Lindberg Jolly Roger float test.

Yeah, and full of French guys so inviting targets for the Royal Navy. Seriously though, prize money would be the motivation for not sinking a ship on the spot. And I don't think it was a matter of taking pains, more likely a bit of luck following action.

In fact Dr. Tilley's Hancock was such a prize, although I don't know what/ if she was sold and for how much.

I learned in a recent read that the Bismark, being in operation as a commerce raider; had on board several hundred men as prize crews. Quite a few journalists, too. Those prize crews were among the most experienced deckhands in the Kriegsmarine, and were lost when the ship was destroyed.

Following this build with interest!

The French ships were known for fine build quality and nice sailing characteristics.

Why?

Well I have no idea in this case, but usually the prize money was a primary motivation.

Aha ! Yes she was .

Most folks assume the Surprise and others were English built ships . She was French built . Of course that's the point of my question .Why would the Royal Navy take pains not to sink French vessels , but , instead dismast and take as prizes ? The secret is right before your eyes .

Tanks you make very curious statements at times...

I'll defer to Tilley but I thought she WAS a French ship.

Yes I have been warned that after she is finished she may not float so well/.I guess I will find out but she sure is pretty!

Ya Know what ?

     Years ago I used to float REVELL'S large Constitution in the waters where I lived .( the California River Delta . confluence of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers ) . I built a fake bottom to hide the iron keel and used foam that comprised that fake bottom . She floated at the waterline depicted on the model .

     I had to do at least five bouyancy tests before I got it right . With this one I would not float her anymore .She's not built for it . By the time you add all the masts and rigging she will float too deep and without a false keel she WILL roll over .

Darned good looking model though  .Ask Dr.Tilley why she resembles a French ship . The answer will surprise ( sic ) you . The English did it for a reason . Funny their ship yards never caught on , now did they ?  Tanker - Builder

put on the rails and constructed the bowsprit.Concerned that the thin plastic may bend under the pressure of the rigging,I replaced the first 21/2 inches of the sprit with a brass tube.The sprit will be epoxied and reinforced with thread.    

A bit more progress.   

I decided a little bling out back was in order courtesy of Testors square bottle gold enamel.    

Yeah, packaging and marketing seem to be what keeps the company in business.

The Micromark catalog does include some AL kits - including vehicles as well as ships. (Micromark's kit offerings are kind of odd. It sells a few Tamiya kits, and a few from other manufacturers - and lots of model railroad stuff.) I have no idea what the vehicle kits are like. The ship kits have an abominable reputation.

They sure have nice boxes!   

Micro-Mark still sells Artesania Latina kits.

Thanks for the warning, jtilley - since I live in spain those kits are reasonably priced, and I'd have made the mistake of buying one if it wasn't for your comments. The poor materials are probably responsible for the masts being pulled forward by the rigging..

I also heard that AL had to suspend production and had to recall a bunch of kits because they were shipped with the wrong instructions as in instructions for a totally different ship.What an expensive Boo boo!

I'd forgotten about the Artesania Latina kit. I know it only through pictures.

Among serious scale ship modelers AL probably has the worst reputation of any of the HECEPOB companies. Its kits are notoriously inaccurate, poor in terms of quality of materials - and expensive. Its nickname in certain scale modeling circles is "Artist in the Latrine."

One thing I remember about this one in particular is that all the guns on it are long guns. No acknowledgment of the ship's carronades. And that picture differs in a lot of respects from the plans of the real ship.

Artesania Latina, as I understand it, no longer has an American distributor (though I guess some retailers get some of the kits directly from Spain). Model Expo dropped the line years ago. Frankly, I wouldn't dream of buying an AL kit.

Yes that main mast is really leaning forward!

Artesania Latina also does make a HMS Surprise, and while my experience in wooden models is nonexistant, and I'm not sure if it's accurate or not, I think it looks pretty good:

Not sure why the rigging seems to pull the masts forward that much though! 

Amazing what a little paint will do!   

Regarding that Lindberg "Jolly Roger" kit - it's a reissue of a kit originally released in the late sixties, labeled as the French frigate La Flore. For its day it was a pretty good, reasonably accurate representation of what it was supposed to be. It was based on an old model that was owned at one time by President Kennedy. Scholars have doubts about whether that old model represents an actual ship. We've discussed that question several times here in the Forum. At any rate, the Lindberg kit has a pretty distinctively French look to it.

The Surprise in the Patrick O'Brian novels is based on a real ship - a French frigate that was captured by the Royal Navy. Several modelers here in the Forum have used the kit as a basis for models of HMS Surprise over the past ten years or so. I can't recall seeing one that actually got finished, but some of the in-progress photos were very impressive.

The HMS Rose replica has never had much of a reputation among serious researchers. (I've heard it described as "a monstrosity," and I confess I tend to agree.) All sorts of compromises and departures from reality were made in its construction. Most conspicuously, there's too much space between the spar deck and main deck, and the spar deck itself is wrong. (The real ship had an open waist, with separate quarterdeck and forecastle deck.) People who've seen it since the movie was made say that the movie makers did a really brilliant job of concealing the more blatantly unrealistic parts.

When I saw her in Rhode Island about forty years ago, the phony gun barrels were mounted on ridiculously oversized carriages, in an attempt to make the barrels stick out the middles of the ports. (The deck on which the guns sat was at least a foot too low.) As I understand it, the guns now have reasonable carriages, but each of them sits on a highly non-prototypical platform.

I really like the movie, but the ship isn't to be taken seriously.

At least two wood model companies have attempted scale models of the real HMS Surprise. (Her Admiralty drawings have survived; she'd make a good model subject.) Mamoli, one of the HECEPOB firms, actually release its version; it looked better than most Mamoli products, but that's not saying much. And the excellent British firm Jotika announced one quite a few years ago. On the basis of photos it looks great (and expensive), but so far as I know it still hasn't been released.

Yeah, there's a "Tea Party Ship" in Boston. The last time I toured it was a long time ago. The story that the staff told the visitors was utter nonsense. I don't know what visitors hear now.

Most Americans misunderstand what happened at the original Boston Tea Party. The Tea Act of 1773, which started the ruckus, was, in modern terms, a government bailout of a business that was too big to fail - in this particular case, the British East India Company. The Tea Act officially made tea imported into the colonies by the East India Company exempt from most of the taxes British subjects normally paid when they bought tea - whether in England, in India, or elsewhere. The only tax that had to be paid on East India Company tea in North America was the piddling two pence per pound left over from the Townshend Duties of 1769. That tax break was supposed to encourage American colonists to buy East India Company.

The idea backfired, because the tax break on East India Company tea would have allowed that tea to be sold cheaper than the illegal, completely untaxed tea that people like John Hancock were smuggling into the colonies. When Hancock learned that his illegal tea was going to be more expensive than the East India Company's tea, he and his friend Samuel Adams started thinking up a scheme to keep the East India's bargain-priced tea out of the colonies. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I've been trying to straighten out college students' misconceptions of this episode for the past 31 1/2 years, with dubious success. The usual version is: "We didn't want to pay taxes, so we threw the tea overboard." When you start to think about that, it becomes obvious that there's no logic to it. (If you don't like the tax, don't buy the tea. Nobody's forcing you to buy it.)

There is, I guess, some connection between the modern "Tea Party Movement" and the actual Boston Tea Party, in that members of the modern movement don't particularly like government bailouts. But I wonder how many of those folks know the real story.

Another irony of this whole mess, to my notion, is that the Townshend Duty on tea was two pence per pound. A pound of tea is a lot of tea. (I like tea, but I'm not sure my wife and I could use up a full pound of tea leaves in a year.) And two pence, even in 1774 currency, wasn't going to send anybody to the poor house.

The deeper one gets into the facts of the American Revolution, the more obvious it is that, like most conflicts, it wasn't a simple struggle between good guys and bad guys. Or, for that matter, between idiots in red coats standing in straight lines and smart people in blue uniforms firing Kentucky long rifles from behind trees. As is so often the case in international affairs, miscommunication, misunderstandings, and cultural differences had at least as much to do with it as "rights" and "wrongs."

Strictly in humor, its curious to me how a movement that wants less government and lower taxes named itself after an historic event protesting the lowering of taxes...

Isn't there a ship in Boston Harbor with a Tea Party museum on it?

I think they are using her in a tax preparation commercial that recreates the Boston Tea Party!

jtilley

When I was a lot younger I built quite a few plastic sailing ship kits to sail. The casualty rate was high.

Ballasting such a kit is a real crapshoot. There's just no practical way to figure out how much ballast will be necessary. Every additional piece of styrene, wood, or whatever that's added to the model will add to its weight - and change the center of gravity.

I suppose one way to do it would be to add weight to the exterior of the hull below the centerline of the keel.

Having owned a number of pond sail boats as a kid, its most practical to have a narrow (front to back) fairly deep extra keel.with a weight on the bottom of it. Not prototype but it cant be seen.

The subject of the relationship between scale and water is an interesting one. You can change the scale of your model, but not the water. I have no idea how many modelers have discovered that a scale keel just isn't up to the task of keeping a scale model upright in any sort of breeze. Many modelers add "false keels" to give the water a little more of a fair chance.

The classic Revell America comes with an add-on pond sailing keel, but its thin plastic and my guess is that the model would float nose downward.

When my little model of the frigate Hancock was almost done, out of sheer stupid curiosity I took a deep breath and set it afloat in the bathroom sink. Much to my surprise, it floated upright - but about 1/4" too deep in the water. I haven't floated it again.

Probably a very wise choice.

Watching a little sailing ship ghosting along the surface of a pond or swimming pool is indeed a big pleasure. Just don't expect much in the way of performance - and pick a calm day and a shallow-draft pool. When I was at Ohio State, there was a nice, landscaped pool called Mirror Lake at one end of the campus. My dad and I would sometimes sail models in it - and we usually drew quite a few interested spectators (including golden retrievers and water spaniels). The most spectacular event of that sort, though, came when my Revell Beagle sank, and Dad (a fearsome Professor of Architecture whose students quailed when he approached) went wading after it. Ah, memories....

There were a couple like that in Architecture school. One guy had a six or so foot long pole he stood with like a spear. Whenever he wanted to add emphasis to a point, he'd bang the butt of it really hard on the floor. Another structures Proff. made us stand up and click our heels together when he came in.

The restoration of the ship for Master and Commander sure has left her in great shape judging from pictures. I still haven't watched the movie, shame on me!

Yeah!I am painting it like the Surprise!Russel Crowe has stated he is more than willing to reprise the role of lucky Jack Aubrey but i guess the first film did not do well enough to justify a sequel.

Thanks.  I asked about the ROSE because back in 1970-74, the ROSE was "based" in Newport, RI and I would go aboard her a lot when my sister was attending Salve Regina.  When I saw her in MASTER AND COMMANDER - I said to myself; "Hey, I know her.  The old gal's in great shape."

Tim- the popular choice is HMS Surprise.

Yes, its an attractive little 18th Century frigate.

May I make a stupid comment; that JOLLY ROGER sort of looks like a US frigate or even the HMS ROSE.  Could you make like the HANCOCK or another frigate or even the ROSE from that kit?