Given that nobody really knows what the Jolly Roger looked like, much less the color, the interpretation is entirely your own.  That is why I like building old sailing ships, nobody can nit pick on the paints I used (within reason, my guess is that a neon green won't fly) unlike aircraft or armor.   My recommendation is go with what you think looks good, because nobody can really prove your painting scheme wrong.

Personally, I think the second one looks more pirate-ish and the second looks more European ship of the line.

First - welcome to the Forum!  I think you'll find it an enjoyable, helpful environment.  Some of its inhabitants are a little weird but the vast majority of us are relatively harmless.

Before doing any serious work on this kit, the first thing you need to do is establish what you're trying to accomplish - and be aware (in case you aren't already) of what the kit actually is.

It's not a scale model of a pirate ship; it's highly unlikely that any vessel operated by a genuine pirate ever looked like that.  The kit is a reissue of a kit Lindberg originally released back in the mid-1960s, representing the eighteenth-century French frigate La Flore.   The name "Jolly Roger" and other piratical paraphernalia are just a marketing ploy by Lindberg's current management - an effort to squeeze a little extra money out of some old molds.  The company has slapped pirate-related names on reissues of several old sailing ship kits.  The one in the other picture you posted, now being sold under the name "Captain Kidd," is a reissue of the German two-decked warship Wappen von Hamburg.  The most ridiculous kit in the series probably is the one Lindberg calls "Blackbeard's Ship," which is a reissue of Pyro's old Sovereign of the Seas kit.  For a seventeenth-century pirate to operate the Sovereign of the Seas would be about as likely as it would be for a modern one to operate the U.S.S. Nimitz.

French naval history sources are notoriously sketchy, and there's some doubt as to what actual ship - if any - the kit represents.  It seems to have been based on a more-or-less contemporary model, which wound up in the collection of the late President Kennedy.  As such, and taking its age into consideration, it's not a bad kit. 

If you do a search in this Forum for "La Flore" you'll find several useful, informative threads dealing with this kit. (The one started by Donnie, who built a really nice model from this kit, comes to mind immediately.  Several other folks have used it as the basis for models of H.M.S. Surprise, from the movie "Master and Commander."

To each his own.  The modeler wanting to turn this kit into a "pirate ship" is on his or her own; the result will be a fun piece of fiction, and how the modeler paints it is entirely his or her business.  If the objective is to build a scale model of La Flore, the second of the two photos is probably closer to reality.  The typical French warship of that period probably would have had an oiled, natural wood hull, perhaps with the exterior of the upper bulwarks painted black or dark blue.  The wales - the wide bands of thick planking just above the waterline - probably would have been tarred - that is, a very dark brown.  The other rails and moldings most likely would have been yellow ochre, with occasional touches (on the figurehead and transome decorations, for instance) in gold.  The underwater hull probably would have been coated with a mixture of white lead and tallow (among other concoctions), a dull off-white color when new and indescribably ugly after it had spent some time in the water.  (It looks like the model in the picture has a copper bottom.  Copper sheathing was indeed coming into use at that time, but the Lindberg hull halves don't represent the copper sheets.)  The insides of the bulwarks, and most of the deck furniture (capstans, gun carriages, etc.)  probably would have been a dull red. 

There's plenty of rooom for discussion, and personal taste, in all this.  I do recommend checking the various Forum threads to see what other modelers have done with this kit.  It's formed the basis for a number of really interesting projects.

 

Thanks for that wealth of info jtilley and all!-->
I just picked up this kit today at Hobby Lobby. i want to build Captain Hook's vessel. Pics of even the animated ships are hard to find. I plan to read the book Peter Pan to my daughter this month at bed time and renting that last movie that came out around 2003? I think. This will be my first sailing ship. I normally build sci-fi and armor. Any suggestions on the sails? I just bought teh kit on my lunch break it looks like tha sails are made of light plastic. I was thinking of making them from tissue paper...

 

 

We had a good, lengthy discussion of sailmaking some months back here in the Forum.  Here's the thread:  http://www.finescale.com/FSM/CS/forums/350912/ShowPost.aspx

If you're thinking in terms of a gift for a young Peter Pan fan, though, the sort of thing we discussed in that thread may be on an inappropriate level; you may find the vac-formed plastic sails in the kit satisfactory.  (I'm confronting the task of introducing my 8-year-old grandson to model building when he comes for a visit in a couple of weeks.  The last thing I want to do is discourage him with something that's too sophisticated and/or time-consuming for him.)

If you're a Peter Pan fan (as who isn't?), you might want to take a look at a book called Under the Black Flag, by David Cordingly.  He was the curator of a famous temporary exhibition about the history of piracy at the National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich, in the early nineties.  The book covers the history not only of piracy but of its public image; Dr. Cordingly devotes a whole chapter to Captain Hook.  I was interested to learn, for instance, that Peter Pan and company made their first appearances not in a novel but in a stage play.  (The initial staging called for an enormous glass reducing lens to be hung over the stage in front of Tinkerbell, so she'd be miniaturized for the audience.)  The novel came later.  The story of the play's genesis is told (very well, in my opinion) in the movie "Finding Neverland," the casting of which, for pirate movie fans, is rather interesting.  The author, James Barrie, is played by  Johnny Depp, and the theater manager, who has grave reservations about the practicality of the venture, is Dustin Hoffmann.

Actually there is (or used to be) a plastic kit that represented Captain Hook's ship.  (Incidentally, did that ship eve have a name?  I don't remember.)  In 1960 Revell issued a reasonably faithful scale model of the vessel that resided in the recently-opened Disneyland.  The kit has been out of production for a long time, but examples turn up on E-bay.  Here's a link:  http://www.finescale.com/FSM/CS/forums/639376/ShowPost.aspx

Good luck.  If she likes Peter Pan, try Treasure Island.

Good luck.  If she likes Peter Pan, try Treasure Island.

In the 1941, Heritage Press printing of "Treasure Island", "Hispaniola" is drawn as a two masted vessel. As I remember, in the movie version, with Robert Newton as John Silver, she was a three master. Did anyone ever come close to doing a model of "Hispaniola"?

http://www.finescale.com/FSM/CS/forums/560730/ShowPost.aspx

Hmmm....If I remember correctly, Stevenson (who certainly ought to know) describes the Hispaniola as a brig.  On the other hand, in the most recent film version - the made-for-TV one with Charleton Heston as Long John Silver - the part of the ship was played by a replica of H.M.S. Bounty - the one with the blue hull, which was built in the fifties for the Marlon Brando/Trevor Howard version of "Mutiny on the Bounty."  (That ship is still around; I think, on the basis of the TV ads I've seen, that it appears in the new sequel to "Pirates of the Caribbean.")  So those who like to build models of "movie ships" might want to consider starting with either the Airfix or (preferably) Revell Bounty - bearing in mind that the movie version was deliberately made about 20 feet longer than the original, to accommodate the big Cinemascope camera equipment and Marlon Brando's equally expansive ego.

The old movie Bounty is still around. Here is the website for it.

http://www.tallshipbounty.org/main.html

It includes pictures of the recent restoration.

The Jolly Roger kit is really a model of the French Frigate "La Flore"

Here is a link to one world class scratch builders model of the La Flore

 

http://homepage3.nifty.com/shiphome/flore-page.htm

 

Lon Hill

jtilley wrote:

Hmmm....If I remember correctly, Stevenson (who certainly ought to know) describes the Hispaniola as a brig.  On the other hand, in the most recent film version - the made-for-TV one with Charleton Heston as Long John Silver - the part of the ship was played by a replica of H.M.S. Bounty - t...

Shiver my timbers, I just read the book last week - too bad I left it in Europe, so I can't check. If I can trust my memory (and I often can't...), the Hispaniola was a two-masted schooner, and I think in one scene (after he cuts the ship loose and fights with the last remaining of the pirates) he refers to the mainsails as a fore-and-aft sail. But I'll better check the next time I step into a bookstore.

SirDrake

Now that my memory's been jogged, I think Sir Drake is right.  Maybe the vessel in Kidnapped was the Stevensonian brig I was thinking about.

We need to bear in mind that - even if we assume that Stevenson was truly familiar with nautical terminology, which he may or may not have been - the word "schooner" in British eighteenth- and nineteenth-century usage covered quite a bit.  A schooner might - and frequently did - have square sails on one or both masts.  Or it might not.  (From what I can gather, British usage generally referred to a vessel with square sails on one or both masts simply as a "schooner," and a vessel with no square sails as a "fore-and-aft schooner."  Americans, at least by the nineteenth century, seem to have done it the other way around, calling a vessel with no square sails a "schooner" and one with square sails a "topsail schooner," or "fore-topsail schooner.")  It would be a mistake to think that any of those terms had a really specific meaning that lasted through the centuries.  The defining features - the ones that got the word "schooner" applied to a vessel - seem to have been the fore-and-aft, gaff-rigged sails on both masts (or all three, or four, or whatever). 

The little Model Shipways Sultana might make a good Hispaniola.

I beleive someoen mentioned that the Revell Roger has been rereleased. Where can it be purchased? Do they have them at Walmart? I am trying to avoid getting it on e-bay if it's on a shelf at a retailer. Trying to stay in the less-than-$20 range and shipping always drives the price up. So far I have only seen one listing for it on e-bay for under $20 ($14.54 including shipping to my area) but hey if it's at "Wally World" for $10 I'll head there!LOL.

jtilley wrote:

Now that my memory's been jogged, I think Sir Drake is right.  Maybe the vessel in Kidnapped was the Stevensonian brig I was thinking about.

I remember (from a class project associated with reading the book) running into some contradictory items, like "roundhouses" being in the province of a "Snow."  Which then got into the finicky details of Snow v. Brig v. Brigantine v. Hermaphrodite Brig--all of which would have been plying the Hebrides during the book's, ans RLS's time . . .

I chose to sketch the ship from the bow and let the foremast obscure much of the "missing" or contradictory information; "vignetting" a generic "roundhouse" and mast top sketches to help fill in the space . . .

The old Revell "Peter Pan Pirate Ship" is indeed listed, with the new title "Caribbean Pirate Ship," on the "coming soon" section of the Revell/Monogram website.  Here's the link:  http://www.revell.com/News_Viewer.news0+M54ae017d99f.0.html

If some modelers welcome this thing - great; to each his own.  I have to confess that, in view of all the excellent scale sailing ship kits that Revell produced over the decades, it saddens me more than a little that this...thing, which isn't a scale model of any vessel that ever sailed, and was originally intended as a kids' toy, is the one they picked for re-release.  (It doesn't even vaguely resemble any of the ships in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean."  It's based on the old fifties animated "Peter Pan.")  Why not the Flying Cloud?  Or the Charles W. Morgan?  Or the Golden Hind?  Or the Mayflower?  Or the Viking ship?  Or the big Cutty Sark?  Or...well, never mind.

In regards to the paint scheme, there are a few ideas why ships were painted the way they were during this period.

Although there were "pirate" ships, most were very small, coastal craft. The ships that Hollywood has portrayed as pirate ships were actually privateers, which have been recored to be all types of ships and were to mount up to fifty guns, and at any time were either a decomissioned warship that was sold out or a merchant ship that was contracted by a nation to conduct military operations under private ownership .   Many of the well known pirates were privateers who decided to either perform as double agents, or at times just become freelance commerce raiders, and hence pirates.  But again, the most known pirates had small ships such as sloops and brigs that were fast, required small crews, so that each would get higher payouts when distributing the booty, and easy to maneuver in shallow water.

There are three types of ships we are talking about.  Privateers, Merchant ships, and Warships.  Privateers would have looked much like the model on the box of the Jolly Roger.  These were privately owned, and the owners were not concerned, nor wanted to spend the expense, of painting their ship, so it would be likely that the ship would have had the appearance of worn, natural wood or blackened with a tar preservative.  Merchant ships were painted to represent the company's colors that owned the ship and to the owners preference and willingness to pay the expense of paint, and were known to look anything from a privateer to a very colorful, ornate galleon.  Warships were known to always appear to look in top condition, and freshly painted depending on the wealth of the captain, and in some cases were painted in the colors of the nation the ship was serving.  French and Spanish colors depicted royalty and nationalism, hence the use of green, blue, white, or red, and the British painted their warships to resemble the look of "fresh oiled oak" so although the ship may have been rotten and worm eaten on the inside, it would always appear new on the outside.   Black was used not only because of the tar as a preservative, but to show strength, which captians wanted to emphasise to their crews, passengers, and enemies.

Scott

Sheesh, my brain is gonna fill up with all this info! Thanks scottrc. I have run off some coppies of the rigging diagram my "Jolly Roger La Flore". Gonna break out the color pencils and try some colors on it. I do this with most all of my kits so that I can get an idea of what works best. Planing on going with the red and black with gold trim and guilding...

As far as I know, no plastic kit of Hispaniola was made, but somewhere in my collection (boxes in the loft) I have two plans from the old "Hobbies Magazine" for making wooden versions. I think that they were produced in the 1940's and made models about 18 inches long. one was a waterline model. I've been collecting these old single sheet ship plans for some time now and currently have about 40, from an egyptian vessel through to HMS Vanguard. They are very simplistic compared to todays kits, but fun to make.

Okay  I have been doing some home work, I.E. a little reading and watching Discovery Channel. The book Peter Pan describes the Roger as "brig" and I recall reading some where on this site (jtilly I beleive it was) mentioning that that word has a different meaning depending on the year and whether the person speaking was British or American. So I have some questions:

1. What's a brig?

2. I finally stumbled upon the amusement park ship and it is out of proportion/cartoon like. If the Revell Jolly Roger (aka "Peter Pan Pirate Ship" bka "Caribean Pirate Ship"), which is supposed to be based upon this ship, is it true to the original and out of proportion as well?

Actually the definition of "brig" is relatively straightforward.  A brig is a two-masted vessel, square-rigged on both masts, with a big, fore-and-aft mainsail (sometimes referred to as the "brig mainsail") fitted with a gaff and boom, which are secured directly to the mainmast.

If, instead of being secured directly to the mainmast, the mainsail is secured to a small, vertical spar just aft of the mainmast, the vessel is a snow (rhymes with "thou").

If there are no square yards on the mainmast, but there are yards on the foremast, the vessel is a brigantine, or hermaphrodite brig.

If there's a gaff-rigged sail (with or without a boom - generally without) on the foremast as well as the mainmast, the vessel is a schooner.  ("Schooner" is the more complex term we were discussing earlier.)

In standard American usage, a vessel with two or more masts, all fore-and-aft rigged with no square-rigged sails, is generally called simply a schooner.  A two-masted vessel with gaff-rigged sails on both fore- and mainmasts and square sails on either one or both masts is called a topsail schooner.  The British often turned those definitions around (sort of); in nineteenth-century British texts a "schooner" usually has square sails on at least one mast, and a vessel with no square sails is called a "fore-and-aft schooner."  I wouldn't be so bold as to say that terminology was universal, though. 

If that's a little confusing, be glad you aren't wrestling with the word "sloop."  It's had at least half a dozen meanings over the centuries - some of them pretty confusing.

"Out of proportion" and "cartoon like" are excellent terms to describe the "ship" at Disneyland - and, for that matter, the one in the animated Disney movie.  So far as I can tell, the Revell kit is an accurate reproduction of it - i.e., wildly out of proportion as well.  It bears little if any resemblance to any ship that ever actually sailed; the kit seems to have been aimed primarily at kids who had seen the movie and/or been to Disneyland.  (I imagine the sales in the Disneyland shops alone would have been enough to make it a profitable venture for Revell.)  I notice that the current reissue in the European and American Revell catalogs meticulously calls it a "Caribbean Pirate Ship"  Note the careful avoidance of the phrase "Pirates of the Caribbean," or any direct reference to either of the two movies of that title.  It's pretty clear that Revell did not pay the necessary licensing fees to Disney.

Anybody embarking on a model of a "pirate ship" really needs to make a basic decision before starting.  A model based on anything that appeared in either of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, or on that Revell kit, or on any of Lindberg's so-called "pirate ship" kits, is going to be an exercise in fantasy - roughly analagous to a model of the Batmobile, or a flying saucer that appeared in a science fiction movie.  I don't intend that observation as a criticism; lots of beautiful and impressive models of that sort get built.  But if you want to build a scale model of a pirate ship, or even a believable  reconstruction of one, none of those kits is a reasonable starting point.

I've had an interest in pirate and pirate ships for a long time. Most pirate ships were stolen and they probably didn't care too much about maintance or what the ship looked like as long as it didn't sink. Most hauls of that era were black with a trim color. I would go with a worn weathered look and some battle damage, perhaps with some minor repairs. From what I've read many, if not most of the ships were modified to carry more guns. Often times they were re-rigged for additional sails. Pirates prefered ships with a shallow draft and a flat and fairly clear deck.

I do like the Jolly Rodger. It seems to fit what an early pirate ship would look like. There's a few pictures on the internet of the ship used in "Goonies". I think that has the look of what pirate ship should look like, but "Pirates of the Carrabean" might give you a better referance for colors.

http://www.pbase.com/sharpy/image/29599005

http://www.kipar.org/piratical-resources/pirate-carib-guide.html

http://pirateshold.buccaneersoft.com/index.php

http://www.freewebs.com/dforecastle99/Pictures/Ships/victory.jpg

 

When adding guns to a pirate ship, remember they installed a load of swivel guns and smaller bored cannons, and fewer large cannons.  The guns were for disabling the target and crew, not sinking it.  If you have the oppotunity to catch the "real Carribean Pirates" on the History Channel I would recommend watching it.  It is very informative on the crews and ships of a pirate fleet and entertaining as well.

I did see part of the special, but i think they really over played the idea that cannon fire would sink their prey.  Remember it was actually very rare for a wooden ship to sink that way.  The average merchant man would carry a minimum crew, so the large pirate crew would naturally try to carry by boarding.  Even Black Beard attempted to board, without realizing he was actually outmanned.  Only the large men-o war mounted big guns, so gun size on pirate ships was naturally limited to what was available.

 

I built La Flora last year and did much of the research you’ve seen in these threads.  A 36 gun frigate with a crew of nearly 300 was really much bigger than even Queen Anne’s Revenge.  If you want a pirate ship pick a little brig, schooner, or sloop.  Built this La Flora as the French scout chasing the British off New England.

Captain

France Enters the American Revolutionary War

The disastrous English defeat at Saratoga in 1777 was followed by war in 1778 with France.  France had already given private help to the American privateers and to their forces in the field. The rupture came in March when the British ambassador, Lord Stormont, was recalled from Paris, but actual conflict did not take place until July.

Neither fleet was ready for service but the French were somewhat more ready. On the 13^th of April a squadron of twelve sail of the line and four frigates was dispatched, under the command of the Comte d’Estaing, from Toulon to America. As no attempt was made to stop him in the Straits of Gibraltar, he passed them on the 16^th of May, and though the rawness of his crews and his own error in wasting time in pursuit of prizes delayed his passage, he reached the mouth of the Delaware on the 8^th of July unopposed.

The French fleet arrived off the entrance to Narragansett Bay on July 29, 1778, setting the stage for a combined French-American attack on Newport. On August 4 and 5, two of d’Estaing’s ships ran the West Passage and rounded the northern end of Conanicut Island.  On August 8, the main body of the French fleet, led by d’Estaing’s flagship, Languedoc, ran the East Passage under fire from British batteries and anchored off Conanicut Island. Having already evacuated Conanicut Island, Major General Sir Robert Pigot, the British commander, began to withdraw his forces from the northern part of Aquidneck Island back to the lines around Newport in anticipation of a siege. The forcing of the Narragansett channel resulted in the complete destruction of the British fleet of 6 frigates (Grand Duke, 40 guns, Orpheus, Lark, Juno, Flora, each 32 guns, and Cerberus, 28 guns), 3 corvettes, 220 guns and the corvette Sengal, and a bomb ketch, to prevent their capture by the French and To hinder the movement of the French fleet. Then on August 9, Admiral Howe’s fleet, reinforced by four vessels, appeared before the entrance to the main channel. The next day, taking advantage of a favorable wind extremely rare at that time of year, D’Estaing cut his anchor lines and stood out to sea. The two fleets maneuvered for two days, each trying to gain the advantage over the other. On July 12 gale winds scattered the ships. Skirmishes occurred later between isolated vessels of the two fleets, but Howe escaped and on July 20 D’Estaing’s fleet, which had not weathered the storm too well, dropped anchor off Rhode Island.  Meanwhile Admiral Byron had arrived in New York with a fleet of 13 vessels. This alarming news was brought to D’Estaing by the Marquis de La Favette, who boarded the flagship Languedoc as soon as it was ready to receive visitors. D’Estaing’s fleet was therefore obliged to leave General Sullivan and the American troops to go to Boston for supplies and repair work. The American general, rendered vulnerable by this decision, was nevertheless able to extricate himself and withdraw his men and artillery without great loss.  The light frigate La Flore returned to France in December, 1778 with dispatches from d’Estaing’s squadron which remained on the western side of the Atlantic.

 

French Frigate La Flora, Scouting for Comte de Grasse off Newport, sights a detachment of the English Fleet anchored in Narragansett Bay, July 29, 1778.

La Flore was part of the squadron under d’Estaing that forced the British to scuttle several ships at Rhode Island in August, 1778. La Flore returned to France in December, 1778 with dispatches from d’Estaing’s squadron which remained on the western side of the Atlantic. She served in the Mediterranean until she was taken out of service in 1787.

La Flora, 1768 until 1787, was a typical light frigate of the19th Century.  She had a 125 feet long gun deck, a total length of 180 feet and was 600 tons burden.  Her rating was 26 guns, but she actually carried 30 eight pound and 6 four pound long guns.  Her crew was 11 officers and 196 men.  The term “frigate” in the seventeenth century indicating a ship that was faster than usual.  In the age of sail, it referred to a ship smaller and faster than a battleship, used for scouting, patrolling, and escort work rather than fighting fleet actions.  The classic sailing frigate can be traced back to French developments in the second quarter of the 18^th century. These ships were full rigged and carried all their main guns on a single gun deck. The lower deck, where the crew lived, carried no armament and near the waterline. The sailing frigates were able to fight with all their guns when the seas were so rough that comparable two-deckers had to close the gun-ports on their lower decks. They sailed very well and were good fighting vessels due to a combination of long hulls and low upper works compared to vessels of comparable size and firepower.

Paul Hunter 2006

The proper identity of the ship represented by the Lindberg kit is a matter of some controversy.  It was originally issued under the name La Flore.  It seems to have been based on a well-known model, which somehow ended up in the private collection of John F. Kennedy.  (The kit appeared initially in the late 1960s.  A traveling exhibition of the Kennedy ship model collection made the rounds of several maritime museums at about that time; I remember seeing it when I was in high school.  I suppose it's possible that interest in that exhibition was a factor in making Lindberg choose that rather obscure ship for a kit subject.)

Several French frigates of the late eighteenth century were named La Flore.  One of them did indeed get captured by the British and renamed H.M.S. Flora; she played a rather prominent role in the American Revolution.  That, however, is not the ship represented by the Lindberg kit.  There's a series of four paintings, believed to be by Francis Holman, in the Peabody-Essex Museum of Salem, Massachusetts.  They depict the well-known fight of July, 1777, between the American squadron of John Manley and the British one of Sir George Collier, in which the Continental frigates Hancock  and Boston were captured.  (I got interested in all this some years ago, when I was working on a model of the Hancock.)  The art historians think the paintings were commissioned by the captain of the Flora, John Brisbane.  The ship in the paintings clearly is not the one depicted by the Kennedy model - or the Lindberg kit.

French naval history enthusiasts have spent quite a bit of time trying to sort out the histories of the various ships named La Flore.  (I think Jean Boudriot, the reigning expert on the subject, wrote an article about the subject for Model Shipwright some years back.  I'll see if I can find it.)  Some experts seem to think that the old model on which the Lindberg kit is based does not in fact represent an actual ship, but rather a proposed design for one.  Beyond that recollection I'd better shut up, lest I get out of my depth.

At any rate, for its age the Lindberg kit isn't bad.  Neither is the Lindberg Wappen von Hamburg, which was released at about the same time (and is currently being marketed under the ridiculous name "Captain Kidd").  Serious modelers need to remember that all these piratical names for plastic ship model kits are just marketing ploys.  I wonder what the designers of the original kits - if those individuals are still among us - think of such stunts.