Capstan bar stowage and other 'Mayflower' modelling questions ...

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

Well, the Trumpeter Mayflower kit that I ordered on the weekend has already arrived, and I’m now able to formulate some more specific questions about it, as part of the planning process.

  1. When a capstan was not being used, where were the bars stowed?

  2. This kit’s bulwark insides are blank - would plastic strip be a suitable enough material for modelling the stanchions?

  3. When a ship’s boat was in use, could the ‘trestles’ on which it was stored be dismounted, or were they permanent fixtures on the grating or deck?

  4. So long as one uses a suitable marking jig, does one really need to assemble a hull before marking off the waterline and cutting it down?

That’s it for now - thanks in advance!

Cheers,

vonBerlichingen

2

Well, I can’t claim to have definitive answers to any of these questions. (I’m not at all sure any of them has a definitive answer. Modern knowledge of ships from that period is extremely sketchy.) But here’s the best I can do:

  1. The books I have within reach don’t say anything about stowage of capstan bars. I’ve seen examples in which they were lashed to eyebolts in the deck nearby, or stowed in racks on bulkheads. I don’t think there was any standard method at that time.

It’s worth noting, perhaps, that the typical capstan bar of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries seems to have gone all the way through the capstan head. There typically seem to have been two holes running all the way through - one positioned slightly above, and at 90 degrees to, the other. In that case there would be only two capstan bars, and they’d be more than twice as long as the ones we associate with later centuries.

  1. Absolutely. That’s the technique I’m using on my little Revell Golden Hind. (Both Revell Mayflower kits, incidentally, have nice detail inside their bulwarks.

  2. Information on boat chocks is scarce. My inclination would be to put the chocks on the deck even in the absence of the boat, but if both boat and chocks were absent I don’t think anybody could pronounce the model “incorrect.”

  3. That’s entirely up to the modeler. In some ways it’s easier to mark the waterline when the hull halves are still separate. (That way you don’t have to worry about keeping the model absolutely upright while you’re marking the waterline.)

Hope that helps a little. Good luck.

3

Glad to hear your Mayflower came.

4

The capstan of the nearly contempary Swedish warship Wasa was indeed served by 2 capstan bars at different levels that goes all the way through the capstan itself.

5

Thanks, all!

In general, I think that modelling for wargaming purposes, when the game is more about the crew and passengers than the ship itself, means compromising on any detail that: a) would impede the temporary placement of based figures on the deck or other flat surface; b) would get in the way of thick and/or clumsy fingers; and/or c) that would be vulnerable to damage.

  1. It looks as if the Trumpeter capstan will have to be remodelled or replaced, then. (The bars would have gotten in the way of gaming);

  2. OK!;

  3. Thanks - the chocks are not a huge impediment, so I’ll leave them there; and

  4. Thanks, that’s what I was thinking, although both approaches beg the question of whether ships really were maintained on ‘even keels’ such that the keel was parallel to the water surface … Regardless, that should be a reasonable enough assumption.

New Questions/Observations:

  1. I’m waiting for a set of plans and a couple of other references to arrive, but it looks as if Trumpeter made what should have been their Mayflower’s halfdeck into a quarterdeck, since some of the bulwarks are incredibly high above the deck. Also, if I remember correctly from a Revell kit of long ago, the space astern of the mainmast was decked over, enclosing the capstan.

  2. I will do a search, but are there any recommended Vasa references?

Here’s my ‘to do’ list of Trumpeter Mayflower build changes/redemptions:

a. Replace all spars with wood;

b. Deck with wood;

c. Consider replacing guns with brass and/or pewter sakers or falcons;

d. Remove silly stern detail, and affix a carved heraldic rose (in keeping with the fictional ‘Black Rose’ name);

e. Consider extending the quarterdeck into a halfdeck;

f. Waterline and cut the hull;

g. Consider elevating the stern chasers;

h. Consider realigning the skewed bowsprit;

i. Detail the bulwarks;

j. Waterline and cut the boat;

k. Reinforce the forecastle and quarterdeck/halfdeck/poopdeck corner strakes for mounting swivel guns;

l. Consider replacing all pins with wood;

Cheers,

vonB.

P.S.: These finescale fora really need a ‘reply to thread rather than individual posts’ button, as replying to one post temporarily hides the points that others have posted …

6

There are lots of good references on the Wasa. The latest and best in print is Wasa I, by Fred Hocker. It’s the first of four volumes that will cover the whole story of the ship, her career, her exhumation, and her conservation in extreme detail. There are two problems with it from the modeler’s standpoint. One - only the first volume is available so far. It contains several fold-out plans, but not a full set. (I assume more plans will appear in the subsequent volumes.) Two - it’s expensive. (I bought mine with Christmas money - good timing.) If you’re really interested in that ship, though, the book is an essential. Here’s a link: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9789197465908&itm=2

The ship herself also has an excellent website: http://www.vasamuseet.se/Vasamuseet/Vasamuseet.aspx?path=%2Fhome%2Fvasamuseet%2Fom&layout={C0D465E0-3110-436A-A0E4-EA5BB84475B8}

That may furnish all the information you need for your particular project.

The Airfix Wasa kit, incidentally, is one of the best styrene sailing ship kits ever. It’s on a pretty small scale, but an excellent basis for a scale model - if you can live with the “dummy” lower deck guns.

The terms “quarterdeck,” “halfdeck,” and “poopdeck” seem to have been used extremely casually in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So the phrase “turn the halfdeck into a quarterdeck” doesn’t really make much sense. There are so few reliable documents and graphic representations that it’s hard to say what’s authentic and what isn’t. As I remember, the Mayflower II (the 1950s full-size replica, on which the Revell kits are based) has two full-length decks, a raised forecastle deck, a quarterdeck (if that’s what you want to call it) that stretches from just abaft the mainmast to the stern, and a poop deck at the extreme stern. What I’ve just called the quarterdeck is, I think, divided by a low step (less than a foot high) about halfway back. (I’m honestly not sure why, but that configuration does seem to have been common - then and later.) In that case, the section of deck aft of the step is sometimes called the “halfdeck.” But the use of terminology seems to have been inconsistent.

The Mayflower II was designed by William Baker, longtime professor of naval architecture at MIT and a fine scholar. He would be the first to tell you, though, that any reconstruction of the Mayflower - or any other seventeenth-century vessel, except the Wasa - is by definition highly speculative. The hard information about the Mayflower consists of two pieces of data: she was of 180 tons burthen (a figure that’s subject to interpretation), and she had at least one topsail. (John Winthrop’s journal tells about a sailor who fell overboard and saved himself by grabbing “the topsail halyard,” which was dragging in the water.) Beyond that - nobody really knows.

All your ideas sound good - though that’s a lot of work to put into a model destined for the wargaming table! Replacing plastic belaying pins is always a good idea. You might find brass ones preferable to wood ones, though; much more durable, and the brass belaying pins available from the aftermarket companies are far better proportioned than the wood ones.

Good luck.

7

@jtilley: Many thanks, once again! I’m not sure about the deck terminology or its historical appropriateness, but the Trumpeter kit seems odd in the sense that there is a rather high (9’[?] above the maindeck in scale) extension of the stern quarter bulwarks forward to just aft of the mainmast. If the bulwarks were so high, one might expect there also to have been a deck which extended between them at roughly 6’ above the maindeck. Otherwise, the 9’[?] high bulwarks would have represented an awful lot of construction merely to build windbreaks …

Cheers,

vonB.

8

I haven’t seen the Trumpeter kit. It has a somewhat dubious reputation. Nine-foot-high bulwarks do indeed seem irrational - though with the usual caveat that, since so little is known about naval architecture during this period, it isn’t fair to pronounce such things definitively “wrong.”

I just took a look at the smaller Revell Mayflower (which is based extremely precisely on the Mayflower II). My recollection about the “step” in the quarterdeck (if that’s what you want to call it) was incorrect. There’s one simple deck running from just abaft the mainmast to the stern. (The instructions call it a “half deck”; I won’t argue with that.) The bulwarks on either side of it are about waist high, as are those of the forecastle and poopdeck. That arrangement looks quite reasonable to my eye, and consistent with all the contemporary illustrations I’ve encountered.

I suppose one possible reason for the problem with the Trumpeter kit is that the scale is mis-labeled. That sort of thing unfortunately happens quite freqently to sailing ship kits, whose manufacturers frequently don’t seem to understand what they’re doing. Sometimes, I think, the confusion originates with marketing people who are writing literature about kits that originally issued years ago, and who know virtually nothing about sailing ships. A year or so ago we had an interesting discussion in another thread about the various H.M.S. Victory kits on the market. Measurements of actual specimens established that MOST of them were incorrectly labeled as to scale.

Nobody seems to know just where that Trumpeter Mayflower originated, but it’s been speculated that it’s a reissue of some other manufacturer’s kit. Maybe the people at Trumpeter put the wrong scale on it. I would emphasize again, though: that’s speculation on my part, as I haven’t seen the kit.

Incidentally - when Professor Baker designed the Mayflower II he made one deliberate (and freely admitted) deviation from historical accuracy: he added a foot or two of headroom on each level. Otherwise modern tourists would bash their skulls on the deck beams.

9

Lavery cites capstan bars of the same height a feature of 1670 and later.

10

Interesting. The capstan in the Airfix version has the same problem. Maybe, in both cases, the designers figured the capstan would be so hard to see on the finished model that it wasn’t worth fussing over.

You could slice off the captan bars easily enough. If you want to take the trouble, you could drill holes in the appropriate spots. (The holes would be square; an easy way to deal with that problem is to find a small, sharp nail with a square point and press it into the hole.) Or you could represent the holes with black paint - which, in view of the fact that the capstan’s tucked away under the quarterdeck (or halfdeck, or whatever you want to call it) probably would be quite satisfactory. Or you could slice off just two of the bars (i.e., both ends of the same one) and glue them back on a little higher up.

One other possibility for capstan bar stowage: they could have been hung from, or between, the beams overhead.

It seems like I once built a plastic sailing ship kit that had its capstan head molded in two parts, so the bars were on different levels. But I can’t remember what kit it was. Maybe the Airfix Wasa.

11

Thanks for the tip.