1:50 Virginia Pilot Schooner

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

Hello everybody!

I’m new to the ships forums, but yesterday I got to photograph the model I’m working on for like five years now, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Here are the photos:

This model has an interesting history. It started as Artesania Latina (“Artist in the latrine”) HECEPOB kit, about 1990. It was bought by an older gentleman, a grandfather of my work’s colleague’s wife (almost a family to me :-))). He started to build it as his first ship model, was later incapacitated by a stroke, and eventually died. Before his death he managed to assemble the keel, the bulkheads and the plywood false deck, and started to plank the hull. I got this kit started about 2005 from my work colleague. I tried to keep as much of the original work as I could, as a kind of a tribute to the original modeller, but I had to install new filler blocks in the front and rear of the hull, and remove the old, unfinished planking and start it over.

The kit itself is something of a rip-off the “Katy of Norfolk” - with a plank-on-bulkhead hull and lots of bugs added. The one I got didn’t have sails (althought versions with sails were also available).

As I went on I started to see things in the plans, that I just couldn’t accept. Here’s the boxtop of the kit I have - just take a look at the chainplates to see what I mean:

It’s like a contest - how many factual errors can you spot in the photo above?

I went on to study the books by Wolfram Mondfeld, George Biddlcombe, and Charles G. Davis, and also relied on Model Shipways instructions to try and debug the kit - I probably still have a lot of bugs in it, but I feel I took some more serious ones out. I made my own sails and now I try to finish the model.

I also have a question - could somebody give me a tip what kind and size of anchor - if any - would this kind of ship carry? That’s the detail I have most problems with at the moment. I would be grateful for any help.

Thanks a lot for reading, have a nice day

Paweł

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Great job on what was probably a real pain in the butt.[t$t] I did a similiar piece, a Baltimore schooner/clipper. I just got to the point of finishing the spars and starting the rigging when it met its demise via being knocked off the workbench. At that point I was past caring anymore and just got rid of the wreck.

It did come with anchors however and they were of the Admiralty type. Sort of like this:

If I had to guess, I would say yours should be about a scaled 1.5 meters high,.

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Looks great! Indeed many of the European wood kits are less than topnotch. I have a soft spot in my heart for Model Shipways, even though I haven’t built a kit since they were taken over by ME. However, from what I hear from others, they have gotten even better. I was particularly critical of two AL kits I bought.

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subfixer - I thought about regular anchors for it, but then according to old regulations, if it was a big ship, it would ave to have an anchor that’s about 1200 lbs/600 kg heavy - can’t see using this kind of anchor on a ship with no decent catheads and no capstan. Then again I see modern boats of similar size using anchors that are much smaller, you can raise them without a big capstan. I still wonder about that.

Don - judging by the instructions, MS kits must have been great. Like I wrote I used the MS instructions as my reference and rigging the ship without them would have been impossible.

Thanks for your comments, have a nice day

Paweł

5

I believe that it isn’t the mass of the anchor that is 1200 lbs//600 kg, but the amount of pull that the anchor can resist.

On a side note, our local newspaper is named the Virginia Pilot.