HMS Mary Rose sailing warship Henry VIII English Navy 1545

[JIM BAUMANN]

Good day all!

you did read it correctly .... 1545 !!

new project-- at a complete tangent to my usual interest of 1860-==> 1920's....

HMS Mary Rose was one of the largest warships ( 800 tons ) in Tudor King Henry VIII's navy, topped only only in tonnage and guns by the 'Great Harry'

contrary to popular myth and misinformation , HMS Mary Rose did not sink on her maiden Voyage whilst being watched by King Henry VIII from his vantage point of Southsea Castle...

HMS Mary Rose was launched in 1511, and partook in a number of wars and naval engagements
In the third French war, a very large invasion fleet engaged the English fleet in the Battle of the Solent;
Mary Rose led the attack on the French Galley's and promptly foundered !
--there are various theories- either a sudden gust of wind, too sharp a turn, even French cannon fire...

whatever --she heeled over dramatically, water entered the leeward gunports and she capsized and sank quite rapidly,
taking around 500 crew and soldiers with her,
most of whom were trapped by the anti-boarding netting over the main decks-thereby -preventing their escape from the sinking ship...

far more detail can be gleaned here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose

The remains of the Mary Rose , and a considerable amount of artefacts were raised in 1982 and after 30 years of conservation work what is left of her ...
- 3/4 of the starboard side, is preserved in a new state of the art museum complex at the Portsmouth Naval dockyard

-================================================================================================
The Airfix model is a simple, cheap and cheerful little kit-- though dimensionally pretty accurate ( as far as is possible to know ! )
and was prepared and designed with the aid and approval of the HMS Mary Rose trust

Rather than me photograph the kit contents ,a fair review of what is in the box can be found here:

http://www.scalemodellingnow.com/hnmari ... tarter-set

The kit out the box built... would be reminiscent of those old nostalgic Airfix models of small sailing ships of our youth, cute, but alas a bit toy-like...
( image from the internet--airfix forum)

needless to say I plan to complicate it and make it much more difficult-- and hopefully end up with a presentable more detailed model of a almost gaudily painted Tudor warship
something like this!

[JIM BAUMANN]

Now it would seem quite a task and a lot of good pre-dreadnought model- building time expended on making life very hard indeed...

enter to the rescue ... Robin Carpenter of scalewarship.com

He rather usefully for me-- for this project had already developed a PE set

-consisting of decks , bulkheads, hatches -a few small parts and PE ratlines

more images of the pieces in action installed on his demo model can be seen..

--right here--at Modelwarships.com !!
link below

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=159397

Now this is a great help, but once bitten by the idea of making a 'good' model this vessel...

I did the best thing I could and visited the Mary Rose museum last weekend!

==> impressive museum--seeing the real thing gives the whole model project a new context for me--
I also gleaned a few useful details , some educated opinions from the guides and a whole dose of inspiration.

...curiously the Mary Rose museum gift shop seems to be missing a trick here... as they don't seem to stock/ sell the Airfix kit !!!!!!

with this in mind I knew I had to try harder--

so I drilled out the muzzles of the big guns of the lower gun deck

and immediately set about opening all the archer blinds, thinning the overly thick ships sides mouldings and opening up all the holes that would have small guns or cannon poking through them !!

there were a lot of very small apertures to cut out !!

the Airfix deck was a mere curio and was discarded

I followed the instructions from scalewarship for fitting deck supports-and then deviated slightly in height, position and material..!

with a bit of paint on it is starting to pull together

more fun soon

Jim Baumann

[Strategos Augustus]

This is a proper ship, Jim.

Good to see you've come over to the dark side.

Looking forward with immense anticipation.

[ModelMonkey]

[Goodwood]

And now for something completely different!

Say, Jim...you're not gonna...not gonna put her on a sea base...in her...you know..."final condition"...tipping over and capsizing...are you?


...are you?

[Royaloakmin]

Very cool!

[NCMac]

Sean Nash, ACG (aircraft camo gestapo)

Say, Jim...you're not gonna...not gonna put her on a sea base...in her...you know..."final condition"...tipping over and capsizing...are you?

You may be onto something here, I did note the continued existence of a full hull, a bit uncommon for Mr. Baumann. Given the builder involved, I can picture this moving from extraordinary to downright insane!

Eagerly awaiting the next installment,

Mac

[zs180]

Wow Jim, this is a real surprise!
And a rather pleasant one.
I am so sure we are in for a treat and will be delighted to see your ingenious solutions to somewhat different problems than before.
Looking forward to it!

Goerge P�k

[wefalck]

Looking forward to your treatment of the subject !

In general, however, I must say, I am not a great fan of etched shrouds/ratlines and decks; the former look too flat and where the deck caulking should be, there are deep furrows ... think of soldering together pre-tinned wire in a shroud-making frame as 'Shipbuilder' does, or something similar.

[finnfan]

Oh no! I too was tempted by the PE set and built the Airfix Mary Rose earlier this year. A fun project which I was going to bring it to Telford along with all the mistakes I made and minimal rigging, but now there will be a vastly superior version in existence so perhaps not. At least it gave me a chance to experiment with Uschi van der Rosten's elastic rigging material.

See you there Jim

Best wishes

Don

[MichelB]

Gonna watch this one! Visited her last summer, bit underwhelming - but tacked at the end of a long Southampton day having had a near-religious experience encountering the HMS Hood ship's bell - and with a belly full of hearty food.

[marijn van gils]

Fantastic! You're actually building one of my dream projects!

I'm really looking forward to see this develop further, and to see you tackle the masts, yardarms, sails and period rigging.

No chance you will portray her at the moment of foundering? Or maybe in this kind of action?:


Cheers,

Marijn

[Joe Simon]

Great work as usual Jim!!

[Mike Reading]

It is extremely well worth visiting The Mary Rose Exhibition at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. You will gain all sorts of information, including how the ship was built.

[Rob]

Nice to see this one being built. I was planning it as well and the PE is on my shopping list for Telford this year.

I thought that the revamped museum was superb.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you gents

I did visit the museum and thought it very impressive also!

Whilst there- during my visit spoke at length with a number of the curators about various aspects of the ship--
==> many of the chats concluded with them saying ...
' we think this is what it may have been like--but we are only guessing...'

this is a new milieu for me-...!! -where we usually with post-1860 ships have plans and photos to back up our constructions...

so inevitably it will all be a bit freelance--especially as the only surviving contemporary drawing of the ship bears only scant resemblance
to the real ships specs- in shape, guns or decks- as evidenced by the salvaged wreck

not exactly scale or unifying period images !!

I spent some time darkening and shading the wood ( where it would be exposed)
as much of the ships topsides are fortunately covered in gaudy painted stripes and shields!

anyhow --

with reference to the conversations at the museum .-- it seems that the underwater was most likely treated with a pitch / tar concoction- appearing blackish -it being pre-white lead and pre copperplates

so rather than waterline the ship by cutting.

(-being a hollow plastic model as opposed to the to-me-more familiar resin casting- )
as I did not want to compromise its structural integrity for fear of the metal etch decks coming adrift during the cutting/ sanding process


I elected to cut a hole in the waterline base insert of the case.
I took some measurements using a digital vernier calliper gauge and marked some offsets on the baseplate

the cutting could have been more accurate..(!) but it was good enough!

--rather than the more usually depicted vessel-on-a-square run,

I have decided to set the ship with a small bit of heel on a broad reach

( but not this much!!!! )

-as that would mean having to close the gunports--which would make the model less visually interesting )


nothing is glued/fastened as yet

but the initial feel is to my liking so far!

[Bill Code]

nice choice of her healing ...

[marijn van gils]

With the masts and rig emphasizing that heel, that should look excellent indeed!

I'm really looking forward on how you'll construct masts and yardarms�

Cheers,

Marijn

[maxim]

Very interesting! I had seen Don's model built using the kit and PE parts and the models at scalewarship.com table.

I am very curious on your results!

[JIM BAUMANN]

progress again

The model being small and discreet is progressing nicely!

I made the sea-base with a light swell with my usual method

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=37223

of watercolour paper over cocktail sticks

The delightfully gaudy nature of ship of this era was well assisted by the, on the whole-- excellent decals..

However I found that the decals were in places rather short in all sorts of areas--especially with the new PE decks meaning that some parts
were now exposed that would previoulsy have been covered by the " netting" deck insert...
==> I simply bought another kit and robbed it of the decals ( cheap enough at � 5.99 )--
with benefit my daughter ( 10) can build the kit out of the box in wood natural...

decalling progress was swift-

the plain white areas I used the really excellent TL-decal strips ( from Germany)- albeit with lots of decal softener.

but a lot of fiddly cut-and shut splicing of the Airfix decals --usually cutting on a diagonal joint

luckily the second sheet was of great help, with adding additional sections in
T the whole ship tapers and narrows in all sorts of directions !!

My plastic cutting was not as good as I thought it seems...

much improved once I pulled my finger out and upped the game!

more progress shortly !

JB