Paint on old sailing ships. question

Another thing to remember.  At this period the crew couldn't just walk down to the paint locker and get a bucket of topside ochre.  Paints had to be mixed according to recipes.   So many pounds of white lead,  lamp black,  ground oyster shell,  and/or ochre mud to so many gallons of linseed oil.  Painting would be an all hands evolution taking a significant amount of time just to prepare the materials.    Linseed results in a flat to satin finish.   Glosses didn't come in until the shellacs & lacquers (beetles disolved in alchohol).

The white hull was probably tallow coat.   White lead in tallow (beef fat).  The lead would help cut down on sea-borne critters.

well I'm going to be doing the old revell 1/110 bounty for my first go at ships,  I figure to just do the bottom white since its just a woodgrain molded on the model.  and the upper hull in green & black with the yellow and red accents

HMAV Bounty was coppered after the Navy bought her.

Hi !

    What is not known is the make-up of the paints of those eras .I would suggest you think about this carefully . Tallow and and boiled tree sap was used for wood colored places and a darker pitch like substance was used on many .The Bounty more than likely had a white lead concoction on the hull below the wales .

    This did wear off and had to be re-done to prevent the wood from being eaten up by Toredos . A very nasty salt water worm much like termites that would turn a ship spongy in about two or three years . Remember the voyages averaged two to four years minimum or more .

 In this instance they would find a good shore and " Careen " the ship , clean the growths off and re-coat the bottom .Careening was done by attaching gear to the topmasts and pulling the ship over on it's side to allow access to the bottom .

 This is why in later ships were " Coppered " or covered with a Copper infused metal and was called " Muntz metal ". The sea critters that ate wood definitely did not like those substances .      T.B.       P.S. As " G " said , the finishes would be like a satin finish if at all . Many were flat , but we are not talking twelve year old cheaply maintained ships here . Satin would be correct

It was usually satin, not too shiny. Also there were finishes other than paint. Navy ships were pretty well maintained. When modeling a naval sailing ship, prim and proper is the way to go.

For instance, on HMS Victory, there were close to 1,000 men in the crew, as 100 guns with 9 men each, even accounting for the fact that a maximum of 50 guns or so would be fired at a time, meant that there were a lot of hands unemployed on a ship that probably took less than 100 to sail.

Idle hands are the devil's etc.

Bounty is a special case, but as Bligh was a tyrant, again well maintained I am sure.