SEARCH FINESCALE.COM

Enter keywords or a search phrase below:

HMS Victory rigging

11696 views
7 replies
1 rating 2 rating 3 rating 4 rating 5 rating
  • Member since
    November 2005
HMS Victory rigging
Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 5:57 PM
I have started on Heller's HMS Victory but do not intend to rig it with sails.  So can I assume that standing rigging is all that I would need to worry about or should the running rigging be attached?  The instructions assume the plastic sheets will be used.
  • Member since
    December 2003
  • From: 37deg 40.13' N 95deg 29.10'W
Posted by scottrc on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 6:12 PM
A ship with just standing rigging, and no running rigging, is like a prom queen wearing just a girdle and no dress.

When I really want to go all out in rigging a ship, I leave off the sails in order to see all the details, such as footropes, stays, and futtocks.  The dark tone of the standing rig and the light color of the running rig tends to give the model  balance too.

When I want to be lazy, or hide a poor rig, usually a screwed up standing setup or shrouds, then I put on sails.

For your first model, I would suggest doing the rig in the instructions, if you can understand them since they are quit a pain to decipher.  I know I really struggle with them.

Scott

  • Member since
    April 2004
Posted by Chuck Fan on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:02 PM
Unless you plan to depict her either sitting in reserve, or undergoing dock yard maintenance, you would have to install running rigging.   On a sailling warship in commission, running rigging is never removed except for maintenance.





  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:36 PM

Well I surely wouldn't want my prom queen to go with just a girdle, so we will give her the dress also.  Thanks for the reply. 

 

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 10:04 PM

One obvious point needs to be born in mind in any such discussion:  it's your model and you don't "have" to do anything to it.  There are, fortunately, no rules in the hobby of ship model building.

There are several ways to approach the matter of rigging.  "Standing rigging" is usually defined as the rigging that holds up the masts.  (Without it they'll fall over.)  "Running rigging" is the gear that's used to move the yards, gaffs, booms, etc. and the sails in order to maneuver the ship.  Running rigging can be further divided into three sub-categories.  Some lines are used to raise and lower the yards and swing them around to receive the wind.  These lines are virtually essential just to keep all the spars in position.  They include halyards, lifts, braces, and the gear associated with the gaff and boom on the mizzenmast.  It would be extremely unusual to see a ship without them. 

The second category of running rigging is attached to the sails, and is used to set and furl them and change their orientation in various ways.  The lines in that category include sheets, clewlines, buntlines, bowlines, jib and staysail halyards and downhaulers, slablines, reef tackles, and quite a few others.  If a ship was to be at anchor or tied up to a pier for a long time, the sails might well be removed from the yards and stowed - and that sort of rigging might well be removed with them. 

The third group of running rigging lines has miscellaneous purposes not directly related to the movement of the ship - gear for cargo handling, flag halyards, anchor gear, etc. 

Lots of modelers, taking into consideration such matters as scale, time, and personal taste,  adopt a compromise approach to running rigging.  Many perfectly respectable models have been built with just the running rigging in what I've just dubbed Category #1.  Those lines, in lots of people's eyes, make the model look reasonably believable and complete.  To do the ones in Category #2 it's desireable - indeed almost necessary - to fit the model with sails.  (Some modelers, including me, like the look of furled sails.)  In the absence of the sails, you have to do some odd things with the lines that normally would be attached to them - bowlines, reef tackles, clewlines, leechlines, etc.  It's possible to tie those lines off at points other than the sails, but a model rigged that way can look pretty bewildering.

Category #3 is pretty simple.  You'll almost certainly want to rig the flag halyards, and the yard and stay tackles, which are used for handling the ship's boats and other objects, are fairly straightforward.  You can show the anchors stowed at the bow, or include some or all of the gear that's used for handling them.

If you don't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, a workable approach might be to start by setting up the standing rigging and the running gear in Category #1.  Then sit back, imbibe some liquid refreshment, and ask yourself two questions:  how does the model look to me, and how much more time do I really want to spend on it?  If you're satisfied with it, that's what matters most.  If you want to add more rigging to it, you certainly have the option of doing so.

But it's all up to you.  Go to a good maritime museum and you'll see all sorts of variations on the theme of rigging in ship models - including some beautiful examples that don't have masts or rigging at all.

I agree with Scottrc about the Heller rigging instructions.  In fact I'll go a step further:  they're garbage.  They have three basic problems.  First, the English translation is a scandal.  (It apparently was written by somebody who neither understood French nor had attempted to build the model.)  Second, the designers adopted a system of cryptic diagrams and numbers that makes the job at least twice as confusing as it needs to be.  Third, the people responsible didn't understand how rigging works.  In one of the great howlers in the history of ship model kits, they made no provision for securing the yards to the masts.  That's downright laughable.

Rigging this model will be a lot easier if you get hold of at least one good book.  The Victory has been the subject of quite a mass of literature over the years.  Three books include good, comprehensive rigging diagrams for her:  John McKay's Anatomy of the Ship:  The 100-Gun Ship Victory; Alan McGowen's H.M.S. Victory:  Construction, Career and Restoration (with drawings by the same Mr. McKay); and C. Nepean Longridge's classic The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships.  All three are excellent works.  I think, though, that my first recommendation would be the Longridge book.  Despite the title, it's a detailed account of how the author built his 1/48-scale model of the Victory (which is regarded as a classic - and doesn't by any means include all the prototype's running rigging).  The drawings in it are beautiful and easy to understand.  Best of all, Longridge provides a verbal explanation of how each line leads.  To me, at least, that's preferable to a diagram that makes me sort out a bunch of numbers.  (Mr. McKay's drawings are masterpieces of the drafting art, but the rigging diagrams have little accompanying text - and only in rare cases to both ends of a line appear in the same drawing.)

One other thing you may want to bear in mind when you get to the rigging stage.  The blocks and deadeyes in the kit are just about worthless.  In a sense that isn't really Heller's fault.  A scale block or deadeye has to have a groove around it and at least one hole through it.  Styrene parts have to be made in rigid molds, and a rigid two-piece mold can't produce an object with a groove around it and a hole through it.  Most serious modelers who tackle this kit junk the blocks and deadeyes and replace them with either wood or metal aftermarket parts.  (My personal favorites are the ones made by Bluejacket - www.bluejacketinc.com .)  Other candidates for aftermarket part replacement are the belaying pins, hammock netting stanchions, and eyebolts.  Some (not all) of the belaying pins in the kit have sharp points (pure silliness), and eyebolts and hammock netting stanchions snap pretty easily when put under a strain.  Bluejacket sells nice brass belaying pins, and perfectly acceptable stanchions and eyebolts can be made from brass wire in a few minutes.

None of the foregoing is intended to detract from the fact that the Heller Victory is an excellent kit - one of the best products of the hobby industry.  Most of its problems are due to the inherent weaknesses of styrene as a material and to the limitations of the injection-molding process.  With the help of some aftermarket parts, a little basic scratchbuilding, and some good reference material to replace those wretched instructions, it can be turned into a masterpiece.

Good luck.

 

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    April 2004
Posted by Chuck Fan on Thursday, March 16, 2006 12:58 AM
BTW, two points if you plan to model the ship without sails:

1.  The top mast yards and top gallant yards (second and third yards from the bottom) are only hoisted into their normal positions when their sails are attached and deployed.     When the sails are not attached, the top mast yards and top gallant yards would be in their lowered position, resting on the cap of the mast below them.

2.   Flying jib boom, the long, slender, outter most segment of the bowsprit, is only ever deployed if the flying jib sail is deployed.    If you rig the ship without sail, the flying jib boom would be retracted until its tip is flush with the tip of the jib boom, which is the 2nd segment of the bow sprit.


  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:00 AM

Chuckfan is right about the topsail and topgallant yards.  You'll need to provide some means of fastening them (and the lower yards) to the masts; the Heller designers forgot about that.  In a couple of other threads we've discussed how that was done.  It involves making some simple gadgets called parrels - easy to fabricate, and not worth worrying about at this point if you're just starting the model.  I think most people who've spent a lot of time looking at ship models would agree with me that a model with raised yards and no sails looks - well, a little weird.

The flying jibboom was, in 1805 (the date the Heller kit represents), a relatively new innovation.  (James Lees's The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War says the first "issue" of flying jibbooms was in 1794.)  I don't remember how the Heller kit depicts it, but Mr. Lees says it was stepped more-or-less permanently on the bowsprit cap. 

All the spars of a full-rigged sailing warship, except the three lower masts and the bowsprit, could be "struck" - removed from their positions and sent down on deck - by the ship's crew at sea.  It was customary to strike the topgallant masts, for instance, pretty frequently when the weather got rough.  The jibboom and flying jibboom could be "struck" under similar conditions.  But Mr. Lees (who is generally regarded as the no. 1 authority on the subject) makes no mention of striking the flying jibboom as an ordinary part of taking in the flying jib.  In the section of the book devoted to "Rigging of the flying jibboom" the only lines he describes are a pair of guys (one on each side, leading to eyebolts either in or adjacent to the catheads), a "flying martingale stay" (leading down from the outer end of the boom, through a hole in the dophin striker, and up to an eyebolt in the bow on the starboard side of the bowsprit), and a pair of footropes (or "horses).  There's no permanently-rigged gear for hauling the boom in and out when the sail is set and furled. 

It's pretty well established that, in 1805, the Victory set four square sails on each mast:  course, topsail, topgallant, and royal.  (The mizzenmast actually had three, since there was no sail on the crojack yard - the lowest on the mizzenmast.)  Models of ships from that period, unless they have sails, rarely show the royal yards. In 1805 the royal was in the process of getting established as a more-or-less permanent part of the sail plan of British warships.  In earlier years the royal (often referred to as the "topgallant royal") was "set flying" - the yard, with the sail attached to it, was only hoisted into position when the sail was set.  I've often thought that 1805 was a little late for that arrangement, but most contemporary illustrations of the Victory, and most models of her (unless they have sails) show her without royal yards.  The Heller kit doesn't have them.  One could justify adding the royal yards in the absence of sails, but I wouldn't be inclined to do it.

One could certainly justify rigging the model with the flying jibboom housed - and the topgallant masts housed.  Lots of good, knowledgeable modelers, however, show all the masts, booms, etc. in their "deployed" positions.  I do suggest lowering the topsail and topgallant yards; there's a fairly general consensus that they look better that way, and that configuration certainly represents a real ship, without sails, more realistically.  But that, too, is strictly up to the individual modeler. 

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:36 AM

It may be confusing, Jarhead, but you must put the running rigging too, there is some rigging you do not have to put, the one typical of the sails.  There is a book you can find at low cost now, "HMS Victory, her construction, career and restoration", by Alan Mc Gowan, there are many illustrations by Mc Kay, and the price is now around £10.00 in the U.K.

Michel

 

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!

Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.

SEARCH FORUMS
FREE NEWSLETTER
By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. View our Privacy Policy.