Test Bed: Lindberg's War of Independence Schooner

rocketman2000

On sail furling on a schooner, I am learning about this myself. I am doing a scratch Great Lakes topsail schooner I wish to display with furled (red) sails.

As John so astutely pointed out, years ago, the distinction will be in fixed versus hoisting gaffs.

 Amerchant vessel only has enough crew to "work" her.  Which suggests against rigged blocks at the jaws and along the gaff. 

The big clippers needed no tackle at the gaf jaws, as they were set in a gooseneck at the mast.  A span wire or tackle supported the end of the gaff.  All of this needed to support the weight of sail, and the sailors who would have to shinny out on the gaff to pass the gaskets that brail up the sail.

Having a bunch of supporting blocks out along the gaff will interfere with those sailors getting out there.  (This then presupposes something not documented well--foot ropes on the gaff--a conundrum of sorts.)

Merchant use suggests "loose footed" sails, so as to not have a boom in the way of cargo handling.  And, also any forward stays, which was much needed with a schooner rig.

For the aftmost sail against gaff, mast, and boom tends to look like a distended "C" shape whing the gaff is standing.  In a hoistable gaff, the sail is puddled down on the boom and the gaff laid over the bundle. 

Typically there is a crutch or brace to support the boom.  Some ships will have a fixed wooden arch with a notch into which the boom is lowered by slacking the topping lifts.

Often, there are two such arches, for and aft.  Which will have spaces for spars to support and in-port caonpy to shade the after house.  On some merchant ships, the life rail stanchions are extended upward to support framing for such a canopy and remain a permanent feature.

This is a strange time of year, with the Soo Locks closed due to ice, so I miss my Ship-spotting.

I have a similar revenue cutter on my temp hold shelf.  It is a real oldy, a Sceintific wood model, hull precarved with just bulwarks and stern needing some cleanup.  The ship is almost identical- must have been a class.

On sail furling on a schooner, I am learning about this myself.  I am doing a scratch Great Lakes topsail schooner I wish to display with furled (red) sails.  This is a three master.  Any chance you could do a photo zooming in on the furled mainsail and boom?

Alfa,

 I'll be on the lookout for your response.

Initiating a new PM is not working at this time, hasn't for a couple months

Nice to hear you're doing better.  Hang in there.

Yeah, age gets us all.  I'm kind of like you, but a little different.  2/3 rds of the left ventricle is complete toast, and I'm at 20-25% EF.  ICD and 3 stents.  When that box goes off, I don't even want to be around.....5 times in 3 1/2 hours back in August.

goldhammer,

Yep, health issues .. mostly old age .

I did have a carotid endarterectomy done on my right carotid artery. It was successful and I'm mostly healed from the December 20th operation. A little swelling remains but should be gone in a few months. No more gunk in that artery although the left one is 50 to 70% blocked. My surgeon told me it's best to just monitor that one for the time being.

Needless to say, no more high cholesterol foods for me!

Best,

Tom,

Thanks for the kind words.

It was fun attempting to "plate" the hull with copper. Not a spectacular success but, as you said, a learning experience.

Alfa,

Yesterday I could not reply to your query. Somehow FineScale blocked me from responding ... it was really strainge. I kept getting "Access Denied ......" messages.

This morning however, I'm obviously not constrained by yesterday's gremlins.

I do have the instructions and would be happy to mail them to you. PM me with your address and I'll get them off to you next week.

He's still active here, you might get lucky.  He's dealing with some heath issues, so might be awhile before he replies.

I usually break down the boxes so they are flat, with the instructions inside. This way they take up little space and preserve the history.

ALFA

Good morning Mike.

My brother asked me to build that kit for him, because that's not his hobby. However, the kit came to me without instructions. Is it possible to get a copy of the instructions?

 

I doubt that after 7 years he's still got them, unless they're in a dusty file cabinet.

Hi Mike,

After having built several Lindberg ship kits and with several more in the stash, let me say that I think that you did a great job with this kit.  Sometimes a Lindberg kit is all that exists of a specific vessel and you have to power through with it.  You tried some new modeling techniques and learned a lot, and after all isn't that a big part of this hobby?  Pushing yourself to try new things and to work outside of your comfort zone to improve your modeling skills?  Well done Mike!

TJS

MIKE !

    How dare thee criticize thy own work ! Thou hast no shame ! That said .Wassa matta You ? Diss a nice job dis is . LOL.LOL.

  MIKE ! you have done the little ship proud . Don't think for one minute you haven't . The ships from way back may not have been correct as models go , but you sized it all up when you said more than once you were having fun ! That , sir , says it all !

John, my mistake regarding my thinking that the main mast had square sail(s) above the gaff. You, indeed, mentioned it in explaining the "club" to me (the small spar attached vertically behind the main topmast) that it was for a "more-or-less triangular sail that's set between the topmast and the gaff ".

Mike

That triangular sail above the main gaff is the gaff topsail, which we discussed earlier in this thread. This particular painter seems to have left the gaff topsail yard off - which could well be correct. (Some ships had gaff topsail yards; others didn't.)  But he did set the sail more-or-less correctly, blowing out from the lee side of the mast. (The ship is on the port tack, so the starboard side is the lee side.)

Those paintings and drawings in Wikipedia all appear to my eye to have two important things in common: they were painted long after the Texas War of Independence, and the artists didn't know a whole lot about nautical technology. I wouldn't take any of them too seriously as primary sources.

Unfortunately, though, they're about the only pictorial sources we have.

The Pyro/Lindberg/Lifelike kit was copied from the Model Shipways wood kit, which was based on a set of drawings that Howard I. Chapelle found in the records of the Coast Guard in, I believe, the 1930s. Those drawings most definitely ARE primary sources.

We know that not all the Morris-class cutters were built to the same design (though all certainly were similar). I don't think anybody can say for certain that the kit precisely represents the Ingham/Independence/Independencia, but I don't think anybody can say for certain that it doesn't.

As I mentioned earlier, the records of the old Revenue Cutter Service are extremely spotty. The sources just don't permit the kind of detail and accuracy that modern modelers want. Personally, I wouldn't be uncomfortable calling the model "a reconstruction of the Texas Navy schooner Independence, formally the USRCS Ingham." I don't think anybody could prove me wrong.

From my landlubber's perspective the lithograph on the lower left of the Wikipedia page dealing with the "Independence" is slightly more like the Lindberg model than the full color painting on the top right of the page (the ship's boat aft rather than to starboard and the main mast with square sails above the gaff). The color painting also has me baffled (easy to do) regarding the top fore and aft sail on the main mast - it seems to me as though the artist depicted it filling as though to counter the direction of all the other sails' thrust? You guys gotta forgive my naivité with regard to sail propulsion .

As to which illustration on that page the model is supposed to represent.... I don't really know for sure. Even the lithograph, which I think is the closest, has more square sails above the fore and aft sails than the model. This is just idle chit chat. The model, as I said, was a fun little "test bed" project for me.

Mike

The precise composition of the "Texas Navy" seems to be a little questionable. My natural inclination is to believe Silverstone in preference to Wikipedia; on the other hand the Wikipedia entry probably is a little more recent. It seems to have been written by somebody who knew his/her way around Coast Guard history.

The other two "Texas Navy" schooners presumably were acquired from somebody other than the USRCS.

The whole "Texas Navy" is a curious little footnote to history (it only existed for about a year) - but an interesting one. What I don't understand is why Pyro (and Lifelike, and Lindberg) took so much trouble to make the actual story of the ship so obscure. I don't think any of them mentioned the name Ingham, which is the vessel the model almost has to represent.

The Ingham and the Roger B. Taney were both members of the Morris class of revenue cutters, which were built between 1830 and 1836. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the Ingham was the only one that wound up in the "Texas Navy," with the name Independence.

I really like the lines ans look from this illustration: 

According to Wikipedia there were several schooners in the Texas Navy. Here are some Wikipedia links to 3 of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan_schooner_Independence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan_schooner_Liberty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan_schooner_Brutus

There was another listed of the four that came up when I Googled "four schooners Texas Navy" but it had a steam engine also.

What the Lindberg kit model represents I'm not certain but it does seem to fit into the first half of the nineteenth century as I mention in this thread early on.

I did enjoy working on both the copper (Muntz metal?) plating technique as well as trying my hand at furled sails. I'm now a little wiser thanks to Capnmac82 and JTilley with regard to some nautical terminology as well as how ships'  yards, gaffs, and booms were positioned when fore and aft sails as well as a square topsail were furled.

Thanks all for the kind comments.

Mike

In glancing over this thread again, I've noticed that there's a little historical confusion in it. The ship that the kit apparently is supposed to represent didn't operate in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), but in the Texas War for Independence, aka Texas Revolution (1835-1836). That's the conflict in which Texas, then a province of Mexico, gained its tempoary status as an independent nation. The two most famous actions of that war were the defense of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas remained independent until it was annexed by the U.S. in 1845. That move by the U.S. precipitated the war between the U.S. and Mexico that started the following year.

One of the first moves of the newly-declared Republic of Texas in 1835 was to buy the Revenue Cutter Ingham from the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. (Price: $1700.00.) The Texans renamed her Independence. So Pyro was technically correct in calling her an "Independence War Schooner" - once we accept that the war in question was the one between Mexico and the Republic of Texas.

According to Wikipedia, the ship was later captured by the Mexican Navy and renamed Independencia. (The word had a patriotic ring for Mexicans, who had gained their independence from Spain only a few years earlier.) One could really raise some eyebrows by putting a Mexican flag on that model.

Mike,

Nice job! I had hoped that Lindberg had re-released this kit!

Bill

Thanks Steve.

Don't forget to look back in this thread at the comments from Capnmac and John Tilley regarding where the gaffs, booms, and yards are supposed to be positioned if you build her with sails furled.

Next up: Trumpeter's S.S. John W. Brown (Liberty Ship) as the S.S. Stephen Hopkins.

Mike

Mike,

I really like what you've done with her. I'll have to pick one up and build it now.

Steve

OK, here she is as far as I'm able to finish her. I do like her. She's diminutive compared to the 1/96 Connie and Cutty Sark I have in my little condo. (I'll have to work up the fortitude to give away some of my builds as I begin others - not much more room! ) She'll reside somewhere in my dining/kitchen area I think.

My apologies for hot having obtained the correct information to begin with regarding how I rigged the little ship with sails furled. I did remove the club head but when I attempted to break off the fore topsail yard so that I might position lower - just above the mast cap - I found it attached so well that I was sure I'd break the mast if I continued my attempt. So it sits higher on the mast than it should. I certainly was not going to try to redo all the rigging and take a chance on breaking the mainmast  gaff by attempting to lower it to the boom. C'est la vie.

All in all I'm happy with my little ship.

Mike

That old kit has an interesting history, which we've discussed several times here in the Forum. Let's not go over it again here; a Forum search on "Taney" should bring up the earlier posts.

The kit is intended to represent a revenue cutter of the Morris class. The most convenient, up-to-date source of basic information about American sailing warships (including revenue cutters) is Paul H. Silverstone's The Sailing Navy, 1775-1854. According to that source, the Morris class (which the author calls the Morris-Taney class) consisted of thirteen vessels. Not all of them were identical. In fact it's likely that no two of them were. Some had head rails and billet heads for figureheads; others had plain stems. And their dimensions varied somewhat. (The records of the Revenue Cutter Service are notoriously miserable. Silverstone was able to find records of the dimensions of only six of the ships.)

According to the same source, the "Texas Navy" consisted of thirteen ships, one of them, the Zavala, being a steamship (former name Charleston; apparently a converted merchantman). Of the twelve sailing vessels, only one was a former revenue cutter: the Morris-class U.S.R.C. Ingham, which the Texans renamed (drum roll please) Independence.

I have to get a bit of a laugh out of that story about Pyro donating the model to the CG Museum in recognition of the Coast Guard's assistance with the "research" for the kit. It's pretty clear that Pyro's "research" actually consisted of buying a Model Shipways solid-hull wood Roger B. Taney, which was then a relatively new kit. (Pyro also swiped the Model Shipways Harriet Lane, the tug Dispatch No. 9, and fishing trawler Hildina. The owners of Model Shipways referred to Pyro as "Pirate Plastics.")

One change that Pyro made I don't understand: that strange round blob at the extreme bow. The Model Shipways plans show a traditional billethead for a figurehead; I've never seen anything quite like the Pyro/Lindberg representation.

The old kit has been around so long, under so many different labels, that it's hard to sort out its history. (I suspect the people running Lindberg in the seventies and eighties had no idea where it had come from.) By modern standards it's pretty crude, all right, but frankly I wish it would come back. There aren't many plastic sailing ship kits that make good beginner projects. Round 2 Models has reissued the Harriet Lane; maybe they'll reissue this kit too. I'd also love to see the return of the Pyro Gertrude L. Thebaud / "American Cup Racer," which was pirated from a Marine Models wood kit.