Looking for Ranger

The problem is that nobody knows what the Ranger looked like. Experts have been looking for plans of her for more than a century, without results.

This is a common difficulty with ships of the American Revolution. The U.S. government of that period (such as it was) didn't have any systematic arrangement for archiving ship plans (or much of anything else); in many cases the naval architects didn't bother drawing comprehensive sets of plans in the first place.

The number of American vessels from the Revolution for which we have contemporary plans almost can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Rather crude original designers' drawings of the frigates Virginia and Randolph survived somehow, and the frigates Raleigh, Hancock, and Confederacy had their lines taken off in England after they were captured by the British. So did the privateers Rattlesnake and Oliver Cromwell. (I'm working from memory here, but I think I'm right about all those.) That's about it. One reason why we see so many models of those ships is that reliable plans are available.

When it comes to building models of famous ships for which contemporary plans don't exist, different modelers and different historians have different philosophies. The late, great Howard I. Chapelle, a fine historian who virtually created the scholarly study of the history of American naval architecture back in the 1930s through the '60s, once wrote an article for the Nautical Research Journal called "The Ship Model That Should Not Be Built." He put John Paul Jones's Bonhomme Richard at the top of his list. Chapelle's argument was that, since there's no way to know what that ship (or the Ranger, or the Mayflower, or the Golden Hind, or various other famous vessels) actually looked like, modelers ought to concentrate on ships that can be reconstructed with confidence. (He made quite a list of those, too. There are reliable plans of the Philadelphia and the Chesapeake, for instance - but when was the last time you saw a model of either of them?)

Another warship of the Revolution has become downright notorious among serious ship modelers. Back in the 1920s one of the first modern scale modelers, Charles G. Davis, published a book that included a "reconstruction" of the Continental brig Lexington. Davis was a fine modeler, a trained naval architect, a veteran seaman, and an excellent draftsman, but he didn't know much about the details of 18th-century shipbuilding. (In fairness to him, at that time scarcely anybody else did either.) His "Lexington" was full of anachronisms - fittings and other features that didn't appear until the 19th century. Furthermore, in the past few decades a couple of contemporary pictures of the Lexington have surfaced - and they make it clear that she didn't look much like Davis's plans. Unfortunately, though, the book got wide circulation and thousands of modelers have built Lexingtons based on those drawings. (There's one in the famous Crabtree collection at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia. I used to work there, and had the unpleasant duty of removing the name "Lexington" from that model's label and re-designating it "Armed Brig, Circa 1810." The uproar that change created was interesting, to say the least.) I was also disappointed when, a couple of years ago, ModelExpo started importing a wood Lexington kit from one of those Continental European manufacturers - and that kit, though it doesn't seem to be based on the Davis drawings, is just as bad. Apparently the people responsible for it paid no attention whatever to the research about the Lexington that's been widely published in the past thirty years. (There's a good article about this whole subject in the latest issue of the Nautical Research Journal, if anybody's interested.)

On the other hand, in the past few years several fine scholars have done some mighty impressive work on ships that were on Chapelle's list of "no-no's." Jean Boudriot, a Frenchman whose work I greatly admire, did a book a few years back in which he reconstructed the Bonhomme Richard in great detail, using as his basis a set of plans for a French merchant ship that was designed by the same man and built in the same yard. Boudriot's work, in my opinion, is superb - in terms of both research and draftsmanship. And William Gilkerson, a first-rate American marine artist who most definitely knows what he's doing, has published a book called The Ships of John Paul Jones, in which he offers a good, plausible version of what the Ranger looked like. (If I remember correctly, though, that book doesn't include plans - just Gilkerson's beautiful watercolors and sketches.) A model based on either Boudriot's or Gilkerson's work would certainly have my respect. The same goes for Harold Hahn's reconstructed plans of George Washington's first schooner, the Hannah. All of those scholars would acknowledge, though, that what they've produced is based on a considerable amount of guesswork - and subject to change if and when new evidence surfaces.

My last major modeling project was a scratchbuilt Hancock. Now, there's a nice subject for a model. She had one of the longest and most interesting careers of any sailing warship, serving in the American, British, and French navies. Contemporary hull and deck plans for her are available from the National Maritime Museum, in London; though there are no spar dimensions, we do have a set for the contemporary and almost-the-same-size Raleigh (which would be another good subject). If any kit manufacturer is reading this, please note.

Bottom line: if you want a model of the Ranger you're going to have to build it from scratch, and if you want it to be reasonably accurate you'll have to do a great deal of research. If you're looking for a kit that will produce a reasonably accurate model of a ship from the American Revolution - good luck. The Model Shipways Rattlesnake is the only one that comes to mind - and, if memory serves, it's not one of that firm's best or most recent efforts.

By now you probably wish you'd never brought up this subject. Sorry to be so long-windedly pessimistic, but this is one of my favorite topics. Good luck. It's a terrific hobby.

Coming from someone who knows NOTHING about sailing ships, I can relate to the problems of accurate plans, research, and simply not knowing what these vessels looked like. Even more recent ships, especially Axis, Yamato, Shinano, etc., have their share of mysteries.

Well written John, but I wouldn't expect anything less from History Professor!! :-)

Jeff Herne

Thanks, Jeff. You're right: the reliable reference material on ships is often surprisingly scanty - even for famous vessels. I found that out when I was doing some research for the Coast Guard. When I went looking for plans of the famous "Treasury" class cutters of the 1930s (Campbell, Spencer, etc.) I learned that the CG had lost most of the original blueprints.

My 53-year-old, Halfzeimer's-afflicted brain now remembers one more Revolutionary War-period kit that I didn't mention in my earlier post: the Model Shipways brig Fair American. This vessel is a bit of a mystery.

The kit is based on a model that's now in the Naval Academy Museum, at Annapolis. To my knowledge nobody has ever positively identified the vessel (beyond the name painted on the stern); there are records of several brigs of that name. One of them, I believe, was a Revolutionary War privateer, and that may be the one represented by the Annapolis model - but as I understand it that hasn't been confirmed. The old model certainly gives every appearance of being contemporary, though it's been restored several times since it came to the museum. The Nautical Research Journal has carried several interesting articles about it fairly recently.

Model Shipways has had Rattlesnake and Fair American kits in its catalog for at least forty years, but both have been through several incarnations. (I built the original, solid-hull Rattlesnake back in the early '70s.) The current versions are plank-on-bulkhead kits, and I can't claim much familiarity with them.

My poor old brain also remembers (from way, way back) a plastic kit from Pyro (known to the two gents who founded Model Shipways as Pirate Plastics) that was based on the Fair American. It was about four inches long, cost fifty cents (when my mother bought me one at the local drug store), and featured injected-molded sails and a hull that was pretty extravagently distorted. Pyro also did an equally awful little Bonhomme Richard (based on what sources I have no idea), and Aurora did a much larger version of that vessel (equally unattributed and equally awful). So far as I know, those are the only plastic kits of Revolutionary War vessels (unless you count the various H.M.S. Victory kits).

I positively love it when you two guys get going in this forum. I feel like I should be getting some college credits just for being here. Thank you! (just a little sidenote: I served on both the Ranger and the Lexington, [CVA-61 and CVT-16], I'm old but not that old)

What worries me most at this point is that our/my disgusting verbosity may have scared the originator of this post, jackgoterch, out of the forum. Jackgoterch, if you're still with us, please let us know.

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but how good are the plans for Hancock? I happen to be in the middle of trying to get a set from NMM. Thought it would be neat to build (or at least try) a ship from my hometown.

Well, here we go with another topic that's a little more complicated than it seems at first glance. The "Admiralty draught" of the Hancock (under her British name, H.M.S. Iris) in the National Maritime Museum is a typically excellent example of 18th-century British draftsmanship. Building a model from it, however, has three drawbacks. One, copies of plans from the NMM are notoriously expensive, and take a long time to get delivered. Two, the original was drawn with several colors of ink, which don't show up in the black-and-white reproductions. Three, the original is on linen, which has been shrinking and stretching for more than 200 years. I've never tried to work directly from such drawings, but people who've done so generally find they have to redraw large parts to make the lines work.

An alternative (the one I used on my model) is to use the drawings made by Howard I. Chapelle. Excellent copies of them can be had for a very reasonable price through the Smithsonian. Chapelle worked from the Admiralty drawings, and made sure the lines were fair. He also left out a number of lines (such things as the rising line of the center of the floor sweeps) that aren't especially relevant for model builders. Unfortunately these particular plans have minor problems of their own.

Chapelle included plans of the Hancock in two of his books, The History of American Sailing Ships (1936) and The History of the American Sailing Navy (1949). In the first, for some reason, he changed one rather conspicuous feature of the original: the odd shape of the bow at the level of the forecastle deck. (It's somewhere between the traditional, squared-off beakhead bulkhead and the round bow that was becoming fashionable at the time.) The deck plan in The American Sailing Navy is better (I think Chapelle became aware of the error), but still not quite right.

Chapelle frequently made additions to the old drawings he was tracing - in some cases with logic that more recent research has made questionable. I have doubts about the way he showed the gangways in the Hancock's waist (the Admiralty draught shows none), and he gave her boomkins for the fore tacks. (I think they went through holes in the forefoot, which holes seem to be indicated on the Admiralty draft.) He also left out some useful stuff that appears on the originals - including the thickness of the bulwarks.

When I did my model I worked directly from a copy of the Chapelle drawings, with a copy of the Admiralty draught to serve as a check. I didn't bother to get prints from Greenwich; the Admiralty drawings have been reproduced several times. (I think I xeroxed them out of The American Neptune.) I also made a trip to Greenwich while I was working on the model, and asked to take a look at the originals. I was only allowed access to a photographic negative, which was no more helpful than the xerox.

If you happen to have access to the British magazine Model Shipwright, you might want to take a look at the series of articles I did about the Hancock back in 1982 (gawd this makes me feel old). The text summarizes all the primary sources about the ship I was able to find - and includes a really nice reproduction of the Admiralty draught.

One other, fairly convenient source (including another modern set of plans) is Harold Hahn's Ships of the American Revolution and Their Models. Harold, a first-rate draftsman and an even better modeler, was working on his Hancock at the same time I was working on mine. (Neither of us knew it - though we lived about a hundred miles apart at the time.) His book came out after I was finished and I haven't studied it closely, but I have a great deal of respect for his work. He also offers his plans, on a large scale, for sale.

Bet you wish now you'd never asked the question. Sorry; this is one of my favorite topics. Good luck. Like I said earlier, she's a beautiful subject for a model.

Wow John. Thanks a bunch. Amazon has Hahn's book for 37 and the 2 Chapelle books for under 20 bucks (for both), so I guess they're as good a starting point as any. I didn't realize there was such a wealth of information for this ship. If only the Boston was as well documented.

The big problem with the Hancock is that there's virtually no contemporary documentary or graphic information about her from the deck up. I used the spar dimensions of the Raleigh, which was almost exactly the same size and built at the same time a few miles away, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

If you live in New England, be sure to stop by the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and take a good look at the series of four paintings by Francis Holman that depict the Hancock's capture. The images of the Hancock in them are pretty small, but they contain quite a few useful tidbits of information. Those paintings inspired the publication of another book that 's useful for Hancock modelers: Fired by Manly Zeal: A Naval Fiasco of the American Revolution, by Philip Chadwick Foster Smith. It was published by the museum and probably is scarce nowadays, but is the best and most detailed source on the Hancock's career in the Continental Navy.

Good luck.

Thanks. I happen to live in Newburyport, MA (main reason I want to build Hancock) and I've been meaning to stop by the Peabody-Essex Museum now that the renovation is done. Guess I know what I'll be doing Saturday. Thanks again. You've saved me quite a bit of time in research.

For a point of departure on the 'Ranger', I would explore the frigate 'Raleigh'. The Raleigh's design is well documented in Chappelle's 'History of the American Sailing Navy' (turn the page and you can compare it with 'Hancock')and was built in the same yard as 'Ranger' (Hackett's in Potsmouth, New Hampshire). Raleigh's design is different from the other Continental Frigates, reflecting the local shipwright's design biases. Ranger was built after Raleigh. Naval architecture was a slow evolutionary process... builders went with what worked for them before.. hull forms and arrangements would geneally be similar for a given yard and a general type of ship.

'Rattlesnake' was built by a 'maverick' designer and represented an 'extreme' hull design. It might not be a good point of departure, even for a speculative design.

Beyond Chappelle, I would recommend John Fitzhugh Millar's 'Early American Ships', 1986. (~$15.00 on http://www.addall.com/Used/ ) He also has a prior version of the book called 'American Ships of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods' 1978, if you can't find the former (more expensive and less info - but hardbound and prettier). He presents his viewpoints on the appearances and comparative dimenions for Ranger, Raleigh, Hancock, etc. and gives a good overview of the appearance and development of 18th century ships in general. Not a reference bible but a good point of departure for your project.

Mr. Millar is somewhat of an expert in speculative naval architecture, having been the driving force behind the HMS Rose (Russell Crowe's HMS Surprise for those of you have been off-planet) and Providence sloop replicas.

Good Luck and have fun.