Airfix Wasa rigging questions

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I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to help much with these particular rigging questions, because I don't have the rigging diagram.  My first inclination when I was reading number 1 was that the lines in question were the jeer tackles, but you seem to have ruled that out.  My best guess is that they're what was known in the English navy as masthead pendants.  In English practice the pendant was a heavy line (the same diameter as the lower shroud) seized around the masthead, with a large single block or thimble seized in the lower end.  A heavy tackle rigged to that block or thimble was used to tighten the lanyards of the lower deadeyes.  When not in use for that purpose they were, in English ships, generally stowed away, but sometimes the lower end of the tackle was hooked to an eye in the channel.  The lines you've described sound like they might be a Swedish variation on the same concept.

The gear for hoisting the topmasts was known collectively as the topropes.  Again, I know next to nothing of Swedish practice, but according to James Lees's The Masting and Rigging of English Warships, 1625-1869, English ships did leave their topropes set up most of the time.  I imagine Swedish ones did too.  In the case of the Wasa, since she was on her way out of the harbor on her maiden voyage when she sank, it seems reasonable to suspect that she kept her topropes set up throughout her seagoing career - such as it was.

I've never had the good fortune to visit the Wasa.  I was most interested, though, to read the short piece about her in the latest issue of Ships In Scale magazine.  It seems the researchers at the Wasa Museum have been doing some high-powered research about her color scheme, and have come to some rather surprising conclusions.  They are now convinced that the upper sections of the bulwarks, which are generally depicted as a beautiful, indigo blue, were in fact a deep red.  And the majority of the carved figures, instead of being gold-leafed, were painted in natural colors.  If I had built that excellent Airfix kit prior to reading that article, I probably would be considering hari kiri at this point.

Hello prof. Tilley,

Thank you very much for your answers.

Unfortunately I finished most work on the Wasa (or Vasa actually) before my trip to Sweden. After arriving there I soon found out that things looked rather different then what was sitting on my workbench. In most aspects the kit resembles the actual ship. However, there are a few reconstructions made on the ship that weren’t there at the time the kit was made.

Although I didn’t commit hari kiri (yet) I am planning on doing this kit again some time. There are however quite some changes that have to be made. The ship will be painted red instead of blue. A lot of belaying points have to be created as well as a new railing on the bow. The windows will be cut out and filled with glass. The big lantern on the poop deck will be discarded as there is no evidence that the real ship ever had one. At least the shape and the location of the lantern are as of yet unknown. Painting all the sculptures in natural colors seems almost impossible in this scale (1/144). To be honest, the samples the museum shows look rather awful. Don’t get me wrong, it looks nice on a single statue but I can’t imagine the whole ship being covered in bright colors. A second bowsprit lashing has to be made which requires making a hole in the beak etc. etc. etc. A rather daunting task but certainly worth the trouble when one has seen this beautiful ship in real life.

One more question: are there any after market blocks available in this scale or does someone have any ideas for simulating them?

Thanks,

Bluejacket (www.bluejacketinc.com) makes some very nice blocks, deadeyes, etc. cast in Britannia metal.  The two or three smallest block sizes probably would be about right for most of the major standing and running rigging of a 1/144 Wasa.  (I've seen it spelled with a V and a W; I gather the W version is in effect a transliteration into German.  If I remember right, the nameplate in the Airfix kit has "Vasa" on one side and "Wasa" on the other.)  Bluejacket blocks require some cleanup, and the grooves around them often need to be filed deeper.  They also have to be painted (or otherwise colored).  And they aren't cheap.  But they're excellent replicas of real blocks.

The smallest blocks in the Bluejacket range are 3/32" long.  On 1/144 scale that's a little over a foot - a pretty large block.  For smaller ones, the best suggestion I can offer is a very old one:  tie neat knots in the rigging where the blocks should be, and give each knot a touch of white glue.  If you mix a little acrylic hobby paint of the appropriate color in with the glue, it will be stiffer and you can shape it, just before it dries, into a reasonable, block-like shape.

It's unfortunate that our ancestors didn't always have exactly the aesthetic tastes we think they should have had.  I agree completely that the ship would have looked better with gold-leafed carvings on a blue background.  But seventeenth-century people seem to have been fond of color - as people of most generations have been.  I'm reminded of the oft-cited example of the Parthenon, which apparently was painted in rather garish colors originally.  I'm also thinking of the generations of people who grew up thinking that colonial American buildings were painted in pastel colors, because of the "authentic Williamsburg colors" that the paint companies used to sell.  Those colors, in many cases, were indeed matched meticulously to the paint on buildings at Colonial Williamsburg - after those colors had been fading in the weather for almost two hundred years.