Question on ketch-rigged ships

         What would be an interesting model to build, is the 8 gun ketch NONSUCH. Constructed in Essex, England in 1650, this vessel was responsible for the founding of the Hudson Bay Company in 1667. This company, once had a monoply on the fur trade in British North America, through its network of trading posts. The Hudson Bay Company is considered one of the oldest commercial corporation in the world since its royal charter was granted on May 2, 1670. Known for its department stores in Canada, the company has its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario.

  Plans for the NONSUCH can be located by contacting,  www.heritagepublishingco.uk/more products

          Montani semper liberi !          Happy modeling to all and every one of you.

                                               Crackers      

Yes- there's some scope for an interesting model in there somewhere. Wish I hadn't started digging around now- I have enough on the go!

I just noticed the link t o the Danske maritime museum database doesn't work. The Ketch I had my eye on is called 'Amager', which includes a full set of drawings for her including deck plans. Assuming you haven't already found it!

good luck.

Will

Many thanks for the useful tips! I'll try to track down the Marquardt book, that shouldn't be too difficult.

I'm right now looking into Chapman (why oh why didn't I think of doing that myself...) and the privateers certainly look interesting. According to the description these privateers were pretty well armed, but that should be variable anyway.

Also, I've started to trawl the Danish maritime museum, a site of which I was shamefully unaware (but which will come handy next term when I have to teach something on naval-related databases... ). So even if the model never sees the light of the day, I now have another tool in the box to torture my students!

The Royal Yachts are very tempting, but probably beyond my abilities - particularly the freeze-esque decorations look daunting. Then again it's 1/150odd, so perhaps worth a try. There is an interesting build of HMY Fubbs over at Model Shipwrights - hmmmmmm....

Jorit

You might also find this contemporary model of a Ketch at the National Maritime Museum (UK) rather jolly. It is a very rare example of a contemporary full-hull, rigged model of an eighteenth century merchantman.

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/object.cfm?ID=SLR0526

Although to kitbash a plastic model of  a vessel like this you would be better starting with a HMS Bounty model!

Will

edit- If you really fancy dressing the model up, howabout a Royal Yacht. Here's HMY Katherine in all her glory. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/espenett/book2/images/Chapt204_html_m1a615f9f.jpg

HMY Fubbs would be a good candidate too.

Another good source is Karl Heinz Marquart's Eighteenth-Century Rigs and Rigging.  (Original German title:  Bemastung und Takelung von Schiffen des 18 Jahrhundert; Jorit probably will find the original easier to locate.)  It's a big, expensive tome, but good libraries often have copies of it.  It covers the whole subject of rigging in that period pretty comprehensively, with lots of good illustrations.  (And it operates on a completely different level than the same author's "Anatomy of the Ship" volume on the U.S.S. Constitution, which has gotten some pretty serious criticism in this Forum and elsewhere - for good reason.)

The relevant volume in the "Conway's History of the Ship" series, The Line of Battle:  The Sailing Warship 1650-1840 includes a good overview of the type in naval service.  I imagine the corresponding volume on merchant ships (The Heyday of Sail:  Merchant Shipping Before the Coming of Steam does the same thing for commercial ketches, but I don't have that one in front of me.)

Hope that helps a little.

In which case, Chapman's Architectura Navalis Mercatoria  of the late 1760s might be of some help. Other than the positioning of the masts, the deck layout of such a vessel would be more or less identical to a contemporary brig or snow. Plate 61 (the one with all the rigging details) includes a couple of merchant ketch rigs to work from. 

As I said above though- the sharp lines (almost caricature) of the Pyro vessel might be difficult to disguise, certainly for a humble baltic ketch (Chapman calls this type by the Scandinavian name 'Galeas'- not to be confused with dutch Galleots, even though that was where their ancestry was laid).

As a rather bold suggestion however, Chapman includes a privateer ketch in is volume (a popular rig in C.18th Scandinavia) in plate XXIX (number 9) This would be an interesting model, and would allow the hull of thePyro bomb ketch to be used much more legitimately.

In this vein, why  not have a search on the Danish maritime museum's website database of drawings? You might find something of use. here's a good ketch, which includes deck fittings (so rarely included in plans, and one the aspects of ships which Chapman rarely dealt with):

http://www.orlogsbasen.dk/billed.asp

Having looked through my  copy, of Architectura Navalis Mercatoria, I notice from Chapman's rigging plan for his ketches that there are a few intersting features I hadnt notice before now- e.g-  the mizen doesn't have a stay,  just the foremost shrouds of the mizen drawn forward to be rigged to the mainmast channels. Interesting stuff!

hope this helps,

Will

edit- you may have noticed my avatar, which is a 'Yorkshire Billyboy', a ketch-rigged coastal trader of very full form that had direct lineage from the North sea ketches of the 18th century. The type was used pretty much unchanged right in to the last decades of commercial sail on the Humber coast of England.

Thanks for the answer! I actually have the Granado book, but didn't know the other title, which sounds highly interesting.

Basically what I want to do with the kit (which has quite a number of rather odd features) is give it a new deck and turn it into something generic that's not a bomb vessel (a merchant, yacht, something like that) - which is why I'm particularly after a deck plan.

Jorit

A Ketch (or in England at the date you're talking about more commonly called a 'catch') rig is essentially a ship rig missing it's foremast. The setup was quite handy in middling sized vessels and was used a lot in small trading vessels and packet boats from the middle of the 17th century. It was favoured in the Baltic/ North seas. The Dutch Smaak is similar but has a few important differences.

Naval Bomb ketches, because of the need to accomodate mortars and allow them to fire safely, are again, different in a few important respects from merchant Ketches.

Anyway- to cut to the chase, in terms of modelling bomb ketches- The Anatomy of the Bomb Ketch Granado  and Bomb Vessel- Shore Bombardment Ships in the Age of Sail  will give you much more info than you could ever put on an ancient small-scale plastic model!