I imagine you're talking about the privateer Rattlesnake from the Revolutionary War. A good place to start is in the works of Howard I. Chapelle: The History of American Sailing Ships and The Search for Speed Under Sail. I believe there's a discussion of the ship in each of those.
If I remember correctly, the Rattlesnake isn't actually a well-documented vessel - or even an especially important one in terms of historical events. She's a popular model subject mainly because an authentic, contemporary set of plans for her exists: she was captured by the British, and taken into the Royal Navy (under the name H.M.S. Cormorant, if I remember right). The British had the estimable habit of taking the lines off every ship they took into their navy, so the lines and deck plans of the Rattlesnake are in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Back in the 1960s Model Shipways produced a nice solid-hull Rattlesnake kit, with plans by George Campbell. I believe the firm, under its new masters, Model Expo, still sells a Rattlesnake kit, but in the plank-on-bulkhead format. I haven't seen the kit itself, but I have seen pictures of it; it doesn't look like one of the company's best offerings.
The other reason for the popularity of the Rattlesnake among model builders is that she was a beautiful little ship. She has most of the features of a full-rigged 18th-century warship, in a scaled-down format; she's about the smallest three-masted, full-rigged warship with raised quarterdeck and forecastle that I can think of. She makes a beautiful model in any format.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.