Lindberg's "USS Alliance", another kit question

I don't think so.  I've never bought this kit, but I remember looking at it when it was issued (under the Pyro label, in the late seventies I think) - at the same time as the Joseph Conrad kit (which I did buy).  I don't know what ship, if any, it represents.  If I remember correctly, the information on the side of the box was utter nonsense - and the U.S. Navy never operated a training ship named Alliance. 

I remember bumping into this question in (I think) one of those short-lived magazines about plastic ship modeling a few years ago.  Nobody in that discussion was able to figure out what the kit represented either.

It's hard to imagine that a model company would dream up a ship out of thin air, but I've never read any reasonable explanation for this thing.  At the time of the kit's original release Pyro was on the verge of going out of business; I think that batch of ships may have been just about the last new kits the company ever produced.  Perhaps that situation had something to do with the problem.  Maybe somebody else on the Forum has an idea.

I found what may be the answer.  Here's a link to the Naval Historical Center's entry under the name "Alliance":  http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/a/alliance.htm

Scroll way down - past the history of the Revolutionary War frigate and most of the interesting story of the 1877 gunboat.  Near the very end is a discussion of how that ship underwent an extensive overhaul and was converted into a "sailing vessel," for use as a training ship for landsmen.  Maybe this is indeed the ship represented by the old Pyro kit. 

Why in heaven's name a kit manufacturer would pick this vessel for a subject, with so many important ships out there waiting to be kitted, I have no idea.  As I said in my last post, Pyro in those days probably was getting desperate.  Maybe somebody in the company happened to stumble on a set of plans for this ship and thought they looked nice.  Or maybe the intent was to make a model of a Revolutionary War frigate, and the people responsible for designing it, having gotten a set of plans for a ship named Alliance  from the National Archives, didn't know what they were looking at.  (One would think the propeller would have given them a clue - but kit designers have done dumber things than that.) 

At any rate, this kit is a real curiosity.  I wouldn't spend much good money on it, but it is indeed a matter of some interest. 

 

Mr. Tilley, your assumption is correct.

According to The Old Steam Navy, Volume 1: Frigates, Sloops and Gunboats, 1815-1885, by Donald Canney (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1990), the Alliance was one of four Enterpise class gunboats authorized in 1873. Displacement is given as 1375 tons, and dimensions as 185' x 35' x 16'2" (depth of hold).  Original armament was 1 x 11" Dahlgren on pivot and 4 x 9" Dahlgrens on broadside.  

Carmike,thanks for the useful info. Do you know if the enterprise class gunboats have any connection with a civil war ship class design ?

The ships appear to be a further development of the Civil War Kansas-class gunboats (836 tons displacement, 179'6" x 30' x 12' (depth of hold)) but with fuller lines than the earlier ships.  Canney reports that one of the Kanas-class gunboats, U.S.S. Nipsic, was rebuilt to the same plan as the Enterprise-class ships but not completed until 1879.  According to Canney, the Kansas-class gunboats were themselves an improved version of the "90 Day" gunboats constructed at the start of the war.  It looks like the armament for thes ships varied a bit with some being outfitted with a 1 x 100-pdr rifle (Parrott?) or 150-lbr rifle on the pivot with 2 x 9"and 2 x 20-pdr; while other ships mounted 6 x 32-pdrs in lieu of the 9" and 20-pdrs.  

Carmike, you provide magnificent info. Thank you very much ! Now my last question does the lines of enterprise class resemble to any of the confederate cruisers ?

I actually bought this kit, as I'm particularly interested in this era of ship development,  I'd never seen the kit before and $9.99 seemed a fairly reasonable price. If anyone is interested I'll post some close-ups of the parts/sprues when the kit arrives in the mail.
If I can find enough references I'll probably convert it to the original gunboat configuration. Scratchbuilding the armament will be a challenge, possibly lathe turning is the best option.

The kit arrived in the post today - after comparing the parts to photographs, it definitely seems to resemble an Adams-class steam sloop/gunboat like the Alliance fairly closely.
However there are a few odd things about it, notably the armament. It has no less than 32 cannons in gun ports on the lower deck, plus 4 smaller pedestal-mounted guns (which look a lot like late 19th-century "quick-firing" guns) on the spar deck, two each at the bow and stern. (These are not shown on the box art)

According to Wikipedia, it was armed with four 9" and one 11" gun (probably Dahlgrens) and one 60-pounder breech-loading gun. I assume the two heavier guns would have been pivot-mounted on the spar deck, like the 11" guns on the Kearsarge I'm currently building, but would the lighter guns have been on the lower deck?

The armament supplied with the kit seems completely fictitious. 32 broadside guns seems more appropriate for a sail-era frigate, whilst the smaller guns are the sort you'd find on a late 19th or early 20th-century warship.

The deck fittings also don't look quite right - the funnel is too short, and I think the "flying bridge" (is this the correct term?) is in the wrong place - but it's hard to tell as there aren't many good photos of this class of ship, and none of them show the deck clearly.

Here's a photo of the box art and of the hull + deck:

I'm leaning myself out of the window really far (mainly because I don't have the Canney at hand at the moment which should yield the necessary information), but if I remember correctly Alliance underwent a substantial rebuilding before she was turned into a sailing training ship. This rebuilding included joining poop and forecastle with a continuing deck and getting rid of all the previous armament, thereby effectively totally changing the look of the ship. The funnel was done away with as well, replaced by a simple stove pipe. The guns fitted were probably for training, but this is where my memory completely fails.

In order to get back to the original configuration, you would therefore have to cut her down one deck from a point in the vicinity of the foremast to one in front of the mizzen mast. I have this kit as well and looked into this a few years ago only to turn away from the project because it seemed to be quite daunting to me.

Jorit