Revell 1:96 Constitution and United States

I have this model, it is for all practical purposes a 'Constitution' with an extra stern gallery and Qtr gallery built on the after end of the Qtr deck.

Revell refer to it as a round house, and the result is a Poop deck on the after end of the ship.

The rail surrounding the Poop deck is a crude affair looking far too heavy for the model, another example I think of what John Tilley refers to as a manufacturers marketing ploy, cashing in on existing moulds, and producing something less satisfactory than the original.

Although my model is completed to the hull stage, It is destined to stay that way 'laid up in ordinary' in the loft as I have little interest in completing it.

I would suggest one is far better sticking with the original 'Constitution'

So then, the hull halves themselves are the Constitution, with additions to the stern.  Interesting. 

You know, if that United States of yours is just going to stay in storage, perhaps I could take it off your hands somehow?   I'm always looking for kits to bring to light....Let me know.

 Grymm

I rather think Grymm that the cost of shipping the model from the UK to USA would far exceed the worth of the thing.

If you're curious to see what the stern looks like, the next time I venture into the loft I'll get it down and photo it.

The value of that particular ship, to me, is a lot higher than you would think.  As far as shipping costs go, email me pstanfield38@aol.com and let me know.

And if worse came to worse, I have family everywhere from Manchester to London.  My mother was British... 

Grymm

According to Dr. Graham's book about the history of Revell, the big United States kit was released in 1977 and stayed in the Revell catalog through 1980.  He gives its current (i.e., 2004) value as $60-70.  I have the impression that it's not particularly rare; you probably could find one someplace like e-bay.

The real United States did have a "roundhouse," otherwise known as a raised poop deck; she was intended to serve as the flagship of the newly-created U.S. Navy, with a supernumerary commodore embarked, and the "roundhouse" was supposed to house his quarters.  No surviving plans indicate how that structure was actually built.  If I remember correctly, there is at least one photograph of the ship (taken shortly before the Civil War, in which she met her end), but it's no help; the after part of her is blocked out by another ship in the foreground.

I never bought the kit, and I can't recall having actually examined it, but on the basis of photos I'm inclined to agree with George.  By 1977 Revell clearly had lost interest in serious scale models of sailing ships - and was struggling to stay in business.  This particular stunt bears all the earmarks of a half-baked attempt to squeeze a few extra sales out of a 12-year-old kit, with minimal additional investment.  I suspect the wonderful artisans who were responsible for the excellent sailing ship kits back in the good ol' days had long since left the company.  The reworking of the Constitution's stern, to turn the kit into a passable replica of the United States, looks like it was carried out by people who had only a vague idea of what they were doing.

There were three ships in that "class":  United States, Constitution, and President.  If you have some reason for wanting to build two of them, converting the Constitution into the President would be quite practical.  The President did not have a "roundhouse."  She was, in fact, the only one of the three for which a reliable set of contemporary plans exist that show her in her War of 1812 configuration.  (When the British captured her they took off her lines.)  Howard I. Chapelle published a tracing of those plans in two of his books, The History of American Sailing Ships and The History of the American Sailing Navy.  They show a ship that looks almost exactly like the Revell Constitution kit.  The name on the stern obviously would have to go, but little else would need to be changed.  As a matter of fact, I think one of the ship modeling guides published by Kalmbach contains a chapter on that conversion.

jtilley wrote:

Howard I. Chapelle published a tracing of those plans in two of his books, The History of American Sailing Ships and The History of the American Sailing Navy.

The original Admiralty draughts for President (along with many others) are also reproduced in Robert Gardiner's book Warships of the Napoleonic Era.    

There are differences in the quarter gallery windows that would need to be addressed in a Constitution to President conversion.

jtilley wrote:

The real United States did have a "roundhouse," otherwise known as a raised poop deck; she was intended to serve as the flagship of the newly-created U.S. Navy, with a supernumerary commodore embarked, and the "roundhouse" was supposed to house his quarters.  No surviving plans indicate how that structure was actually built.  If I remember correctly, there is at least one photograph of the ship (taken shortly before the Civil War, in which she met her end), but it's no help; the after part of her is blocked out by another ship in the foreground.

A version of the story about the "upper stern galley" that I know of is that it was added sometime right before Decator took command.  The current captain wanted quarters for his wife and servants and had the second galley added.  Part of the story went to where he justified the added costs was that he was to also carry a commodore and his family to the Mediterranian so the ship needed the added accomodation.  THis cruise never materialized but the new galley was built.  When Steven Decator took command, he hated how the added weight of the new structure destoyed the sailing qualities of the ship so he had it removed.  A 

Awesome stuff.  This is a most informative thread.  There is a United States on Ebay right now.  I'm anticipating it will approach $100 or more.

Grymm

Steves - I see what you mean about the quarter gallery windows.  I imagine there also were differences in the transom ornamentation, and the bow ornamentation certainly looks less ornate than the interpretation in the Revell kit.  I rather suspect, though, that a Constitution kit with the name on the transom changed, and no other modification, would look more like the President than the Revell United States kit looks like the real United States.

Scottrc - Wow, that's a new one to me!  But the more I think about it, the more I think it might well be true.  Chapelle is rather vague about that "roundhouse" arrangement; he says it existed, but that's about all.  The new biography of Decatur, by Leonard F. Guttridge (a long overdue book if ever there was one), doesn't say anything about this point one way or the other - but it's not the sort of book that necessarily would.  I've looked at several contemporary pictures showing the battle between the United States and the Macedonian; such prints are far from 100% reliable, but it's noteworthy that none of them shows a second level of transom or quarter galleries on the United States.  As a matter of fact, I can't recall having seen them in any pictorial rendition of her, other than the drawing in Chapelle's History of the American Sailing Navy - and Chapelle makes it clear that his rendition is based mainly on guesswork. 

If, indeed, the "roundhouse" was removed prior to 1812, the Revell kit looks even worse.  On the other hand...Revell also reissued its smaller, older Constitution with the name "United States" on it.  As I understand it, the only changes Revell made this time were to change the Andrew Jackson figurehead to a simple billethead, and to alter the name on the transom.  The original, small, Constitution kit represented the ship in her configuration of the 1830s or thereabouts.  I'd always assumed the omission of the "roundhouse" made it an utterly bogus United States.  But if the roundhouse was removed before 1812, maybe that smaller kit actually isn't so bad - as a replica of the United States in the 1830s.

Fascinating, if trivial, stuff.

Information about the 'United States' particularly how she looked is somewhat thin, as part of my research into the vessel I read 'White Jacket', by Hermann Melville, who served on the ship in 1849. The book is a fictional account, but based on his service on the ship and he does mention the round house.

The book is an interesting read but is otherwise of limited value in modelling terms.

It was the lack of reasonable evidence of the appearance of the ship that basically caused me to lose interest in the Revell model, also that additional hamper on the stern didn't appeal aesthetically to my eye, it rather ruins the lines in my opinion.

At least with 'Constitution' there is a wealth of information available, to produce a model that one can reasonably say represents the ship.

Given the interest in this subject I will retrieve the model from my loft and post some pics of the stern.

Go for it GeorgeW ! Got me curious now. Climb your loft and get clicking Sir !

Julian

Well here she is, don't judge me too harshly as at the time I stopped building her she was very much work in progress.

I had started to fine down the Poop rail which originally was much coarser than as seen. It is not fixed as yet to the Poop deck

I decide to add a skylight to the Poop deck, this is not on the original model.

The gun port lids were modified to the half opening style that fitted around the cannon barrels, and the kit cannon were replaced with brass ones.

I hope this gives some idea of the kit differences, but having seen her again after a long time, I still think the original 'Constitution' is better

A few weeks ago a letter was posted on the ModelWarships.com site from an Edward Zimmerman who says he is the "founder/President of the USS United States Foundation."   Most of the letter is a very strident complaint against Revell and Monogram for their smaller scale Constitution kits that have been released, unmodified, as the United States.   The one exception he makes is for the Revell 1/96 issue, which at least made an attempt to represent the different stern configuration.   His letter states in part:

"In, or about, the year 1976, the Revell model company produced a 1:96 scale version of the frigate USS UNITED STATES, designated as kit number H-396. This kit had a roundhouse and poop deck with a balustrade on the stern of the model. This structure was witnessed on the original frigate by the journal of First Officer, Lt. John Mulowney; by Nathaniel Parker Willis in his "Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean"; by Ordinary Seaman and "Moby Dick" author Herman Melville in his "Journal of A Cruise...In the Frigate UNITED STATES", and by USMC Cpl Edward W. Taylor in his journal "Pacific Ocean Campaign 1842 - 1844". The structure was well documented and known as "lofty" and it could hold as many as two quadrilles of dancers. A well known author on naval architecture, Howard I. Chapelle, has also recognized the roundhouse, poop deck, rail and drift on his drawings "on UNITED STATES only". "

The entire thread can be read here:

http://www.shipmodels.info/mwphpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16110

The as-built profile of Constitution in Chapelle's History of the American Sailing Navy does show dashed lines representing a raised poop with railings and two-level quarter galeries for United States.   The railings Chapelle draws are much lower than what is depicted on the Revell model. Unfortunately, there is no plan view.  

There is a plan view of the United States' spar deck in Donald Canney's Sailing Warships of the US Navy.   Dated "1830's" and drawn at the Charleston Navy Yard, it shows no poop deck at all, only small curved-wall structures at the corners of the stern inside of the quarter galleries.   These look like they could be enclosures to allow continued use of the upper level of the quarter galleries as heads.   The lack of a poop deck in the 1830s would, however, be in direct conflict with Melville and others, unless it was rebuilt at a later date. 

Thanks for posting GeorgeW. That is a nice build you had underway. Interesting to see how Revell did "battlefield" surgery on the Constitution to make another sellable model. Things work okay until you reach the poop rail which bears closer resemblance to the frame of a party tent than to anything belonging on a ship.

Cheers,

Julian

On the basis of those photos I have to agree with George and Julian.  Though George was doing a fine job on the model, I can easily understand why he gave up on it.  That stern structure just doesn't look right.  It's out of proportion with the rest of the ship.

One of the first things a history major learns is that "the absence of proof isn't the same as the proof of absence - and the proof of absence is difficult to establish."  No evidence proves decisively that the United States did not look like that.  But it's hard - nay, impossible - for me to believe that a shape like that could have originated from the drafting board of a trained naval architect - let alone one of Joshua Humphreys' stature.

This thread has reminded me, once again, of what awful, ripoff-motivated horrors manufacturers like Revell and Heller have perpetrated over the years at the expense of innocent ship modelers.  (This isn't the worst example by any means.)  As a longtime believer in the potential of the plastic sailing ship kit, I've found myself irritated and downright angered more than once by the stunts these companies play.  But I keep reminding myself that the HECEPOB (that's Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead) wood kit manufacturers are even worse.

Steves - I see by your profile that you're an architect practicing in Tampa.  By chance have you ever encountered an architecture firm called Fenton and White, on Sanibel Island?  The two partners, Ray Fenton and Phil White, were students of my father at Ohio State, and hired Dad to work for them during several winters after he retired.  (I, in the meantime, got stuck maintaining the house in Ohio - during several memorable blizzards.)  I don't know whether the firm is still there or not.

Nice work on that hull.  And yes, it just doesn't look right.   And Model companies habits of rehashing kit's in order to make them into something else (aka Constitution into United States) is a very old cost cutting measure.  With simple modifications to the mold, a new model is created that will cater to those people who built the Constitution.  A quick, easy, and inexpensive way to add to the bottom line.  From a business standpoint, it's genius and the standard these days.  Even in the auto industry you see it.  After all, what is an Escalade, but a snazzy Tahoe.  A Pontiac G5 is just a re-dressed Chevy Cobalt.

I'm kind of torn on the subject.  Looking a the United States, I can see it is another example of Revell whoring their own molds for every dime they can get from the consumer.  I look to the day when a model company just takes the time to do it right.  But, on the other hand, I know that Revell just doesn't have the resources available to make every model perfect.  Also on the other hand, if a not so "right" looking USS United States keeps my 13 year old interested in the subject of history for at least a little longer before girls, hip hop, and wanting to get his own car take over his life, then I'll gladly build the kit for him.  And I get enjoyment just building.  

And as I said before, If that hull is never going to be completed, I would love to take it off your hands.  I have come into possession of a United States kit...unfortunately missing it's hull halves...

jtilley wrote:

Steves - I see by your profile that you're an architect practicing in Tampa.  By chance have you ever encountered an architecture firm called Fenton and White, on Sanibel Island?  The two partners, Ray Fenton and Phil White, were students of my father at Ohio State, and hired Dad to work for them during several winters after he retired.  (I, in the meantime, got stuck maintaining the house in Ohio - during several memorable blizzards.)  I don't know whether the firm is still there or not.

Sanibel is about 100 miles south of me, and though I've done a little work in Ft Myers I don't know either gentleman.   A search of the on-line Board of Architecture listing reveals that there is a Ray Fenton at Fenton Associates practicing in Sanibel, but I could not find a current listing for a Phil White.   Was your father a professor of architecture at Ohio State?

Steves - That must be the same Ray Fenton; I imagine Phil White has retired by now.  Or maybe moved back to Columbus.  The Sanibel firm started out as a sort of a branch operation of a successful Columbus firm, Aycock, White, and Trees.  (The other two partners were named George Aycock and Douglas Trees.  The latter, unfortunate gentleman's middle name was Fir.  He had two siblings:  Jack Pine and Mary Christmas.  I kid you not.)

Dad graduated from the OSU School of Architecture in (I think) 1936.  (His prize for being first in his class of about twelve people was a trip to the annual AIA Convention at the site of the newest, most exciting project then going on in American architecture:  Colonial Williamsburg.)  He got hired to teach at OSU shortly before WWII, when (not exactly by his own choice) he had to take four years off for service in the Navy.  He taught sophomore-level architectural design until his official retirement, in (I think) 1974.  (I was just starting grad school at OSU then; the History Department and the School of Architecture were in the same building.  I used to park my bicycle in Dad's office.)  Later he got rehired part-time to team-teach the "freshman freehand drawing studio."  At that time - the mid-seventies - it was still taken for granted that an architect needed to learn to draw.  That, of course, is no longer the case.  The university discontinued that course sometime in the late seventies.  By then, Dad was starting to feel - and be regarded - like a dinosaur in the profession.  (I think he also was part of the last generation in that field to make it all the way to full professor with only a bachelor's degree.)  He taught me, among other things, to appreciate good, old-fashioned draftsmanship - which, as you undoubtedly know better than I do, is now a dying art form.

Well, now we've REALLY hijacked this thread.  Sorry about that.

jtilley-Unfortunately, had I been one of his students your father would not remember me as one of his best.  I was never too good with a pencil and embraced cadd enthusiastically when it came on the scene.

Mr Trees seems to have followed the same philosophy of child-naming as Bill Lear, of Learjet fame, who named his daughter Shanda.

Shanda Lear.  Ouch.

I have no doubt that cadd is a wonderful thing.  It undoubtedly has brought about tremendous improvements in accuracy, speed, and safety in the architecture and engineering professions; I certainly wouldn't suggest that the clock be turned back.  Progress is progress.  It does sadden me, though, that the old-fashioned art of drafting seems to be dying. 

Fortunately, a few superb draftsmen in the nautical (Jean Boudriot, John McKay, John Roberts, etc.) and aviation (Arthur Bentley, etc.) fields are keeping it alive for the time being.  (My father used to steal the Bentley drawings out of my copies of Scale Models and hang them on the bulletin boards at OSU.)  I rather suspect this generation may turn out to be the last that knows how to use a rapidograph - and that future generations, if they have the sense to appreciate such things, will hold those gentlemen in as much awe as we now reserve for the wizards who made the old "Admiralty drawings" in the eighteenth century. 

Alright - let's try to lasso this thread back to frigates...  :-)

 I've been wondering (and I'll freely admit that I'm only working from "A Most Fortunate Ship", first edition, Magoun's "Frigate Constitution" and a shelf full of Chapelle books - no Constitution AOTS or "Six Frigates" yet), do we know for sure if the American frigates were built with a boom on their driver or spanker sail?

 My understanding is that the Roal Navy was just on the cusp of conversion from a loose-footed spanker to the use of this boom on the driver sail around 1800, and it has just occurred to me to wonder if the U.S. frigates, as built, reflected the  earlier practice or the newest technology?

 Thanks to anyone who can point me to a good reference or give me a good guess.

Rick 

Whew After reading some of this I decided I don't want to try and build a USS Constitution. And to think I almost bought one.

                         Thanks Guys 

Surface_Line wrote:

I've been wondering (and I'll freely admit that I'm only working from "A Most Fortunate Ship", first edition, Magoun's "Frigate Constitution" and a shelf full of Chapelle books - no Constitution AOTS or "Six Frigates" yet), do we know for sure if the American frigates were built with a boom on their driver or spanker sail?

Well, AOTS may hold the answer as Marquardt gives a list of spars from Humphrey's original papers which includes a spanker boom.   They certainly had them very early in their carreers as there are plenty of contemporary drawings and paintings from the early 1800's (those of Corne and Roux, for instance) that show the ships with spanker booms.   There is also an illustration in Chapelles History of the American Sailing Navy captioned as Philadelphia's original sail plan showing a boom.  If it is the original plan that would date from 1798 or 1799, I would guess.

Bilbirk - I don't think anybody in this thread intended to discourage people from tackling the Revell 1/96 Constitution.  The one that's been taking all the flak is the United States.  I think virtually all experienced sailing ship enthusiasts would agree that the Constitution kit is and excellent one - probably on just about everybody's "top ten" list of plastic sailing ship kits.  I don't recommend it as a first project for anybody getting into that phase of the hobby, but it's a well-designed, generally accurate kit that can form the basis of a superb scale model.

Regarding spanker booms and gaffs - I agree with Steve.  It's always dangerous to be dogmatic about such things, but in this case my strong inclination would be to assume that an American frigate of 1797 had a boom-rigged spanker unless I saw some really strong evidence to the contrary.  In addition to the documents Steve mentioned, the Corne painting of 1803 (the earliest known picture of the ship, reproduced in Captain Martin's book) shows a gaff and boom, and so far as I know those spars are included in all the extant sets of spar dimensions for the ship.  The spanker (or driver) boom actually predates that period by quite a bit.  The gaff-and-boom rig was in used, primarily as a fine-weather replacement for the lateen-rigged mizzen, during the American Revolution.  (A written description of the Continental frigate Hancock mentions that she had "a full driver boom with another across.)

Thanks, gentlemen.

jtilley,

After steve mentioned Philadelphia, I had it in mind to check your Hancock to see if I could bracket a period when the US (colonies, whatever) started using the boom, because I assumed the Hancock must not have.  I started with the concept from John Harland's "Seamanship in the Age of Sail" that the boom came into use around 1800, and I thought I had read the same thing elsewhere, but can't put my finger on it now.  Hmm, must have misinterpreted something.

Thanks,

Rick 

I don't think the question about the appearance of the gaff and boom mizzen rig has a simple answer.

I waded fairly deeply into this one - deep enough to get thoroughly confused - when I was working on my little model of the Hancock.  I satisfied myself pretty firmly that that particular vessel did have a "driver boom."  Sir George Collier's letter about her (which I slightly misquoted in my last post; sorry about that) said she had "a fore-and-aft driver boom with another across."  Earlier in the same paragraph, he said the same ship had "a whole mizzen yard."  My eventual conclusion was that she normally sailed with a lateen mizzen (the sail, presumably, only extending as far forward as the mast), and carried a separate sail, called the driver, for use in fine weather.  (William Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 1776 edition, defined "driver" as "an oblong sail, occasionally hoisted to the mizzen peak, when the wind is very fair.  The lower corners of it are extended by a boom, or pole, which is thrust out across the ship, and projects over the lee quarter.")  I think the idea of that arrangement was to let the aft, lower corner of the sail be stretched out further than that of the lateen-rigged mizzen.

Sources that give "about 1800" as the date for the appearance of the gaff-and-boom-rigged spanker may not be exactly incorrect.  I think it was about that time that the "whole mizzen yard" went completely out of fashion.  (That meant, in practical terms, that the section of the mizzen yard forward of the mast got sawed off.  What was left was, in practical terms, the same as the driver gaff.)  The term "driver" seems to have morphed from its original meaning as a fine-weather replacement for the mizzen, to a permanent replacement for it.  Just when the word "spanker" came to replace "driver" I'm not sure; the change seems to have been pretty universal by the middle of the nineteenth century.  I have a general impression that American terminology adopted the word "spanker" slightly before the British did, but I'm not at all sure about that.

It should perhaps be noted that what we're talking about here is the full-rigged ship.  Smaller vessels, such as sloops, cutters, and brigs, were shipping gaffs and booms well before the American Revolution.

Don't be put off by the comments about the United States Bilbirk. I am building the Constitution as I write this e-mail and am thoroughly enjoying it !

Julian

According to Lees, the mizen boom became official in the Royal Navy in 1793. Contemporary illustrators Corne, Beaugean, Roux and Corne all show the boom on American ships in the early 19th Century.

Relative to Revell's United States stern configuration, it most assuredly did not look that way. The kit designers obviously knew nothing about ship structures.  Ignoring aestethics, the staggered stern windows would have been a nightmare to frame: the stern timbers need to run between the windows all the way to the rail. The framing for the poop rails is not consistent with the ship's timbers either. Also the flat deck may be passable for the gun and spar decks, but on the poop, it really needs camber.

But it's hard to single out Revell, It would be a very short list of plastic sailing ship kits that could be built SOB and claim to be accurate representations.

The other big question on the United States is how was the driver rigged?  The round house would have significantly reduced the area of the mizen/driver if the mizen mast was the same configuration as Constitution/President. This sail is crtitical to a vessel's ability to reliably tack. I would expect United States to have a taller mizen mast in order to maintain effective sail balance.   

It's interesting to compare the photos of the bogus United States parts to the photo of the Revell Constitution's transom earlier in this thread.  In the latter, the camber in the molded rails is subtle but definitely there.  And the sides of the transom windows are laid out the way they should be:  not rectangular, but tapering slightly - with the outboard ones tapered more than the center ones.  (At least I think Revell got that part right.  I may be wrong; it's been a long time.)  Naval architects in those days laid out such ship components the way the ancient Greeks laid out the columns of the Parthenon - with due concern for aesthetics and the avoidance of optical illusions.  The folks who designed the original Revell Constitution kit, which appeared in 1965, understood that - or, at least, understood how to follow a good set of plans.  (They were working from the set drawn for the Smithsonian by George Campbell - one of the best in the business.)  The so-called United States kit is, I'm afraid, one more testimony to what happened to Revell in the late sixties and early seventies.  It's pretty clear that those conscientious, ship-loving artisans had left the company by then, to be replaced by people who simply didn't know what they were doing - and a management that didn't care.

Lack of deck camber is one of the fundamental weaknesses of all the big Revell sailing ship kits.  (We should remember that there really were only three:  the Cutty Sark, Kearsarge, and Constitution.  And all of them appeared during a relatively brief period:  in 1959, 1961, and 1965, respectively.  All other three-foot Revell sailing ship kits were reissues.)  Apparently the technology of the time wouldn't allow the casting of such a big, almost-flat component in one piece of styrene.  So the designers adopted the less-than-satisfactory solution of molding each deck in three pieces - fore, midships, and aft.  Thin, flat (or nearly flat) pieces of styrene tend to warp; in many examples that I've seen (more in recent years than earlier) the deck components have been distorted more by warping than would be correct for scale camber (and frequently in the wrong direction).  Many of Heller's early sailing ship kits also lack deck camber.  The Heller designers finally did figure it out when they got to their H.M.S. Victory.  The decks of that one are split longitudinally, and the kit contains a set of widely-spaced "deck beams" to keep the camber more-or-less right.  Great.

I know of only one other plastic sailing ship kit whose designers really conquered the problem of deck camber.  (I should emphasize that I haven't seen all of them by any stretch of the imagination.  There may be others.)  The Airfix H.M.S. Bounty has a nice, thin deck with cambered "deck beams" molded integrally underneath it.  That system would seem to invite sink marks in the upper surface, but the sample I got for review (a long, long time ago) had none.  Bravo, Airfix.  Unfortunately, though, that kit had little else to recommend it.