The Ship Model Forum

I started an online notes page here:

https://ontheslipway.com/royal-navy-shi ... s-of-wwii/

I'll throw what I found so far on that page and keep on updating as long as there is an interest. This is an elusive subject without a proper comprehensive overview. You have to start somewhere I guess, so this is the discussion part, the blog page the summary

Hi EJ,

That's really a very good idea! Hope it will be possible to have all these types on photo AND a general plan of each. I will look into my store what I can contribute.

Maarten

_________________
"There are more planes in the ocean, than submarines in the sky" - old carrier sailor

Hi Evert Jan

Really good idea, thank you, and thank you Mr Schönfeld, I'll take a look in my bits of papers to see if there's something that may be of use.

Best wishes
Cag.

EJF,

A most useful thread. I will be sending you a PM with some suggestions in due course.

I scanned & processed all my 'unofficial' material; copies from a source of which I desperately need to find the name... some admiralty volume containing more or less everything? If you know, please share this information. All these (some with lines and an info sheet) were all shared by the Late John Lambert. I have a range of his original artwork as well, but a) I have not scanned them yet and b) I will have to discuss with Seaforth Publishing (who bought his plans) if previews of these images can be shared at all.

I added several other pages as well, including some links to IWM images (some boats may have been poorly identified, so please comment!). Uncredited images are my own and contain a blog link in the lower-right corner. I also have a limited set of drawings my Norman Ough, and I have no idea who owns the copyrights.

EJF,

In advance of my intended PM and for those interested.

The Admiralty Manual of Seamanship Vol 1 (1937) has a table listing the particulars of fittings etc for steam and motor boats between pages 284 and 285. There are no drawings in the book. This seems to lay down details of most of the boats that will be the subject of your thread. However, it does not give details of the service's pulling boats.

The collection of Norman Ough's boat drawings including his other work, are held by Bristol University as part of the SS GREAT BRITAIN Trust, which I presume owns the copyright. The drawings of Ough origin are, with those of other draftsmen, part of the David McGregor collection. These have been catalogued (it is a big list) and details can be found on-line (apologies to all, I don't have details of the link). Images are available for purchase on a CD.

Concerning the images in your last post: the 45ft motor launch shown is of the "light" type which came into service circa 1935. It replaced the 45ft motor launch with auxiliary motor that had been in service for some years previously but was still being carried by the "Revenge" class battleships. The latter boat is that illustrated in your blog embarking Royal Marines. Please do not delete that as it serves to illustrate the earlier boat of which there are few good images and from what past research revealed to me, NO drawings available in the National Maritime Museum (NMM). It is known, however that the NMM does have a copy of the drawing of the later boat.

The above will answer your immediate, implied, queries, other details will follow.

Indeed it does, and all sailing boats are on pages 280-281; I intend to put scans in the main page on the blog as well. (I used these pages as a general layout for the page, actually). I wonder if the 1943 version of the manual contains an updated table? This volume is usually a bit more expensive; I only have the 1937 version..



The plans are list here: https://www.ssgreatbritain.org/brunel-institute/collections. They have an extensive collection of plans, I did order a few Ough drawings from them earlier. Quite efficient and affordable, and nowadays also via download (My PC doesn't have a DVD reader anymore.). I have copies of the gig and 42ft sailing launch (not via ssgreatbritian, simple Xeroxes). I can shoot them an e-mail and ask. They also have number of Lambert drawings.



Thank you, that is a great addition. HMS Hood carried one 42ft and one 45 ft barge. I have not found any material on the 42ft sailing barge with the auxiliary motor... The data sheet of the 45 ft motor barge (also on the blog page) says

"This design was developed in 1935 to replace the existing 45ft motor launch; the new design to be a lighter craft to be carried in reconstructed capital ships and to be within the lifting capacity of the aircraft cranes."

This suggest that the type aboard HMS Hood is the pre-1935 version, i.e., the version she received in 1920.

Hi All,

Hi 81542, hi Evert Jan, yes also found the Admiralty Seamanship manual info, Im sure I had some Ough drawings in a ship drawings book, 27ft whaler, 32ft cutter etc still looking.

Will send anything I find

Best wishes
Cag.

If it is any help, Norman Ough's service boat drawings were published at reduced size in Model Boats magazine around the 1970s and are also to be found in "The life and ship models of Norman Ough" by Alastair Roach published in 2016 by Seaforth.

Thank you Cag and FrancisMcN. The book mentioned by Francis is a very useful reference for British warship fittings drawings circa 1939 - 45 and enlightening on a very interesting model-maker.

What follows might be of additional interest to enhancing the accuracy of EJ Foeth's thread though I will have to put it in more than one post.

One NJB Stapleton wrote a most useful book about steam picket boats that can be obtained via the second hand book market. It deserves to be mentioned in the blog.

A number of years ago I completed a model of a "Revenge" class battleship as she appeared at the outbreak of WW2. Final completion was delay by the necessity to research and obtain information about three of the boats that the ship was carrying at the time. I was able to complete a passable model of the 45ft launch with auxiliary engine from some photographs and a model of the boat onboard that of HMS NELSON in the Newcastle Discovery Museum. There were no drawings of the boat in the National Maritime Museum: I checked the holdings in the Brass Foundry (BF). The other two boats; the 45ft Motor Picket Boat and the admiral's barge were only identified from a large midships photograph of my ship in the Richard Perkins collection and one in the autobiography "The Battle and the Breeze" by Admiral Ashmore and using these I was able to trawl the Vosper Thorneycroft (VT) and British Power Boats (BPB) collections. I found the drawings for those two boats there and was able to construct drawings for the required models from those. Anyone getting excited about that information, however, should be aware that neither the VT nor the BPB collections had been catalogued at that date. Therefore any model-maker looking to try and find originals of plans that they need will require a photograph of their quarry and the time and patience to trawl the collections in the BF if what they need cannot be found elsewhere.

I would now like to comment on the content of the blog. First the 25ft Motor Cutter or Motor Boat as it was also known. The drawing shows the boat as designed. It remained in service until the 1980's largely unmodified except for the steering and engine control arrangements (effected in the early 1960's) and in some cases the fitting of GRP canopies.

Next what is described as the Type 1 35ft Fast Motor Boat. The first two pictures appear to be of a longer boat as does number six in the sequence. Images 4 and 5 however, are of a 35ft type that was built by BPB and the drawings are in the collection: they were the ones that I used to model the admiral's barge that I made. What is of interest from a recognition point though is that all of the images show a type of wheel house that I consider indicative of a BPB design boat though I would advise caution on this point.

(To be Continued)

(Continuing)

35ft Aircraft Tender. I don't think that these boats were in the Admiralty establishment. They were probably intended for the RAF so their presence here is dubious. That said, aircraft carriers may have had one.

45ft Diesel Picket Boat. I take in the web address but technically speaking the term "Green Parrot" would be applied to any barge so long as it was that of the Commander-in-Chief of a fleet. The "Green Parrot" in Portsmouth may still be used by whatever Commander-in-Chief there is in the area but is more likely to be a heritage artifact: I stand corrected though.

16ft Fast Motor Dinghy: Colloquially known as the "Skimmer" as well as "Skimming Dish." May be encountered with a fixed coxswain's wind shield. Went out of service in the early 1960's.

27ft Whaler. "Montague" refers to the sailing rig not, at the time, the boat. The term "Montague" came into use in the 1960's/70's; probably to permit differentiation between it and the motor or "3 in 1" whaler which entered service in the late 1950's. Interestingly though, the picture in EJF's Blog shows a boat being steered with the arrangement normally used for sailing. Otherwise they were usually steered with a bar type tiller. The boat also appears to being pulled with two men on some of the oars: there was normally only one on each. I can only think that the arrangement shown was ordered so as to ease working the boat with the weight of the practice torpedo being recovered.

Unknown. Appears from an enlargement of the steering wheel, to be a "light" type 45ft Motor Launch. It is being used as a diving tender.

Steam "Thingy." All are of a 50ft Steam Pinnace or Picket Boat. Some were fitted with motors.

14ft Sailing Dinghy. The link with the web address would seem to indicate that this boat was not the one used during WW2 but the one later introduce as a recreational sailing dinghy during the 1950's. It was colloquially referred to as a "14ft RNSA" the acronym meaning Royal Navy Sailing Association.

I will try to help with other queries that may arise but it is possible that while boat lengths may have been fairly "standard," changes may have been made to the superstructures on orders from above in order to cope with shortages in materials or comments from sea. I certainly get that feeling from the images on the blog.

Reply 1:

The 50ft thingy; this was a placeholder page and I was unsure to name it picket or pinnace, so added an eyesore for a name (as a reminder to change it); the page was not liked yet but apparently showed up . Some pages are simply placeholders, some with some link that may be interesting.

The book by Stapleton is on order from Germany; this may help identifying the various steam pickets other than the 50ft version in the IWM database and avoid posting images of the wrong type.

The book by Ough is very interesting and his drawings most useful. I have the 30ft gig scanned (in parts and stitched together) ready for processing; an e-mail to the SS Great Britain Trust and pin down copyright questions. The drawing I have is from an old magazine and not via the thrust, but still.

I found a number of references at the NMM with various smaller craft, such as: https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collectio ... 74382.html and https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collectio ... 74393.html that contain:

-45' motor barge No. 114 (1913)
-45' motor launch (1924)

It is not specified if these are admiralty boats though; Hood's boat was added in 1920, so only one option remains. They have a number of boxes with folded ship plans that probably need to be inspected... I do know that the one I had in mind is of the wrong type (i.e., the light version).

Regarding the types of the motor boats; this may need some refining as well. The type I was grouped, indeed, according the wheel house. I agree that the length of some of them appears larger. The first image of a boat of HMS Rodney (around 1937/38); an image in Raven & Roberts Battleship book shows an aerial view of Nelson (p. 271) with a 50ft Steam Pinnace; this "type I" is 80% of her length, or about 40ft overall.

The aircraft tender, according to the information sheet, was intended for aircraft carriers. A quick scan of some pics I have show the regular type only.

EJF,

Re: NMM's Box drawings. I recall going through these many years ago in an attempt to find a drawing of what I must refer to as the "heavy" 45ft Motor Launch. I found only a drawing of the boat that had been modified for a specific duty in Bermuda, I believe it was. It proved of little value. There was, of course, one for the 45ft "light" type.

Re: The photograph of HMS NELSON on Pge 271 of R and R. I presume that you are referring to the boat on the port side. My assessment is that it is "probably" a 35ft Fast Motor Boat of British Power Boats origin: it has that type of wheelhouse and thus having the duty of an admiral's barge.

All other points are noted but I need to work out how to send you a photograph of two drawings that I made.

A quick scan over lunch...



I picked up this image last year (anticipating a boats discussion...). The caption states HMS Resolution, East Africa (So, I'd say somewhere 1942, 1943). According to R&R p186, Resolution carried two 50ft Steam Pinnaces and one 45-ft Launch (that is, that deck plan is given as 1936), one of each in this photograph? The disruptive camouflage pattern of Resolution is carried over to the boats.

EJF,

I don't know where you found that last image but it is of considerable interest to me especially the 45ft (?) motor launch! The model that I mentioned in my post of 9.52pm of 11 Jan was of HMS RESOLUTION. I established exactly what RESOLUTION was carrying in August 1939. Amongst those she had a "heavy" type 45ft motor launch onboard at the time and I drew a plan for a model of it based on what I could find at the time. However, I later found an image of a picture from a private collection taken onboard the ship after the Philadelphia repair/refit on a web-site run by one Richard Baker which showed a launch which did not tie in with what I knew of the boat in 1939. I assumed (dangerous habit) therefore that the boat onboard circa 1942 was of American origin and left things there as the timing was outside my period of "interest."

The launch in your image may therefore be of American origin and possibly longer than 45ft, or a British "heavy" type 45ft motor launch with a considerably different steering arrangement from the normal one. However, apart from that your image shows a 50ft steam pinnace and the forward part of a 32ft cutter.

AH, the plot thickens I had some "RN" barges filed under a USS label and that would make sense (the 50ft US variant).



The guardrails at the end certainly match with other US boats. It also appears too large in relation to the 50ft pinnace to be 45 ft and it is again different from the standard version in the IWM image.

I bought this image on Ebay, from a seller who seems to enjoy cutting up albums and selling images separably (a capital offence, in my opinion).

I'll have a look at what I have on the US side to confirm this is indeed American-built.

Edit:


Source: https://maritime.org/doc/boatcat/index.htm

Well done EJF!,

The image in your last post shows a boat that has been somewhat "tidied up" internally compared to HMS RESOLUTION's version but on the balance of probabilities I'd say that it was the type that she must have received in Philly.

For your further information, I trawled for Richard Baker's web-site on RESOLUTION later. It has been up-dated (2017) since I corresponded with him whilst I was completing my model and the image that I mentioned is no longer shown: a pity. Contacting him may help you if you wish to take the matter further.

I still have to process the comments on/for the blog, but meanwhile found one image of a seaplane tender aboard HMS Indomitable (very poor quality upon close-up though). I also added a Carley Float & Denton Raft page (Balsa rafts to be added). The image of HMS Resolution's boats was moved from the 45ft motor launch page to the 50ft steam picket page (with description).

Uploaded more images


HMS Nelson, well-known Wright & Logan image


Close-up from some Rodney negative of a whaler.


Images of HMAS Sydney; I suspect these are variations of the standard 35ft motor pinnaces, as the cabin & rudder arrangement is slightly different (Not my image though).

Hi All

Hi EJ, still going through books and files, will send through what might be of use to you, can only find Ough's book of warship drawings, County, QE class, pre war and late war destroyers etc.

Ships boats in there but rather small!

Best wishes
Cag.

Added HMS Hood's admiral's barge



Description: "This barge is observed aboard HMS Hood and may be unique. It appears to be a variant of the 35 ft Fast Motor Boat Type II, but has a partially enclosed pilot position, an extended forward cabin and a different rear cabin configuration. This variant largely resembles the Royal Barge."

Regarding the 35 ft fast motot boat type I; I compared a few of those suspected to be something else to the 45ft British Power Boat variant and it is a match