The Ship Model Forum

comparison of the Beja and the Flemish Carrack, which is quite a bit more massive, and also, I think, more interesting looking.not to mention a good deal more accurate.First figure painted and cut out. This little fellow was lost, unfortunately. Still hoping he'll turn up somewhere on my work desk.Ordinary seamen, who dressed however they could...and officers, who dressed however they chose. Pretty sure there were no uniforms as such at this time. I thought I would make a number of them rather swarthy, for the sake of variety. Remains from the wreck of the Mary Rose show that a rather high proportion of sailors in North European Waters were of Mediterranean stock. Also I am considering posing her in the Med, perhaps with the Levantine Argosy, which will be my next build. I may even save a few of these for that ship. Forecastle stage re-installed with crew figures in place. They have only just enough headroom. Can you see them? Not really? Yeah... me neither... maybe a wasted effort. Note the hatch gratings installed.

Checking alignment again. Looking into the waist. Still to be created is the horse-shoe shaped 'crescent deck' common to Carracks of the era.Time for the canopies! I knew I would need to adapt Bruno's canopies to fit the shape of the upper stage. but careful comparisons of the shape told me this would not be difficult. Time to shape to fit...It is necessary to cut through the canopy to make room for both the foremast and the bowsprit.Test dry fit of the forecastle canopy. Although easy to bend and shape, and easy to install, it proved quite difficult to glue to the upper stage.

Speechless....

forecastle profile with net canopy installed. Looking gorgonic! Carracks are generally equated to battleships, but I must say that this Flemish design (and probably the Mediterranean prototypes it was based on) have a 'carrier' like quality to me, with their transparent see-through forecastles, reminiscent of hangar decks. One might think of them as 'man carriers' since the whole point of the Carrack in the 15th Century was as a mobile hand-to-hand fighting platform.Odd to see a model of one of these ships from an angle in which they are seldom or never depicted.Dry-fitting the bowsprit (straight-pin for the moment.) The shape of the canopy, particularly the forward end, forced the bowsprit higher than I had anticipated it, making it nearly level with the top of the foremast. Based on the engraving, I knew that the bowsprit needed to be appreciably lower than the foremast. This required more trimming.Trimmed bowsprit dry fitted again. Now it seems a little short, but at least it is the correct height.Time to make the aftercastle net canopy..Oops!!! way off on that one. The entire part will fit behind the Mizzen... I'll have to glue the rest as a separate part and hopefully glue them together. It was getting late by this point... about 10 hours straight of modeling... Final comparison shots with the Beja...And that brings us up to date. Hoping to get more work done tonight. I may have more soon. Thanks for tuning in. All comments welcome!

After your short term low...

( Rusty is right of course--at National competitions there is a a section for models of sailing ships

( in the UK Nationals though. that means any scale any material--meaning you could be up against a 1/100 Preussen...! )

So you are back in the saddle with a vengeance eh??!!!!

You certainly seem top have the bit ''twixt your teeth!...

VERY rapid progress indeed-and overall this build--to my eyes-- looks sharper! ( you have more practice now ! )

Observation...:

to my eye -- the bowsprit angle still looks steep...??

Could be the engraving has been fore-shortened by the artist's rendering-or indeed courtesy of artistic licence..?
---------------------------

apropos the Langley...

write - e-mail or PM and speak to David Griffith before doing more work

see here

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

MartinJQuinn wrote:Speechless....

Thanks Martin.

JIM BAUMANN wrote:After your short term low...

( Rusty is right of course--at National competitions there is a a section for models of sailing ships

( in the UK Nationals though. that means any scale any material--meaning you could be up against a 1/100 Preussen...! )

That would put me back where I started, wouldn't it?

JIM BAUMANN wrote:So you are back in the saddle with a vengeance eh??!!!!

You certainly seem top have the bit ''twixt your teeth!...

Yes. As soon as I got to work on the Carrack I felt a surge of enthusiasm. It just felt 'right' getting back to them. Hope I'm not ruined for Haze Gray... I have a sizeable stash...
I think I can say that yesterday was the most fun I've had with models in a very long time. I used to have these dreams where there were these kits of un-heard-of rare models, like... you know, row after row after row of every armored cruiser ever built... all in styrene, or a gigantic 12 foot dreadnought in styrene, etc. etc. at the proverbial 'mall of dreams' etc. With Bruno's PE I feel a little bit like I'm living that now.

JIM BAUMANN wrote:VERY rapid progress indeed-and overall this build--to my eyes-- looks sharper! ( you have more practice now ! )

Thank you! The Beja was a test bed, so I am still finding my feet with these kinds of ships. I think the fatty hull is more impressive looking, (not to mention more accurate) and the Flemish Carrack architecture is interesting to look at. She will be rather drab otherwise though. I am going to make some shields to hang on the bulwarks, and maybe on the crows' nests. It's all a learning process.

JIM BAUMANN wrote:Observation...:

to my eye -- the bowsprit angle still looks steep...??

Could be the engraving has been fore-shortened by the artist's rendering-or indeed courtesy of artistic licence..?

*sigh*
You're right. I got to thinking about it, and looking at the engraving and came reluctantly to the same conclusion. Now that I have cut away most of the front end of that canopy, I'm going to have to recreate it...

JIM BAUMANN wrote:apropos the Langley...

write - e-mail or PM and speak to David Griffith before doing more work

see here

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

Yes I remember when this was published. Very impressive build. I'm doing the Long Island though, a bit different. Many of the same problems however, although I think they made more of an effort with my kit. I've been checking the layout and got to thinking that the elevator was in the wrong spot, as David had noted on the Langley, however from my checking photos of the actual ship, it seems actually to be in the right place. I went into this kit knowing it was a handful and just tried to be extra careful... actually it was one of the last kits I started before I began scratch building. I think it was actually harder than scratching my first carrack, so there you go.

Calla you�re not just a model maker you are a magician. How can such a model have figures on? I will never complain or cuse again when I paint figures in the future. The detail on the forecastle is frightening me. I thought I had a steady hand at 1:144 you sir have something we mere mortals don't have, the supreme patients and ability to stop breathing when you work in the FINE detail.
Dave Wooley

The ratlines/canopies and the crew are giving the ship more life and thin detail. Looking forward to see more improvements.

P.S.: When do we have the chance to see you working out a scratch of a Roman galley????

Dave Wooley wrote:Calla you�re not just a model maker you are a magician. How can such a model have figures on? I will never complain or cuse again when I paint figures in the future. The detail on the forecastle is frightening me. I thought I had a steady hand at 1:144 you sir have something we mere mortals don't have, the supreme patients and ability to stop breathing when you work in the FINE detail.
Dave Wooley

*sheepish grin* Thank you for the kind words Dave. For me the small scale makes many thing easier, actually. I guess I'm used to it, being able to shape a hull in an hour or two, or hide an error with a little dot of putty or a piece of strip styrene. I have much the same feeling about your big impressive impeccably crafted (not to mention functional) models that I have watched you and Ron and others create on this board... something that's completely beyond my skills or expertize... I suppose everyone has a niche. I don't think smaller is necessarily harder... but I do have to hold my breath sometimes.

Filipe Ramires wrote:The ratlines/canopies and the crew are giving the ship more life and thin detail.

Hey Filipe! Good to hear from you. Say 'Tudo Bem' to Rui when you see him. Haven't heard from my Portuguese friends in a while.

Yes! It was the canopies that drew me to the carrack in the first place. I love transparent structures, things you can see through and have the impression of peering into the interior of the vessel. It's the same effect that attracts me to carriers and to pagoda mast and cage mast battleships... transparent structures. The Flemish Carrack has that effect in spades.

Filipe Ramires wrote:Looking forward to see more improvements.

We'll try to keep them coming.

Filipe Ramires wrote:P.S.: When do we have the chance to see you working out a scratch of a Roman galley????

Yes... the Colossus Dio... We are something like six weeks out from the IPMS Nationals Convention in Omaha Nebraska. I am frantically trying to get some models done to show and perhaps compete when I go there in August. As a result of this I've decided on a self-imposed moratorium on new subjects. If I even think about scratching something new right now I'll have nothing to show in Omaha. However, once I get back from there I will go full throttle on the new subjects... Most especially Lepanto Galleys, Armada Galleons and the Colossus and associated ships, not to mention the Mary Rose, the Columbus Trio, various French and British Ironclads... Yikes! There's just too much! Too many ships! Not enough time!

Hello Model Warship! I thought it was time for a weekly update. I hope everyone is doing well. This is one of those posts that details the 'rough spot' in a build. I have pursued a painting Idea that I now regret, and in addition was too tired to work much today having pulled an all-nighter yesterday and this morning to finish a work project. But I will show you what I have, such as it is, and also share with you some history that I have learned. Particularly on this last part I would welcome any comments or insights you have on this information.

Ok! So let's dive in! First of all I realized in looking at a lateen sail for the mizzen that the canopy there would completely interfere with any reasonably looking lateen yard. How on Earth did they work a lateen yard with such a canopy? Then I looked at the Kraek engraving. Notice the canopy does not extend forward of the mizzen mast. Removing the forward part (which luckily had been a separate piece anyway) cleared the way for a 'workable' (literally) lateen yard. Off it went! So far so good. Now onto a much more challenging operation...
The Horseshoe Deck! (at least that's what I call it.)
Taking a page from Tom Lindsay's Carrack Build, I thought I would make an effort to create the 'grand arch' feature common to all carracks plank by plank. In some depictions this arch forms a kind of entryway into the forecastle coming down at an angle and widening as it reaches to the deck. In some depictions it curves horizontally and becomes a sort of early 'spar deck' over the waist of the ship. I was hesitant about creating this feature, and also wary of adding unpainted plastic to an already painted build, but there was nothing for it. Here are the results. First things first. I had read somewhere that the knight's bits were sometimes mounted below decks. I have also seen models of ships (particularly early ones) in which the lifts (halyards?) for raising the yard disappear into the lower part of the ship. I thought I would take the same approach with this ship... This required drilling two holes on either side of the mast and then squaring them, and would need to be done before the Horseshoe Deck could be constructed. Once that was done I could attend (finally) to the construction of the Horseshoe Deck. I was inspired in this by Tom Lindsay's techniques with his Venetian Carrack. First step, creating the arch.After much bending and flexing a compound curve was created in the arch (0.02 rod) and then the arch inner frame was glued to the ship. Now we are committed. Along with the inner arch frame were the outer arch pieces, which had a simple curve meeting the first deck of the lower forecastle stage, curving down to just above the height of the bulwarks and meeting the stern castle more or less at bulwark level. I also glued a supporting piece athwartships to the lowest aftercastle level.A mistake in measurements meant that one side of the inner arch frame did not reach all the way to the stern castle. This required some creative extensions that, while crude, would eventually be covered over by the planking.Now to begin the planking proper. This is a lot of fun to do and not very tedious. I was very excited to see Tom Lindsay doing this kind of thing way back when I was a 'lurker' here on the Scratch Building Board. Having the chance to do it myself gave me a lot of satisfaction. Each plank was cut to shape at the inner end and left long at the outer end. I knew I could trim with nippers at the outer end if I needed to, but that the inner edge would need to come together in assembly....

Trimming to fit the starboard side...Now comes the painting. First a hand brushed coat of MM Sand. No priming was possible in this case, but I've found that the paint adheres to styrene rod fairly well.Notice the gap between the forecastle and the waist bulwark. This would need to be filled...A bit of strip cut to shape...

Glued in place with CA.Discoloration stripes on the Horseshoe Deck Planks...Triangle piece painted to approximate the color of the hull. This process was repeated for the other side. Didn't turn out to be either difficult or time consuming. A dark wash on the planks...While we're at it, maybe we should add some chain plates, huh? And a Rudder... Bruno's excellent relief etched rudder cut to fit...And mounted on the sternpost.

And now we're ready for painting? But how do we protect the masts, which have all that wolding and are already painted? Tape might dislodge some of my careful thread windings... I decided I'd try some rolled paper.Ready to go under the airbrush, finally! Carefully spraying MM Sand over the horseshoe deck I was able to reduce the contrast between the hand-painted planks almost to nothing... and was able to control the spray enough to avoid overspray to adjacent parts... WHEW!!! Big load off my mind.She's finally starting to look like a proper Carrack! Arch and all! This was a detail I was ignorant of during the Beja build and very self-conscious of its absence once I had learned that almost certainly all carracks/naos had this arch feature. Flushed with this success I decided I would experiment with some new colors on the hull (cue ominous music...) and began by doing a wash of the hull in flat black. My idea was that I would spra from below, covering the black on the vertical surfaces but preserving it for the horizontal surfaces. And the color I chose for the hull? (drumroll!) Burnt Sienna!!! Which came out very red. VERY red. More red than I had ever seen a ship from that era depicted... Come to think of it... when had I ever seen a carrack that was even slightly red? Ok, now, why again did I decide to do that? What was the reasoning behind picking that color... Well, I had never used it before... Turns out there's a reason.

Hmmm what to do?My first effort was to dust it with another color, some MM Dark Tan, in the hopes of toning it down... But it still seemed too red to me. So I decided to paint the wales and riders MM Wood, give it kind of a two-tone effect... Which is nice, if you want a ship that looks like it was painted to look like it's supposed to look like wood, sort of... Hmmm....Mulling this over I decided to add steps to the mast tops so that I could run the shrouds over them... These styrene rods will be trimmed when dry.

Now I must tell you about this book! The title is unfortunately invisible in this badly lit picture but it is "Sailing Ships of War 1400 to 1860." I picked it up at a used book store for a very good price... In just the first chapter I've learned more about Carracks than all the rest of my library put together! Most illuminating of all was this passage:

"The shape of warships, and because of the ever present threat of piracy the shape of merchantmen too, was governed by their means of attack and defense. The ram was not adopted by the Northern seamen, so until the development of effective firearms a warship's armament was limited to bows and arrows, javelins and such objects as could be flung from the fighting tops on to the enemy's decks. A sea fight was simply a land fight on floating platforms and had features in common with an attack on, and the defese of, a castle..." (So far so good, and I had come to that conclusion on my own, but listen to what comes next...)
"Warships had high sides� the equivalent of castle walls� and the high stages at bow and stern provided command and enfilading fire as a castle's towers did. The basic manoeuvre was to place the attacker's stem against the side of the enemy ship, as a siege tower was brought up to a castle wall, and to use arrows and javelins to clear the decks as a preliminary to boarding. To make the tactic more effective the bows were given an enormous forward rake (overhang) and a high forestage that sometimes had to and even three storeys projecting further foward." (italics mine)

When I read this a light went off in my head. What we're talking about is a sort of inversion of the 'crossing of the T' familiar to 20th Century Battleship Fleets. Let me explain...

I had always thought that Carracks, though high and ungainly had fought more or less the same way that ships of later eras did... That is, along side one another.Either parallel...or 'head to tail'...with each castle engaging its opposite, and men attempting to board the waist of each ship, having to brave the fire of the castles looming fore and aft, etc.

But what Mr. Howard is suggesting is that the actual idea of the Carrack was to do this...Notice how the head of the Flemish Carrack projects well over the bulwarks of the later configured Portuguese carrack. And if you refer to pictures of the WA KRAEK engraving above, you will see a large grappling hook suspended from her bowsprit. Even the small dragon/beast figureheads sometimes seen adorning the extreme lower front edge of the fore castle make sense. (if you look carefully at the WA KRAEK engraving you can just see some kind of basilisk head projecting from the prow) This is the part of the ship that would be coming right at the soldiers of the waist deck of the defending carrack. It is (or seems to be) a crossing of the 'T' in reverse. Suddenly everything about the Carrack makes sense to me. The high castles, the projecting forecastle... all of which seem ungainly and even gratuitous... but they all have a purpose. In the era before ship smashing cannons, these vessels were the last word in naval combat, and were perfectly suited to the purpose, given the modes of combat available at the time.
Even the later carracks could still employ the same tactic. The only question is, is Dr. Frank Howard right? This book dates from 1979, and although both authoritative and convincing in its assertions, it is a bit long in the tooth for naval archaeology, particularly in regards to carracks. Dr. Howard published just a few years before the raising of the Mary Rose, so he has scant to say about her. But nevertheless I find his assertions compelling. I would welcome any comments on these ideas, if anyone has the book, or if anyone has better information. Ok. Well, that's all I have for now. Happy Modeling!

"Today I learned"

Thanks Neal for the neat history! I tried to look up some scholarly articles on the subject, but there weren't very many on "carrack design", and what there were did not speak to anything asides from hull shape and masts. However, if you're feeling gung-ho, I put the resources of my university's library and database at your disposal - if you find an article of interest, let me know and I'll use my permissions to get a copy for you: Click here

Oh that's great Tim!
Thanks so much for the info.
I actually found one. The title is:
'Dutch Ship Design in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries'

Much appreciated!

Aye, figured you might like that one. PM me an email and I'll attach the PDF.

Will Do.

OK Callen, you win

I'll design your "horseshoe" decking and improve my PE set to include it
_Bruno