Picking out an merchant galleon

Hi, all.  I've just ordered a Trumpeter Mayflower, owing in part to the very informative discussion in this thread - thanks!

I intend to convert it into a waterline model of an armed merchant ship, c.1580-1660, for use in miniatures gaming, as the scale (1:60) is very close to the so-called '28mm' figure scale.  I expect to replace most of the spars with wooden dowelling, and will attempt to model the hull so that it can be lifted off to reveal a simplified model of the interior.  To allow for room to manipulate the figures, it will probably be standing rigging only, perhaps secured with rare earth magnets so that the masts can be dismounted.

Cheers,

 

vonBerlichingen

P.S.:  This is not my website, but it may give you some idea of what I mean by 28mm scale gaming:

http://www.warcabinet.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/army_showcase%20TYW%20and%20ECW.htm

Restraining such a gun in a heavy sea may well have put more strain on the tackles than the recoil did. A rolling and pitching ship generates a series of extreme forces in a wide variety of directions, in nearly unpredictable sequences

   Having ridden out huricanes on the Atlantic, in a 2200 ton Destroyer, I can appreciate all the above, even things with welded tiedowns can break free. I was not thinking of smaller guns, such as those mentioned, recoil would probably be sharper, but with far less force. The thought of training tackles taking up that force is far more logical under those circumstances, and the use of other lines for securing the gun in heavy weather makes more sense. 

Mr. Lavery's reconstructed gun "rigging" arrangement is based, he says, on Henry Mainwaring's nautical dictionary, published in 1623. Lavery doesn't quote much of Mainwaring directly, but paraphrases him: "Mainwaring...implies [that] the breeching ropes were only fitted at certain times. He [Mainwaring] states...that the breech tackle was not used in fighting, but to restrain the gun in heavy seas." I agree that this arrangement seems awkward. (Among other things, the gunners must have figured out some way to keep the "side tackles" from running through the blocks when the gun recoiled. If they did that by putting a stopper knot of some sort in the line, it would have to be moved every time the gun was trained.) But Mainwaring is an excellent source that can't be ignored.

Just how much force a recoiling gun would put on the ropes restraining it is hard to say, because so many variables would come into play. The guns we're talking about here were quite small compared to, for instance, those of the Victory or the Constitution. (Lavery thinks the Susan Constant probably was armed with minions and falcons. The minion typically fired a 4-pound ball; the falcon, a 2-pound ball.) The barrels also were thinner for their length, and casting methods in those days were relatively crude. I don't know how much modern experimentation has been done in this area, but my intuitive guess is that the standard powder charge used in such weapons was relatively small. The recoil force must have been puny compared to that of a gun on board an eighteenth-century ship-of-the-line or frigate. (The carriage guns of the small ships we've been discussing actually weren't a great deal bigger than the largest swivel guns of the eighteenth century, which by definition couldn't recoil.)

Restraining such a gun in a heavy sea may well have put more strain on the tackles than the recoil did. A rolling and pitching ship generates a series of extreme forces in a wide variety of directions, in nearly unpredictable sequences - and a gun broken loose from its restraints represents a threat to the ship and everybody in the crew. It's no surprise that the phrase "loose cannon" has worked its way into the language.

The verbiage of those old texts is sometimes obscure, and at best (as Mr. Lavery, an excellent scholar, would be the first to acknowledge) they give us only a partial explanation of how such things actually worked. There is, however, little room for doubt that "non-recoiling" guns were common (if not universal) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It looks to me like the breeching (the heavy rope running around the breech, and securing the gun to the bulwark) made its initial appearance as a means of restraining the gun in heavy weather, and became a permanent feature as guns got bigger - and the force generated by the recoil got stronger. That scenario seems to be consistent with the evidence, and does make sense.

Professor Tilley,

Computers are funny things, and I'm glad the note arrived; I appreciate your suggestions along with those of everyone on this forum in finding a good model to build. Thanks also for the suggestion of Mr. Lavery's book on Susan Constant. I found a copy and ordered it, and look forward to reading it when it arrives. Hopefully I can avoid obvious questions this way, and get a better grasp of what I'll be building.

I found an Airfix Revenge, and also the larger of the Revell Mayflowers, which should have me busy for a while now! They are not the same scale (and I have no idea what scale the Revenge is, beyond its plastic hull reportedly measuring some 14 inches) but representitive of different types of ships within roughly the same period of time, and it will be interesting to see how their function affected their fittings and design.

The first order seems to be the "read before you build" stage, to get aquainted with the model parts and their construction, also the purpose of the parts on the prototypes, and develop a game plan for the painting and assembly stages - whether to paint the decks and bulwarks in advance, for example. I'm thinking of making decals for the decorative designs of the upperworks, and will report on how this goes when the time comes. Deadeyes will be fun, since the larger Revell model will surely call for better examples, and probably the smaller Airfix one as well. I've looked at the various sizes on the Blue Jacket site, and also other parts (anchors, belaying pins, chains, etc.), just to get a sense of what they have. I'll follow your advice and not get everything in advance, but proceed in batches as the time comes.

A trivial but evocative aspect are the names for the ships - whether to find names of actual ships which correspond to each vessel's type, or simply make up new ones - Venus, Bear, Apollo, etc. - and any suggestions would be welcome.

I've pretty much decided to model the Airfix kit with the gunports closed, rather than have the shallow sections with the false guns, and I'm looking forward to reading more about the methods of rigging the guns on the upper deck. Last night I was reading in Conways' about the use of bronze and cast iron cannon, and the transition between the two - much more to go here, no doubt.

Curiously, I found the reference to "small merchant galleon" in Conways' of all things, on page 109, in a caption describing the replica Mayflower. It says "She was designed by W. A. Baker, based on his researches into early naval architecture, and represents a small merchant galleon of about 1600." Of course its the caption, possibly written by editors rather than the section's author, who may have used an alternate term. It also adds soundly that the Mayflower II is "in no real sense a 'replica'" since very little is known about the actual ship.

Thanks to everyone for advice and help, I appreciate it very much.

Jim

Mr. Lavery cites contemporary evidence that suggests, strongly, that the breeching lines had nothing to do with absorbing recoil; that they were only rigged when the ship encountered heavy weather, to keep the gun from rolling across the deck.  He suggests that the side tackles (which most of us are used to thinking of as "train tackles," to aim the gun) were in fact relied upon to stop the gun from recoiling.

    Who am I to Question Mr. Lavery ! However, if the training tackle is strong enough to stop recoil, it is certainly strong enough to prevent rolling, and makes the breeching lines economically non-essential. In most cases that I've seen, the breeching lines are a fixed length, and are usually siezed up, when the gun is not in use. That doesn't make sense, if the breech lines are only used to prevent rolling in heavy weather. In that use, the breech lines would be just long enough to hold the gun just inside the gunport. I'll agree wholeheartedly, that the train tackles played a part in absorbing the force of recoil, the mechanical advantage of the tackle would consume a significant part of the recoil energy, the breech lines would provide the final stopping power, and keep the train tackles from running out completely. Or......I have a muzzle load double barrel 12 gauge shotgun. When held at the shoulder, even when elevated to the vertical the weight of the gun doesn't cause any discomfort......on the other hand, when both triggers are pulled simultaneously, the shoulder knows it has happened! Sailors of the day may not have had PHDs, but they were resourceful and clever men who would prefer the easier, less complicated way of handling things, if breeching lines weren't needed, they would have disappeared early on. No, I'm not using historical fact, just logic. In the world of modern sail, one can still find running backstays in use. They are cursed, maligned, and bitterly endured, because they are necessary. When the day comes that masts can take the stress, running backstays will disappear.  I would suspect that Mr. Lavery was never a sailor.

Woodburner - I got your private e-mail message and sent a reply to it, but my e-mail came back marked "not deliverable."  I apologize; I don't know what the problem was.  Anyway, thanks for your remarks; like everybody else in this Forum, I'm glad to help out with projects like this. 

Another book that would be of use, also by Brian Lavery is Anatomy of the Ship:  The Colonial Merchantman Susan Constant.  (When I surf on my office computer, I can use italics.  This computer must have the updated Microsoft Internet Explorer edition.)  That book contains a complete set of plans for Mr. Lavery's reconstructed version of the ship.  (The plans differ in some respects from the completed replica at Jamestown.  Among other things, the management was concerned - quite correctly, I think - about the stability of the authentic hull form.  And the replica has to accommodate, inconspicuously, a diesel engine.)  The book contains all sorts of information about construction methods, spars, sails, rigging, and other stuff that's equally applicable to any other ship of the genre. 

Mr. Lavery makes one particularly interesting point about early-seventeenth-century naval gunnery.  In another thread some weeks back we discussed the possibility that naval guns of that period sometimes were rigged in such a way as to prevent them from recoiling, the heavy breeching line around the breech of the gun being strong enough to absorb the shock of the recoil.  Mr. Lavery cites contemporary evidence that suggests, strongly, that the breeching lines had nothing to do with absorbing recoil; that they were only rigged when the ship encountered heavy weather, to keep the gun from rolling across the deck.  He suggests that the side tackles (which most of us are used to thinking of as "train tackles," to aim the gun) were in fact relied upon to stop the gun from recoiling.

They are probably available from time to time.  

I have tried to get a "Hermine" but, despite winning one on eBay, the seller had already (accidentally he said) sold it to a customer.

What I did notice is the discrepancy of the painted boxart of earlier releases and photos of the finished kits. The boxart shows a very "Mayflowerish" little ship with a high stern that gets quite narrow at the top - even the perspective and general setting is reminiscent of the old Airfix Mayflower boxart. The actual kit does indeed look different. The stern is much wider but shallower in height, the beak is different and the whole thing looks a hundred years older...as it should. The only thing that looks way off are the big blue-painted areas -too early for this colour.

It has a one piece hull with the beakhead molded on, and the usual decks, bulkheads and so on. It does not look large. The sails and flags are vaccuformed.

This is not entirely on topic but there is even one more galleon model that comes to my mind, made by Heller. It is dated earlier than Elizabeth 1st´s reign and it is French, but quite interesting: Jaques Cartier´s "Grande Hermine" 1535 in 1/150 scale. I have only seen some photos of the kit, but it seems to be quite a believable model of a very early galleon with quite some leftover features of the earlier carracks. It has a "beak" but on a higher position than the 1580s English Galleons, it has several vertical fenders mounted on the hull and its overall appearance is very "down-to earth" with a shallow stern, no or very little armament and no stern gallery. Unfortunately I have no photos to upload but the model pops up on eBay from time to time. General layout follows the Mayflower but this model is NOT based on any other design and does NOT share its hull with other Heller ships. It was first available around 1979 - at the time Heller did some well researched subjects and had already abandoned their "one hull fits all"-approach. Might be worth checking out.

 

Thanks for the link to the Mayflower kit photos. I've often been curious about this kit, particularly its origins - I was wondering if it was a copy or derivative of the Imai kit given that Trumpeter have copied quite a few other kits, such as the Tamiya 1/350 range. It certainly doesn't look quite right to me, as Jtilley says the masts, sails and upper part of the ship seems to be in a noticeably smaller scale to the lower hull, and the stern gallery decoration seems to match Woodburner's description (those gilded dolphins look more suited to the "Cheng Ho" ship also produced by Trumpeter). Although Rod Millard's build of this kit looks very impressive - I really like the wood effect on the hull.

On the subject of Golden Hind kits, another excellent kit of this ship is the Airfix one, which is 1/72 scale (according to the box). It's not currently in production but is still available from some UK retailers (e.g www.modelsforsale.com) and not hard to find second-hand on eBay or similar. I'm not sure of the differences in design and detail between this kit and the Revell/Heller one, but it is nicely detailed and includes some crew figures. I can't remember whether it has the typical Airfix "dummy" guns in the lower ports; as the largest in scale of the Airfix sailing ships it might be an exception to the rule. I was intending to post some photos of this kit a few months ago, but completely forgot, I'll take some photos and upload them some time over the next week.

Thanks also for the link to the modelwarships site.  

woodburner

Yes the stern on Trumpeter kit is ugly.especially with the pre painting that comes from the factory.I took some oven cleaner and removed that prepainting.Than weathered the stern with hardly any highlights to the raised flower and dolphins its not to bad.If you go to this web site www.modelwarships.com and look under model gallery,than modelers.Go then to Rod Millard you can see some pictures of the one I build in 2005.I don't have a picture of the stern there but some other good views.The Imai kit has the same raised parts on its stern,but like the Trumpeter kit you can tone down the effect with the right weathering. Also the masts & yards  should be changed out to wood.i don't have any pictures of my Imai kit I did (pre digitel camera) and I gave it away. Hope that helps.

Rod

Thanks for the link to the Trumpeter photos and your opinion.  Its very helpful.

It is of course dangerous to base such judgments entirely on photos, but on the basis of the photos in that ad I'm strongly inclined to agree with honneamise. There's something distinctly odd about that model. The "surface detail" on the hull appears to be pretty good, and the overall hull proportions seem similar to the William Baker reconstruction, but everything from the deck up looks like it's on a smaller scale than the hull. The undersized mizzenmast and sail are particularly conspicuous. This looks to me like a kit to avoid.

If I were thinking in terms of a plastic Mayflower kit, my choice would be (in order of preference): 1. The larger Revell kit. 2. The smaller Revell kit. 3. The Airfix kit.

I second woodburners observations on the Trumpeter Mayflower. You can see some images on this site: http://www.moduni.de/product_info.php/products_id/6361201

As far as I know, Trumpeter products are not neccesarily copies of other molds, but they have all the technical means of pantographing other kits, scaling them up and down and altering the parts in detail and shape. They can create almost everything with their 3-d scanners and CnCs, but they typically rely on what others created. I don´t think that there is much real engineering involved in a way that competent people do a thorough research to create the master patterns - that takes time and money, and, judging from their previous products, Trumpeter tends to save this money no matter how detailed their products look at first glance.

I think their Mayflower is an up-scaled  "patchwork" kit based on an IMAI hull that was combined with the upper superstructures and the beak of the Revell kit, spiced up with some "carvings" of Chinese origin and I really do not have many doubts that they might have used some items from a Souvenir shop that came in handy....

I am not sure, maybe it is just me, but I have a bad feeling about the general proportions of this kit: the whole rigging looks too shallow to me, like as if they have put masts, yards and sails from a smaller scale model onto a bigger scale hull... or better as if they have scaled the IMAI hull up from 1/70 to 1/60 and left all the rigging in 1/70... I really do not like the overall look of this model and it adds to my general impression that the people at Trumpeter are very skilled technicians but know nothing about making ship models. Even their famous, highly detailed 1/350 warships feature severe flaws in the hull lines (not all of them but many, including Hornet, Essex, England and even Nimitz to a certain extent) and the many small parts cannot make up for this IMO. I will stay away from this kit, the ones from IMAI, Airfix and Revell are far superior. 

Considering availability, the IMAI kits are now made by Aoshima, and both the big Revell Mayflower and Golden Hind are available from Heller (although the future of that company is still uncertain), so there is at least something to choose from. Still, it is a pity that the whole sailing ship department of the huge plastic model market is in such a bad shape...

I had the opportunity to look at a Trumpeter kit.  Its huge, but abstract and has a poorly designed aft.  

 

Thanks for your comments on other posts regarding ratlines, rigging and when - and when not to - order blocks and other parts. Your rigging is phenomenal.

Full-size replica ships are fine, educational things. They perform a huge service to the public, and offer researchers the opportunity to learn many things that nothing else can teach. They also have their limitations, and paint schemes are certainly among them.

I don't know of ANY replica sailing ship that could be said to be painted authentically - i.e., with paint mixed from authentic pigments and vehicle, to absolutely authentic hues. (Even the restored modern steel warships have problems that way.) The custodians of such ships have to worry about durability, EPA regulations, availability, and that great bugaboo that dominates everything in the ship preservation world: money. The overall color schemes of the Mayflower II and the Jamestown ships are based on some good research, and certainly deserve to be taken seriously. But when it comes to such things as precise color shades and the use of brown paint to represent unpainted wood - well, take it all with a large grain of salt.

One curious little point about the color schemes of the Jamestown ships. A couple of years ago two of them (the Susan Constant and the Discovery, I think - but I could be wrong about that) were used in the filming of the movie "The New World." The movie makers insisted that the ships be repainted because they were "too bright-looking," and because the cameras had trouble handling the sections that were painted white (e.g., the decorations on the Susan's stern gallery). It took almost a year for the Jamestown staff to get around to obliterating all the color scheme changes that had been made at the moviemakers' behest.

Thanks for the paragraph tip - we will see if it works with this post.

I hope you have a great time at Jamestown.  

Woodburner

    The Imai/Ertl Golden Hind is 1/70 scale.Its a very nice kit like most of Imai kits are.I dry fitted the deck to the hull and there are no gaps.The only thing I don't like is the raised plastic out lines for painting on the hull.They do this to give you a guide for painting.Lots of model company's do this Revell .Airfix,and etc.I normally sand them down and paint the way I want.Jtilley wrote that he thought the Trumpeter Mayflower was a re-do of another company.It copies the looks of the Imai Mayflower right down to decoration on the stern,but is a much larger kit.The Imai Mayflower is about 19 inch long when build and the Trumpeter kit is over 25 inch so I'm pretty sure they did their own molds.

Rod

Something happened to the mechanics of the Forum website a couple of weeks ago. We used to be able to separate paragraphs, use italic, bold, and underlined fonts, change font colors, and add "smilies." All those options suddenly disappeared - at least from the version of the Forum that shows up on my computer - in mid-December. Several people, including me, have posted queries about all this. I haven't seen a response from anybody at FSM (maybe they're all on Christmas vacation). Several readers have suggested that a new version of Microsoft Internet Explorer may be responsible.

One reader in another thread offered the tip that it's still possible to make paragraph breaks by using a code symbol. Type a left-pointing caret, the letter "b," the letter "r," and a right-pointing caret with no spaces. (I had to describe the keys that way; if I actually typed them they wouldn't show. I may also be misusing the word "caret." I'm talking about the "arrows" on the lower right of the keyboard; the "shifts" for the comma and period respectively.) Type that sequence once and the text will jump to the next line. Type the sequence twice and you'll get a blank line to separate paragraphs.

So little is known about late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century English naval architecture that just about any modification you want to make to any of those kits is defensible. If I were basing any sort of model on the Revell Mayflower, one of my big concerns would be that anybody who had any familiarity with the subject would recognize the hull shape. (Professor Baker would be the first to emphasize that his design for the Mayflower II was highly speculative, but over the fifty years that the replica ship has been in existence it's become a near-icon in the public's perception of the story.) It's worth noting that Professor Baker made one deliberate deviation from his own interpretation of historical reality: he gave the replica ship some additional headroom. (An extra foot on each level, if I remember correctly.) The Revell kits reproduce that. If one were building a hypothetical ship on the basis of a Revell hull, one could deal with that problem by changing the stated scale of the model. So little is known for certain about such things, nobody could say for sure that such an approach was wrong.

Back in November my students and I paid a visit to Jamestown Settlement and took a look at the reconstructions of the three "Jamestown ships," the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. The site is anticipating a deluge of tourists in 2007, due to the 400th anniversary of the first settlement there. They've just added a new, full-sized reconstruction of the Godspeed, based on the latest information they've been able to unearth. (A new reconstruction of the Discovery is under construction now.) The Godspeed is, if I remember right, about ten feet longer than the old one, and has no raised forecastle. (It does have a raised quarterdeck.) To my eye it initially looked a little odd, but close inspection left little doubt that the designers knew what they were doing. That illustrates just how much speculation and interpretation have to go into any such reconstruction work.

I have one more question - how can I create separate paragraphs using this forum system? I type them out as separate, but they all crash together when posted. Thanks.

Thanks for your ideas and expertise. It's very helpful and much appreciated.  

What do you think of the Imai/Ertl Hind, and what scale is it in?  

First, welcome to the Forum! You'll find that this part of it, at any rate, is inhabited by some rather odd people, but most of us mean well and are, in general, harmless.

Maybe a good way to start an answer to this question would be to clarify the terminology. Unfortunately, when we're talking about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ships, that isn't always easy. That word "galleon" seems to have been kicked around so much, and so casually, over the years that it has scarcely any specific meaning. For what it's worth, here's the definition from the glossary of the relevant volume from the "Conway's History of the Ship" volume, "Cogs, Caravels, and Galleons: The Sailing Ship, 1000-1650." (Please excuse the quotation marks instead of italics. My computer seems to have lost the ability to include italics in this Forum.)

"Galleon. Sea-going full rigged ship of the sixteenth century and later, characterised by a relatively high length-to-breadth ratio, a long beak under the bowsprit and a crescent profile rising somewhat higher at the stern than at the forecastle. COmpared with carracks (qv), the lines of the galleon were finer, the superstructures lower, and unders sail both speed and handling were superior. Galleons were usually heavily armed, although they were not necessarily specialist warships. The term came to be closely associated with the Iberian powers, and in particular Spain, so that by the seventeenth century almost any large Spanish ship could be described as a galleon."

The only English ship mentioned by woodburner that really fits that definition is the Revenge. The old Airfix kit isn't a bad one - especially in view of its age. It doesn't have a great deal of detail. The lower deck guns, like those in all other Airfix sailing warships, are "dummies" that plug into holes in the sides, there's no detail on the insides of the bulwarks, and the deck furniture and spars are pretty rudimentary. But the basic shapes are entirely believable; the material is there to form the basis of a fine scale model.

The Golden Hind and Mayflower probably were too small to meet the definition of the word "galleon," but they're well-represented by plastic kits. Both the Revell Mayflower kits, in my opinion, are among the best dozen or so plastic sailing ship kits ever produced. The Revell Golden Hind doesn't have quite the level of refinement, but it's an excellent kit - one of my favorites. The Airfix Mayflower isn't a bad kit by any means. It's not based on the William Baker Mayflower II plans (like the Revell ones are); I'm not sure what the basis of it is, but it looks pretty believable to me.

I know the Airfix Golden Hind and the various Imai kits only through pictures. My general impression is that the Airfix Golden Hind is a basically sound kit, but somewhat simplified. Our resident Forum expert on the Imai line, Millard, will I'm sure have some things to say about the Imai (aka Ertl) Golden Hind. (Later edit: I see Millard and I were typing our posts at the same time.) I have the impression that the Trumpeter sailing ship kits are reissues of somebody else's, but I'm not sure whose. They seem to have the reputation of being quite simple and basic - but that doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with them.

I'm not aware of any definitive date for the initial appearance of the open stern gallery. It appears in at least one of the drawings in the so-called Matthew Baker Manuscripts, which apparently date from about the time of the Spanish Armada and are generally regarded as the earliest genuine English ship plans. I suspect the presence of such a feature did indeed imply a certain "classiness," but I don't have any definitive evidence to back that up. (It's perhaps worth noting that when Brian Lavery, one of the best in the business, designed the replica of the Susan Constant that's now at Jamestown, he gave her a stern gallery. She's a small-to-medium-sized merchantman. But William Baker didn't put a stern gallery on the Mayflower II.)

As for the relative accuracy of all those kits - nobody really knows for sure. The source material about this period in the history of naval technology is so sketchy that it really would be unfair to condemn any of them. (It's possible for a plastic kit manufacturer to go so far offbase in designing an early sailing ship that the result simply isn't believable. Heller used to do that on a fairly regular basis. But the kits we've been talking about here aren't in that category.) I feel comfortably speaking up on behalf of the Revell Golden Hind, the Revell Mayflowers, and the Airfix Mayflower and Revenge. I haven't seen enough of the others to form opinions of them.

The sad part of this discussion is that every one of the kits we've been talking about is, so far as I know, currently unavailable. Swap meets and e-bay probably are about the only places to find them - unless one has the good fortune to have a Forum friend like Big Jake, who supplied me with my Revell Golden Hind. The plastic kit companies have almost abandoned the sailing ship concept. At this point I've just about given up any hope of any good, brand new plastic sailing ship kits. But if some of the grand old kits from previous generations would reappear I'd be happy.

Hope that helps at least a little bit. Good luck.

Answering some of the questions.Yes the Imai/Ertl Golden Hind is a model of the 1973 replica,but a very nice kit I'm working on one now. I would use the 1/60 scale Trumpeter Mayflower or the 1/70 Imai/Ertl Mayflower kit both very detailed and both build into nice models.I'm not real keen on Revell kits.There 1/96 scale Mayflower which as been around forever has good detail but I find very fragile. It needs a lot of clean up on flash and die pin marks.I've build all three of these kits thats why I suggest the prior two.

Rod