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SS Hydrograaf, 1/100, hydrographic ship of the Royal Dutch Navy.







Shipyard: Fijenoord shipbuilding and engineering company in Rotterdam

Keel laying 11 October 1909
Launched 26 January 1910
Employed 4 May 1910
Out of service 16 October 1962

Active status
Home port Den Helder; 1985: Amsterdam

Owners:

Netherlands
Owner 1998 - Rederij de Hydrograaf BV Weesp
Charterer Dutch Glory
Previous owners 1910 Royal Netherlands Navy
1964 Sea Cadet Corps, Rotterdam
1985 The Sailing Museum Ship Foundation, Amsterdam

General characteristics

1910 Hydrographic ship
1985 Saloon boat

Length 40.5 metres
Width 6.70 metres
Draft 1.80 metres
Displacement 297 tonnes
Passengers 200 maximum (since 1985)
Propulsion and power 2 steam engines, two screws, 411 hp
1985: 2 MAN diesel engines, 2 x 480 hp

Speed 10.5 knots

Port of Morlaix (29), France.



A little history:

The ship was built in 1909-1910 by the Scheeps-en Werktuigbouw Fijenoord in Rotterdam . The ship was launched on 11 October 1909 and launched on 26 January 1910. As was customary at the time, it was a steamship with two coal-fired steam engines. With a draught of only 1.80 metres, she was perfectly capable of operating in the shallow coastal waters of the southwestern Netherlands, the Zuiderzee and the Waddenzee.

On 4 May 1910, the Royal Navy commissioned the Hydrograaf . As a rule, the ship served as a depth survey ship in a particular area from April to October. Outside this season, it was not possible to carry out bathymetric surveys because of the weather. The vessel was officially commissioned and decommissioned for each season. During the winter months the ship usually stayed in Hellevoetsluis or Willemsoord, Den Helder . The ship did not sail in the grey colours of the navy, but had a black hull and yellow superstructure. In 1921 the ship was reinforced by the Eilerts de Haan, built at the same yard.

The Hydrograaf was used several times as a royal yacht during visits of Queen Wilhelmina, Prince Hendrik and Princess Juliana to the waters of South Holland and Zeeland.

There was a cabin below deck at the stern for this purpose. During the royal visit to Zeeland in 1921, the royal party spent the night of 15 to 16 September on board the ship, which was moored in the port of Vlissingen.

In May 1940, the ship left Vlissingen for England. During the Second World War, the ship was used as an accommodation ship for the bomb disposal service. On 25 September 1943, the ship arrived in Harwich to serve as a depot ship. After the conquest of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, the ship was placed at the disposal of the commander in Zeeland in October 1944. She immediately served again as a survey ship to better map the important access to the port of Antwerp. After the war, the ship returned to the service of the Hydrographic Service. As such, she was withdrawn from service by the Royal Navy on 16 October 1962 and replaced by the modern ship Zeefakkel. She was the last coal-fired steamer of the Royal Navy.

From 30 August to 8 September 2006, the Hydrograaf was used as a stage for the theatrical performance of The Sinking of the Titanic, one of the open-air performances at the Zeeland Nazomer Festival. The audience was taken on a journey through Zeeland's waters from various ports, during which the story of the sinking of the Titanic was told as a metaphor for the decline of Western civilisation during a tour of the ship.

Wiki.



This ship often comes to France, in summer, during the various national maritime festivals, such as "Tonnerre de Brest", La semaine du Golf du Morbihan, Terre et Mer etc.

Thanks to Roland for finding me the necessary plans to draw the hull in 3D.

At 1/100 the ship will be 40.5 cm long overall.

A nice model never reproduced in plastic, there is a paper/cardboard version.

https://www.postbeeld.nl/vnhphydro100-s ... hydrograaf



Some nice examples exist in a large scale sailing version.



I had the chance to see her several times, at Brest 2000, at sea, and more closely in the port of Morlaix, which is what gave me the idea to reproduce this elegant ship in 3D printing lately.

The version will probably be the 1910 one, at least with the elements I have at the moment.

1/100th scale sketch of the hull, nothing final, nothing finished:

Pascal:

An interesting era transitioning between sail and steam. The counter stern, raked masts and ratlines but with the straight stem and little bow flair. Even a spoked wheel on the fantail! I think there is a bit of a visual transition when one moves across scales, though perhaps this is a lesser challenge when 3D printing is used rather than traditional scratch methods.

Quite the transition from reciprocating dual (coal?) steam plants to diesel. I can appreciate the change! I would guess by now that the MAN (Machinefabrik Augsburg Nuremburg) are now excellent. Some (barely) pre war US submarines used MAN engines and they were very troublesome, much better result was had with the Fairbanks Morse engines. A little know fact was the USN pioneered the conversion of US Rail to Diesel pre war in order to develop tested and reliable power plants for the sub fleet.

Should be an interesting project!

Regards: Tom

Nice to see someone working on a model based on the NL national archives drawings. I've seen Hydrograaf lots of times when she had her winter quarters in Amsterdam and she is a beauty. And Tom, triple/quadruple expansion to diesel happened to most ships from the early 20s onward as it was the most economical in fuel costs and it did no mean a full re-design of the ship (like turbine or diesel-electric). Note that most of the dutch merchant ship owners never used turbines or diesel-electric.

Thank you Tom and Pieter.

MAN Diesel has a long history of building reliable semi-fast diesel engines. Many of these are now built under licence in South Korea and power thousands of merchant ships. I have done a lot of work on these engines, including powerful generators.

As to MAN Deisels, it's been a long time since the mid 1930's. That the US Navy used these before coming up with their own, suggests that these were state of the art at the time. The installation of thousands of the Fairbanks Morse engines in railroad engines allowed an unmatched trial and improvement period pre war. Did USN steal MAN's technology? Probably. One of the submariners who became an expert on the development of submarine diesel engines was Chester Nimitz (Good German name) who was offered a very high salary to go to private industry, but turned it down.

As to German engineering, it is considered to be very good for reason. I have a most excellent German 1:1 auto built by the motorsports division of Bayerisch Motoren Werke, back at the sunset of the mostly analogue era. An example of starting with copy-cat and improving was the Japanese "Zero" which was power by the Nakajima "Sakae" engine , a copy cat power plant down to the P&W eagle on the case. However in the airframe they perfected the design policy of simplicity and add lightness. The result was perhaps the most outstanding fighter in the world at it's introduction. The Japanese received the information to produce the excellent german DB 601 but lacked the raw materials to produce the alloys needed in such a sophisticated power plant.

MAN still make very large marine engines of great efficiency, a testament to continued successful development.

Thanks for the interesting story Tom!

Excellent cars. We had a Z3 2.8 liter engine for 10 years. We still have German sports cars..


I'm still drawing the hull lines according to the plan, I had to add some more because of the limitations of my 3D program and to refine the surfaces, it's taking quite some time, but I'm getting the hang of it.











Good progress today. There are some minor modifications to do.

Interesting change at the stern counter for the computer drawings. one can only imagine the experience and skill of the marine engineers, draftsmen and shipwrights turning a concept from an idea to iron and steel with the tools of the day. The project will be colorful and in 1:100 provide a pallet for display of excellent detail!

Cheers: Tom

Indeed Tom, the stern is quite complex to draw in 3D. The boilermakers had to have fun on this part of the ship.

I spent as much time on the rest of the ship as on the stern.

Positioning the hawse tubes today. There will be a new anchor model to draw, I have placed this spare one in the meantime.





I concentrate on the front forecastle with my tried and tested 3D drawing methods and sometimes new ones.

This forecastle is peculiar with its "gutters" on the edges. I have estimated that the deck floor must have looked something like this at the time.

You can see from the contemporary photos that parts are missing, dismantled but not replaced for cost reasons perhaps, in order to replace the steel sheets underneath this floor which suffer a lot from corrosion as they cannot be maintained.







It can be seen that the anchor chain stopper pattern is almost identical to that of the SS Nomadic ( 1910 ).

Is the awarthships handle a hand operate bike pump?

I think it is the command of the steam engine, Tom. It's seems connected to the steam pilot valve.

Yesterday's progress.





You can see that the 2 lines of rivets have been partly removed, or eaten by rust, replaced by an arc weld perhaps.

The ones on the bow are still partly there.

Pascal,

The rivets on the hull sides were probably flat on top (countersunk heads) and not rounded (button head).

Countersunk head rivets did not cause drag and presented nothing to collide with ice flows, etc.

The rivets on the stem were button head and would not contribute much to drag or interfere with sea ice any more than the stem itself. I suspect the button head rivets created a stronger bond between the plates than the flat head rivets.

Phil

Talking about the gutters at forecastle: when you have a wooden decking, you can take this right up to the metal bullwark etc., as water would collect in the corner between the wood and the metal, leading to the rotting of the plank edge. These waterways or gutters used to be formed from angle-iron and were often given a trough shape with a cement mixture to protect the metal from rust.

Countersunk rivets require a certain thickness of plating and are expensive to make. Domed shape rivets tend to be stronger and cheaper to make, but there are also intermediate forms, with partially countersunk and partially domed rivets. Countersunk rivets were more frequently used for aesthetic reasons and not so much to reduce drag. Warship often had countersunk rivets above the waterline and dome-shaped ones below the waterline.

Thanks Phil & wefalck . But I'll leave it like that for aesthetic reasons.

An interesting discussion on rivet types with some documents.

A conversation from 2007 can be conducted by the late Gerard Piouffre, a specialist of Titanic, under the pseudo " Mathusalem ":

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... les-rivets











Hot Riveting.

Pascal:

Interesting discussion on riveting. I am more familiar with aircraft usage which differs considerably. In aircraft flush riveting does reduce drag considerably, but it's a different environment. For ships wave making resistance is a huge factor but not for subsonic aircraft below a critical mach number. In the photo of the slab sided liner (one of the "Queens?) it is interesting the strongly reinforced hull sides at mid level. I suspect that this may be to help resist hogging in a heavy seaway? Always a consideration for a very long ship.

Cheers: Tom

Though not so glamorous as a dashing destroyer, Cruiser of Battleship, the hydrographic vessels preformed vital functions. Reading the War Papers of Admiral Chester Nimitz I first became aware of the USS Sumner which spent the war scouting the vast reaches of the Pacific charting areas for fleet navigation, maneuvering and basing. Nimitz, a map aficionado, discovered (OK it was on a map) the huge lagoon of Ulithi, which became an important advanced anchorage. Sumner was able to make this a reality. One must remember that for much of the Western Pacific the only pr existing charts were often from the 18 hundreds. I recall a submarine operating on the surface at night, the Captain felt spray on his face and ordered emergency full astern. The bow just brushed up on a reef. There were thousands of uncharted atolls, a considerable hazard!

For the Netherlands, accurate knowledge of the costal waters would be essential for operation safety and efficiency.

All the waters around the Netherland are tidal with constantly shifting sandbars and mudflats. This requires re-charting every spring (today aided by satellite imagery and sonar) to make sure that buoys have not shifted and still mark the shipping channels that themselves may have shifted.

Wefalck,

I know that early iron ships used domed rivets on the hull. I have visited a few of the surviving vessels.

However, by WWII flat or slightly domed countersunk rivets were used on hulls, at least with the Cleveland class cruisers that I am most familiar with. The blueprints specify that below the water line the rivet heads will be ground flat to reduce drag. Also, where hull plates of different thicknesses are butted together the edges of the thicker plate that rise above the thinner plates were to be ground back at a 45 degree angle on the leading (forward) edges to reduce drag. On these ships the thinner plates were welded instead of riveted.

Also, above the water line backing plates at the vertical junction between plates in the same strake were riveted onto the outside of the hull plating. But below the waterline the backing plates were riveted to the inside of the hull plating to reduce drag. Likewise, the docking keels were inside the hull plating. On many ships the docking keels were outside the plating.

It would be interesting to follow the development of metal hull ship construction and drag reduction measures over the first 100 years of metal ship construction.

Phil

In my experience, a dirty hull greatly affects a ship's speed and fuel consumption.

So rivets!

That's why we clean the hulls with divers equipped with brushing machines.

But this is less and less possible for ecological reasons.

The same goes for the propeller, 1 mm of seaweed bubble can make you lose 3 knots + consumption.

My recollection, always open to error, is that USN of WWII vintage based operational dynamics and planning on ships "six months out of dockyard". Of course more serious creator of boundary layer drag were barnacles. Undoubtedly antifouling coatings have gotten better. In the long ago days when I raced IOR sailboats there were some really expensive coatings like "Grafspeed" with various nasty ingredients.

Thanks for the continued information!

Tom