Cutty Sark Port Hole Question

A 57-year-old memory is a strange and frustrating thing.  It makes no sense whatever that I would be able to remember the content of that rigging diagram from about 45 years ago - but have trouble with the names of my current students.  I don't think I have Alzheimer's, but my wife thinks I have Halfzeimer's.  (She has the other half.)

Chain running gear started appearing in the 1850s or maybe a little earlier.  The big American clipper ships often used it for such things as tyes and sheets, on the topsails, courses, and topgallants.  The idea apparently was that it held up better than rope for applications that (a) had to withstand a lot of weight, and (b) ran over sheaves frequently.  The Hornsby and Crothers plans of the Young America (my current long-term project) show a lot of chain in the running rigging.  She was launched in 1853.

By the Cutty Sark's time chain was in pretty common use for gear of that sort.  In the huge, latter-day sailing ships an even larger percentage of the running gear was made of chain.  By that time another consideration had come into play:  chain didn't have to be replaced as often as rope.  In ships with small crews (the Young America had a complement of about a hundred; the Cutty Sark had 28, and the big 4-masted German barques sometimes even fewer), that was important.

Later edit:  The foregoing applies mainly to merchant vessels.  Apart from the practice of reinforcing yard slings with chain as part of the practice of clearing for action (which, I think, dates back to the very late eighteenth century in the British navy), naval officers seem to have been slow to adopt chain as a rigging material.  Warships seem to have been slower than merchantmen even to adopt chain for anchor cables.  I've read in various places (none of which I can remember at the moment) that there was some concern that a piece of chain struck by a projectile would turn into nasty iron splinters.

Another question for Steves:  Does your 1959 kit include the little gears to connect the wheel to the rudder head?  My impression is that the first issue of the kit was so equipped, but that the gears got deleted early in production because they didn't work well.  I don't think any of the Cutty Sark kits I ever saw had them.

jtilley wrote:

Steves - does your old kit have those rigging instructions, with the references to the chain and wire?

Yes, it does.  I have both the first and second (1964) issues of the kit and the rigging instructions are different.  In the '59 instructions there is a detail drawing "Typical Sail Gear Arrangement" showing the topsail, upper topsail and topgallant sheets rigged with 36-link chain.   Chain is also shown at the tops of the lift halyards.

There is also a detail drawing of the end of one of the large yards showing how to rig the jackstay, footropes, stirrups, and flemish horse - all with wire.  It also shows the chain sheet running through a sheeve built into the end of the yard.

The '64 version of the sail gear diagram, now called "Details of Sheets and Clew Lines" is somewhat simplified and the chain has been replaced by "heavy grey cord". The yard detail deletes the jackstay, but still shows the footropes and flemish horse, however they are not called out as wire (or anything else).

Interestingly, the '59 kit has a more comprehensive rigging plan, but includes only two types of black line in the kit for the standing rigging, stating "If you want a completely rigged ship, you will need, in addition, one ball each of No. 10 and No. 30 Ecru Crochet Cotton for the Running Rigging." I believe all the other Revell big sailing ship kits have contained both black and tan cord.

I was unaware of chain ever being used for running rigging.   Was this common?  Were the forces in play on this ship so great that rope line would not suffice?

As a slight aside, an examination of my Imai kit, inspired by this thread, suggests the small portholes mentioned as being near the bow are not reproduced (a minor omission on Imai's part).  I can see them on the Campbell plans though now that I know about them so it'll be a simple matter to drill them out. 

I learned something new today - thank you gentlemen.

Michael 

I don't have the Campbell plans in front of me, but I believe you'll find a note about the after deckhouse alongside the little "scrap view" that shows the layout of the bunks, etc. in the forecastle (meaning, in this context, the little triangular space in the bow - the one with the little portholes).  Campbell and MacGregor, in other words, say the same thing.  I suspect MacGregor based his statement on the Campbell plans.

Steves's comments on the big portholes in the Revell kit are most interesting.  My memories of the Revell Cutty Sark and Thermopylae go back quite a few years - far enough that my memories are not exactly a hundred percent reliable, but I can flesh them out somewhat with reference to Dr. Graham's book.  According to him, the Thermopylae first appeared in 1960.  It must have been shortly thereafter - maybe 1962 - that a lady friend of my parents hired me to build one for her; she wanted to turn it into a lamp (ugh!), and offered me the staggering sum of $5.00.  I'd already built the Alabama and Kearsarge, so I felt well up to the task.  They both appeared, according to Dr. Graham, in 1961 - in conjunction with the Civil War Centennial.  I'm pretty sure I got the Alabama for my birthday that year and the Kearsarge for Christmas.  So I think my first encounter with the Thermopylae must have been in '62 - or maybe '63.  At any rate, I rather suspect the quality of the result was such that the client got slightly ripped off, but I, at the age of twelve, was proud of it - and she liked it so much that she abandoned the lamp idea.

I think it was the following Christmas - either 1962 or 1963 - that my parents gave me the Cutty Sark kit.  (I'd told them I wanted it instead of the Thermopylae because my father and I didn't like vac-formed "sails.")  This obviously was a long time ago, but I'm fairly clear in my recollection of an interesting little note in the instruction booklet, which explained that, though the painting on the box showed the row of portholes, the model didn't have them because they'd been cut after the ship's cargo-carrying years.  (The kit also included a copy of a photo-illustrated brochure about the ship - one of the brochures that I saw for sale in the ship's gift shop when I finally got to see her for the first time, in 1978.)  All this is consistent with Steves's assertion that the portholes got removed from the molds when they were modified into the Thermopylae.  (I believe the little bumps on top of the rails, to indicate where the deadeye assemblies were to be glued, were added at the same time.)

The result of the changes, of course, was most emphatically not a scale model of the Thermopylae.  She and the Cutty Sark looked about like each other from a distance; that's the extent of the similarity.  This was, in fact, the first of several marketing stunts that Revell used to get additional mileage out of sailing ship kit molds.

Those original Cutty Sark instructions assumed quite a bit of interest - and financial resouces -on the part of the purchaser.  The rigging diagrams were more sophisticated than the ones Revell put in later issues of the kit; they advised the builder to make jackstays for the yards out of piano wire, and to buy twelve feet of 36-link brass chain for the sheets and halyards.  My father duly took me downtown to Hall's Hardware (a cultural landmark of Columbus, Ohio - with an excellent hobby shop in the basement) to buy the chain.  It came in one-foot lengths, each in a little yellow envelope.  When I asked for twelve of them, the clerk said "What are you building - a Cutty Sark?"  That chain wasn't cheap; I think it was close to a dollar a foot.  But my father calmly handed over the cash  - and another buck or two for the piano wire.  My jaw dropped; Dad wasn't the kind of man who spent money casually in amounts like that.  I realize now what he was probably thinking:  that building a model of the Cutty Sark was preferable to what lots of twelve-year-olds were doing with their time - even in those far-off, so much more innocent days.

Sorry for the stupid nostalgic ramble.  As should be obvious by now, I do, despite the nasty remarks I've made about various sailing ship kits in this Forum, have some pleasant memories of them.

Steves - does your old kit have those rigging instructions, with the references to the chain and wire?

I have three Cutty Sark hulls. One I purchased in 1976, an ebay (no idea how old it is), and a brand new hull which I received from Revell a couple of weeks ago. Each one has the four port holes. Somewhere along the line they fixed it!

Four port holes in Campbell's plans and in the Revell Cutty Sark hull.

According to D. R. MacGregor, The tea Clippers, p 196, the aft deckhouse between the main and mizen masts were not in the original plans. He suggested that they were added after the maiden voyage. It does appear in Tudgay's painting of 1872.

Now I am confused, again! My Campbell plans show the deckhouse, H. A. Underhill's model plans show it, and the Revell Cutty Sark has it. Are there another set of Campbell plans (other than those that I purchased from the Cutty Sark Foundation), or am I missing something?

The 1959 original issue of the big Revell kit had these portholes.  When the mold was modified a few years later to become the Thermopylae the portholes were eliminated and never reappreared in any of the later Cutty Sark re-issues.  The skill of whoever made the modification to the mold was such that the deleted portholes are virtually invisible in the planking detail on the outside of the hull, but you can still see barely discernable depressions on the inside of the hull where they used to be.

The George Campbell plans make the story fairly clear.  As built, she had a short row of small portholes near the bow (three or four on each side, I think; I'll have to check the plans to make sure).  These were to provide ventilation for the small accommodation space in the forecastle.  (Mr. Campbell says he's not at all sure that any sailors ever actually lived in it.  The original plans show it - and don't show the after deckhouse.  Mr. Campbell asserts that the after deckhouse was there within a few years of her launching.)  These portholes were quite small, and had no external rims.  They should show up on a model as simple holes through the planking with glass (or clear plastic) in them.

My understanding had always been that the row of big portholes running the full length of the 'tweendecks was added by the Portuguese, when she was in their service as a schoolship, but I can't refute the source Shipwreck cites.  In any case, the 'tweendecks space, which originally had been used for stowage of cargo, was converted at some point into quarters for the cadets; the portholes provided light and ventilation.  When the ship was restored and placed on public exhibition, the decision was made to leave the portholes there.  With the ship destined to spend the rest of her days stationary, and with thousands of people wandering around her, some means of ventilating the interior spaces was necessary; the alternative would have been a series of motorized blowers, which, in addition to requiring distinctly modern-looking ducts all over the place, would have emitted decidedly non-authentic sounds. 

The restorers made a number of tough calls like that.  Another one was to cut a big entry door in the port side of the hull at 'tweendeck level.  The alternative, in terms of giving access to the public (including the physically disabled), would have been to build an enormous ramp from the pier to the rail (and, presumably, another, shorter ramp from the top of the rail to the deck).  That would have devastated the appearance of the ship's sheer - one of her most beautiful and subtle features.

All this is laid out in the most interesting article on the ship's restoration by Frank G.G. Carr (who was one of the senior supervisors of the project).  I used to have a copy of the article, which I bought many years ago in the ship's gift shop; unfortunately I can't find it.  (One of these days I'll have to track down another one; it's a fascinating piece.)  There's room for argument about all those decisions, of course, but I respect the people who made them - and clearly agonized over them at length.  It will be interesting to see how the current crew of preservationists deals with the same problems.

 

Good detective work Jake. I have heard of these, but have never seen a picture of the Cutty Sark with that many ports.

I am not John, but I have been kind of under his tillage on this list. It seems that in 1938 that the Cutty Sark was handed over to the Thames Nautical Training College. On April 29th of 1938 that 36 scuttles were cut in the tween decks, supposedly to admit light for the cadets. (reference: Cutty Sark Conservation Plan Volume 1: Hdistory of Fabric)