Mystery Ship???

If it's a model of an actual British merchant vessel, and if you live in the vicinity of a good research library, it would be worth the trouble to look up the name "Charlotte" in a few volumes of Lloyd's Register of Shipping.  If I remember correctly, the first volume of Lloyd's appeared in 1776, and a new volume has been added every year since.  The work covers (at least in theory) all the vessels that were insured by Lloyd's of London - which, in practical terms, seems to have meant the majority of vessels of any size.  There's no absolute guarantee that a particular ship will show up in Lloyd's, but the vast majority of "Lloyd's searches" I've done, or heard about, have been successful. 

The listing will include, at the minimum, the basic dimensions of the ship and the date of her launching.  As the years went by the information included got more and more detailed; by the late nineteenth century, "Lloyd's listings" included such things as the types of wood used in the hull, whether the ship was copper-sheathed or not, and the next voyage she was going to make at the time she was surveyed.  Once you've found the ship in one volume, you should be able to trace her back in earlier volumes to the year she was put into service - and forward to the year she met her ultimate fate (including any name changes she underwent in the process). 

All this assumes that the model was intended to represent a real ship - as it may or may not have been.  (Many a sailor built named a model after his daughter or granddaughter.)  And there is, of course, the distinct possibility (indeed, likelihood) that more than one brig named "Charlotte" sailed out of Ramsgate.  But if you have access to a set of Lloyd's Registers, you'll find them fascinating.

DanCooper wrote:

???? England IS an island

Alright, "a port in England, on even smaller island than Britain, for there are more than one island in England, I think, although I can be mistaken, for I've never paid much attention to actual number of islands in Great Britain." People here are pedantic to the extreme. :)

Just to put the record straight, Britain is an Island, England most certainly is not, as the Scots, Welsh, and even perhaps the Cornish would attest

As far as the 'Brig' is concerned these were a common form of ship both Naval and Merchant, throughout the sailing era. Small Merchant ships of this type operated out of the South East ports of England for coastal and cross Channel trade right up the early twentieth Century.

The Great War of 1914 - 1918 saw the demise of many of them.

A photo of the model may assist in identification, but it may prove a difficult task to relate it to a particular vessel.

Grahor wrote:

Ramsgate is a port city in England, I think. On some island.

 

???? England IS an island   But indeed, Ramsgate is a porttown in the neighbourhood of the far more famous Dover (remember "the white cliffs" ?) and is situated on the eastern coast of England.

 

Thank you very much!!! I have forwarded this to my friend. Oliver

Ramsgate is a port city in England, I think. On some island. It is possible, that this ship was named Charlotte (or, say, Queen Charlotte) and was built in Ramsgate, or the model originates in Ramsgate, or the model was built in Ramsgate. There were quite a few ships named "Charlotte" or "Queen Charlotte" in the history of England, but I don't know, if any of them have any relationship to Ramsgate. You'll need to compare the model to pictures of ships. For example, that's one of the Charlottes: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~firstff/charlot.htm