull model mainly.  Based on what I read on the AOS author's research process, and having a look at the stern drawings from the book made me think that at worst I would pick up some outright wrong information and at best I would be confused between sources, one of them having won the Constitution a Presidential Unit Commendation for restoration work.  From looking at a couple of scanned pages it does look like the book would be good for rigging information, but for me just following kit plans and direction was enough.  If I were to get another reference, Cmdr. Martin has written a book/booklet? on the ship's appearance geared towards artists and modelers.

Having had a look at those Marquardt stern drawings again after thinking about building a 2nd one of these and converting it to either a USF President or USF Constellation makes me think that the 1812 sterns he shows are actually a good representation of what the President's stern looked like.  They certainly don't match the Revell stern, the Hull model stern, or contemporary paintings of the Constitution (all red flags for the book), but they do look like paintings, contemporary and otherwise, of the President.  I don't know what's in the AOS book as far as trailboards and billetheads, but mmaaaybe if they're inaccurate for the Constitution they are accurate for the President?  If so that could make life easier researchwise for anyone converting since decorations are such a big part of the difference between ships.

Another interesting thing I found was some photos of long guns that were known to have been aboard the Constitution in this general time period.  They looked like they had been cast (duh) and that the "mold" was split in the same place as the kit guns.  So if you are getting tired of cleaing up those seams ... that's ok ... be a little lax there!

Thanks again, Wade

WadeK wrote:

Another interesting thing I found was some photos of long guns that were known to have been aboard the Constitution in this general time period.  They looked like they had been cast (duh) and that the "mold" was split in the same place as the kit guns.  So if you are getting tired of cleaing up those seams ... that's ok ... be a little lax there! Thanks again, Wade

Oh wow!  All that sandin' for nuthin'!  How ironic is that?  Were those photos on any website?

Sailing ships still scare me, and I come from a sailing family. Yours is very nicely done.

Wade, You've created a stunning beauty there. Love to see it. Those crowded pin racks remind me of what the Cutty Sark I built 48 years ago must have looked like. I rmemeber using piano wire and glue to move the ropes around and tie them. My back hurt for years after because I pulled a muscle. Now I'm getting to rigging a Revell Kearsarge and want to try the Revell       ratlines too, but not 100% sure. I have done a lot of work prefitting them but they will stand out up close for sure as some thing different from all the other accurate work. Maybe I can find a way to thicken the vertical component.  Ratlines would be the obveous suggestion for your next piece along with maybe figures and a diorama? I'm working on using 3/32" Bluejacket blocks on Kearsarge because they are closer than the Revell stuff. When I looked at the gun tackle I could finally see things were way out of scale there and the gun was too far back too. You made my day. Thanks, Paul

Dr. T, How could the planks be replaced so much without chewing up the frames? Are the planks bolted? Do they use epoxy to repair the old wood? Thanks, Paul

The planks are indeed held to the frames with iron or copper bolts.  (I think both materials were used; I'd have to do some reading to find out just where.  It's often said that the copper ones were supplied by Paul Revere.)

There are various approaches to the problem of fastening replacement planks to extremely old frames - the approach depending on the wood species, the condition of the frames, and the manner in which the ship is to be exhibited.  (Any professional conservator will tell you that, from the standpoint of conservation, floating a ship in water is a lousy way to maintain it.  But other considerations - such as public sentiment - have to be taken into consideration.)  The professionals have come up with quite a number of interesting new techniques during the past few decades; I imagine there's an article somewhere about just what they did to the Constitution, but off the top of my head I can't suggest where to find it.  The book about the ship by Thomas Gillmer (one of the naval architects who supervised the major restoration of the 1980s) has the most thorough coverage that I've bumped into.

Lots of people get disillusioned when they find out how much of what they see in that great ship is relatively modern.  Her hull and deck planking has been removed and replaced at least three times since the first time I visited her (in 1966).  As I understand it, nobody's absolutely certain how much of the original fabric is left - but it isn't much.

Professor Tilley, do you have any information about the recessed planks along the gunwale of the  Revell 1/96 kit?    If accurate, for what period and what purpose?   Thank you.

Dave 

Uhu wrote:

Professor Tilley, do you have any information about the recessed planks along the gunwale of the  Revell 1/96 kit?    If accurate, for what period and what purpose?   Thank you. Dave

I have to cop out on this one - at least for the time being.  Most of my book collection (such as it is) is inaccessible at the moment because the furniture on the first floor of our house has had to be stuffed into the same room.  (We're in the process of dealing with what the plumber eloquently described as a "catastrophic shower pan failure," which wrecked the dining room ceiling before I knew it was happening.  The resulting catastrophic checkbook failure has sent me into a semi-catatonic state.)  I think I may have copies of some drawings somewhere that might clear this matter up, but I'm not sure.

I do know three things.  One - the detailed cross-sections in Mr. Marquardt's Anatomy of the Ship volume don't show that planking configuration.  (But, as we've established, that book is far from a hundred percent reliable.)  Two - I can't see any sign of it in any of the pictures of the real ship that I took the last time I was in Boston, in 2007.  (But, as we all know, in many ways she looked different during the War of 1812.)  Three - I can't see any sign of it in any of the pictures of the Isaac Hull model that I took that same summer.  (But the Hull model's hull is solid, not plank-on-frame, and doesn't have much detail.)  None of that constitutes decisive proof one way or the other.

The Revell kit was based on the set of drawings by George Campbell that were commissioned by the Smithsonian back in (I think) the early sixties.  I have an enormous amount of respect for Mr. Campbell; I doubt that he would invent such a feature out of his imagination.  I don't know what his source may have been, but I'm strongly inclined to take his interpretations seriously unless I have some reason not to do so.

All this discussion of the ship's hull planking brings up one defect in the Revell kit that lots of people miss:  the bulwarks are too thin.  That isn't entirely Revell's fault; if the "shell" of the hull were molded to scale thickness the styrene would warp.  (The late lamented Imai, in some of its large-scale sailing ship kits, used some sort of plastic that was capable of being cast in much greater thicknesses.  But Revell, in 1965, couldn't.)  The bulwark has to consist of a frame with layers of planking on the interior and exterior.  The frames taper as they go up; Revell's bulwarks above the level of the spar deck are almost believable in thickness.  But down on the level of the maindeck they're simply too thin. 

The discrepancy shows up most conspicuously at the edges of the gunports.  It's occurred to me that it wouldn't actually take a great deal of time or effort to glue some strips of styrene inside the hull halves to fatten them up around the gunports.  (Only the edges of the strips would show.)  I haven't tried it, and I'd have to get hold of a decent set of plans to figure out just what the dimensions of the strips would need to be, but I don't see why the trick wouldn't work.

jtilley wrote:

All this discussion of the ship's hull planking brings up one defect in the Revell kit that lots of people miss:  the bulwarks are too thin.  That isn't entirely Revell's fault; if the "shell" of the hull were molded to scale thickness the styrene would warp.  (The late lamented Imai, in some of its large-scale sailing ship kits, used some sort of plastic that was capable of being cast in much greater thicknesses.  But Revell, in 1965, couldn't.)  The bulwark has to consist of a frame with layers of planking on the interior and exterior.  The frames taper as they go up; Revell's bulwarks above the level of the spar deck are almost believable in thickness.  But down on the level of the maindeck they're simply too thin.  The discrepancy shows up most conspicuously at the edges of the gunports.  It's occurred to me that it wouldn't actually take a great deal of time or effort to glue some strips of styrene inside the hull halves to fatten them up around the gunports.  (Only the edges of the strips would show.)  I haven't tried it, and I'd have to get hold of a decent set of plans to figure out just what the dimensions of the strips would need to be, but I don't see why the trick wouldn't work.

The question of the thickness comes in just about every Constitution thread. So, Dr. T, or anyone, what plans are available that would indicate the proper thickness? And when you say lower deck, does this mean the tween deck?

There are several set of plans with sectional views around.  Porf. Tilley's recommended Campbell ones being good.

But, you can also find photos of the present ship showing just how thick the gun port openings are.

Like this one:  http://www.hazegray.org/features/constitution/const06.jpg

Here's one showing some ot the upper bulwark thickness:  http://www.vistadome.com/oldironsides/constitution082.jpg

Herw one out of a large series of photos:  http://media.photobucket.com/image/uss%20constitution/ODSHOTEL/IMG_0672.jpg?o=119

Terminology gets quickly confused, too.  Not sure Constitution has a "tween" deck, other than the orlop.  The uppermost "deck" in the kit is a "spar deck" even though it is near continuous.  The deck the main guns (not the carronades) are on is the main deck, which makes her a 'flush-decked" ship in the parlance of the time.

I can help a little with these questions, but let me emphasize again:  I haven't done any research on the Constitution in many years, and I've never done any in unpublished sources.  Lots of people have dug deeper into the history of this ship than I have.  And quite a few of the books I do have on the subject are inaccessible to me at the moment, due to the carpentry work going on in our house (and the consequent stuffing of furniture into the living room, where most of the book cases are).

A little vocabulary may be in order.  The Constitution has a total of four decks.  The lowest is called the orlop deck (the term apparently having gotten started because this deck "overlaps" the hold).  Apparently there's some doubt as to how the orlop deck was originally built.  At present it's in two parts, fore and aft, with a big gap in the middle, but it may have originally stretched the full length of the ship.  (That's the sort of thing that real Constitution buffs know more about than I do.)  The next deck up definitely is a full-length one; it's called the berth deck, because it served as the berthing space for most of the crew.  Then comes the gun deck.  That's the one on which the ship's main battery (the big 24-pounder long guns) is located.  (It's sometimes called the main deck - but "gun deck" seems to be the preferred term, at least for this particular ship.)  The uppermost deck, on which the carronades are mounted, is called the spar deck.

The term "'tweendeck" doesn't seem to have been used often, if ever, in the context of sailing warships.  It's most usually found in the context of cargo and passenger ships, and the usual term is "'tweendeck space" - meaning simply "the space between decks."  (The 'tweendeck space of the Cutty Sark is the space between her upper and lower decks - the only full-length decks she has.)

Speaking of terminology - I'm not sure where the use of the abbreviation "U.S.F." got started, but it really isn't appropriate.  As a commissioned warship of the United States Navy, the Constitution is entitled to use the designation "U.S.S." (United States Ship).  We don't call the destroyer Kidd "U.S.D.," or the Arizona "U.S.B.S."  And I don't imagine anybody's likely to talk about "H.M.S.O.L. Victory."  Whether formerly commissioned warships are entitled to be called "U.S.S." is, I guess, arguable, but I'm inclined to think the answer is yes.  Nobody seems to balk at references to the U.S.S. North Carolina.  My suggestion is that we give "Old Ironsides" the full dignity of the label U.S.S. Constitution.

At any rate, I'm aware of three sets of plans of this ship that really deserve to be taken seriously.  The set drawn up and published by the Navy Department, back during the big restoration project of the 1920s, shows her in considerable detail as she appeared after that restoration was completed.  I have a copy of that set somewhere; I bought it many years ago through Model Shipways, but I don't know where to buy it now.  George Campbell drew his set of plans for the Smithsonian in the late 1950s or early 1960s; these are the plans on which Revell based its 1/96 kit.  Copies can be bought from the Smithsonian for the cost of reproduction. 

The most recent set is the one drawn by Lawrence Arnot for the Bluejacket kit.  Arnot was not a professional draftsman (or, for that matter, a professional historian), but he did a great deal of research and consulted extensively with Captain Tyrone Martin, probably the foremost authority on the ship's history.  Bluejacket sells those plans, along with a big instruction book, separately from the kit.  I haven't seen them myself (the price, about $60.00, is more than I can handle for the plans of a model that I'm not going to build), but they have a fine reputation.  If (heaven forbid) I was going to build a model of the Constitution in her 1812 configuration, I'd probably want to get hold of both the Campbell and Arnot plans.

That's about the best I can offer on this subject.  Good luck.

"I'm not sure where the use of the abbreviation "U.S.F." got started ... "

I'm not sure, but I'd bet it got started in 1797 or so.  Most things I've read have shown that the early Navy referred to their vessels more specifically than they do now.  Therefore, the Constitution being a frigate, she was officially designated United States Frigate (USF) Constitution.  Same system with brigs, schooners, etc.  If you have a close look at the contemporary sail plans and throughout the appendix of Chapelle's book you'll see they only refer to ships of the line as ships.  Everything else is brig, schooner, frigate, etc.  As late as 1934, she was still referred to as U.S. Frigate Constitution, at least in postal cancellations.  I doubt the Post Office gave her that designation rather than USS if the Navy wasn't ok with it, considering other cancellations read "USS ____."  

http://www.postalhistorystore.com/servlet/the-1274/Old-Ironsides-U.S.-Frigate/Detail  

We don't refer to the Kidd, et al as USD Kidd because it was built in the 20th century as opposed to the late 18th or early 19th, different ways to name and designate ships. 

My model depicts the Constitution as she appeared in late 1812-1813, when she would have been referred to as USF Constitution.  Much of modelling being an attempt to capture a particular thing in a particular moment in time, that's how I refer to this model and its subject.  She wasn't big enough and didn't have enough guns to be a "ship," like the Columbus for example.  When referring to the actual ship or a model depicting  such in the present day, or going back 75(?+-) years than I refer to it as USS Constitution.  If anyone believes I don't think the ship deserves its full measure of dignity because I refer to the subject by contemporary parlance rather than current, then they are WAY offbase.

Let's back up a bit here.  My last post certainly wasn't intended to generate any offense; it was intended to bring up a curious little matter of military semantics.  If it came across in some other manner, I certainly apologize.

The point of contention here - and it isn't really an important one, in the grand scheme of things - is not whether the ship in question was referred to as a "U.S. frigate" (that's obvious), but whether the use of the abbreviation is appropriate.  The labels "U.S. frigate Constitution,"  "U.S. battleship Arizona," and "U.S. destroyer Kidd" certainly are.  My contention is that the use of abbreviations for such terms is less so.

The use of abbreviations to precede the names of warships (and merchant vessels, for that matter) is an interesting topic - which some etymologist (which I most emphatically am not) would do well to study systematically.  I've encountered some discussions in articles, for instance, of the origins of the term "H.M.S."  Some historians think it's anachronistic prior to the eighteenth century or thereabouts.  Maybe they're right.  When I was working on my book about the British navy during the American Revolution I had occasion to look at so many contemporary documents with British warship names in them that my eyes glazed over.  The phrase "his Majesty's ship" appeared hundreds - probably thousands - of times, but I can't recall ever bumping into the actual abbreviation "H.M.S." in any document of the period.  (That may be in part because, in that bygone age, people writing such documents weren't as worried about saving time and ink as we are.)  I think I can recall the phrase "H.M. ship," (used in similar contexts to "H.M. government" or "H.M. regiment"), but never "H.M.S."  (The British, who of course didn't acknowledge the legitimacy of the Continental Congress as a national government, had a big problem talking about American warships during the Revolution.  I know of one document that referred to a group of privateers as "vessels of his Majesty's Rebellious and Pyratical subjects arm'd for war.")

I don't have as much first-hand experience with documents after 1783.  I have the general impression that "H.M.S." came into use somewhere around the Nelson era, but it may have been later.  (I'm pretty sure that the full original title of William Bligh's book was The Mutiny On Board H.M.S. Bounty.  That ship was referred to in many contemporary documents as "H.M. Armed Vessel."  I'm not sure whether the abbreviation "H.M.A.V." appeared on any of them; it sticks in my mind that it may have.)

Phrases like "his Majesty's sloop" and "his Majesty's brig" were quite common in the letters I looked at.  It took me a while to figure out that when an eighteenth-century British officer used the phrase "ship of war," he ordinarily was talking about a ship-of-the-line.  ("The channel into the harbor is deep enough to accommodate any vessel smaller than a ship of war."  I didn't encounter the term "man of war" often - if ever.)  But abbreviations are extremely rare, if not unheard of, in such documents. 

The unpublished documents I've studied haven't included much in the way of American ones.  I do know, about as certainly as one can, that the phrase "United States Ship" was not used during the Revolution.  (The American navy that fought in the Revolution was the American Continental Navy - which was not a direct ancestor of the present U.S. Navy.  The Continental Navy ceased to exist in 1785, when the last of its ships was sold.  There's room for argument about the birth date of the modern U.S. Navy, but it certainly took place during the administration of either George Washington or John Adams.)  The American documents of the sailing ship period that I've seen, like the British ones, haven't used abbreviations at all.  They refer to ships as either "United States Ship" or "United States Frigate," "United States Sloop," or whatever.  I'd have to do some checking to see how common "U.S. frigate" or "U.S. brig" was, but, again, people in that period didn't use abbreviations of any sort as much as we do.  (Were we to be transported back to, say Boston or Washington in 1812, I wonder how often we'd hear people say "U.S." in conversation.  I honestly have no idea - but my guess is that they wouldn't use it as often as we do today.)

One curious document I bumped into at the museum where I used to work was a logbook maintained on board the Confederate raider Florida.  It was a big, ledger-sized, leather-bound book with pages made of high-quality paper that had held up beautifully for well over a hundred years.  It was, in fact, a standard U.S. Navy logbook; apparently some officer of the Florida had gotten hold of it somehow (it would be interesting to find out just how), and the captain had decided to use it because it was so obviously of high quality.  The pages had lines printed on them like a modern ledger, and at the top of each page were printed the words "Log of the United States Ship __________________."  On every page the word "United" had been neatly lined out and the word "Confederate" written above it.

I think it's generally agreed among historians and Navy people that "U.S.S." is appropriate for all ships commissioned since the foundation of the modern U.S. Navy.  I don't imply that "U.S.F." is disrespectful in any sense.  But there's something to be said for consistency.  My vote is to either spell out "U.S. Frigate" (or, better yet, "United States Frigate") or to use the abbreviation "U.S.S."  The nameplate on the one American sailing warship model in my meager collection reads "American Continental Frigate Hancock, Launched 1776."  I think my next one is going to be the WWII battleship North Carolina.  If I ever finish it (highly dubious), the nameplate will read "U.S.S. North Carolina."  If - heaven forbid - I ever do another Constitution, I'll make a nameplate that says either "U.S. Frigate" or "U.S.S." - probably depending on how much room there is on it.

Let's acknowledge that, in the grand scheme of the universe, this is pretty trivial stuff.  But it is kind of interesting.  And if anybody wants a really great cure for insomnia, I'll be glad to launch into one of my disquisitions on whether and when the word "the" ought to be used in front of the name of a ship.

That is just awesome work.

Mike

Great work indeed, and I commend you for going further and not making the ship look like the typical out of the box for your first time.  I think the model looks much more applealing with the yellow and off white decor.  I also think your rigging is very good and you did a great job on those rubber "glue strings" that are the kit ratlines.

I have built the kit using both the kit supplied ratlines and have tied my own and would agree with your decision to use the kit supplied.

Great job,

Scott

Damn, that's fine work.

Sorry to pop up this old thread - but I missed that interesting discussion - and I would like to see the model! Any possibilty?