Midieval ship details

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

I’m building the Revell Germany packaged Hansa Cog. I’m wondering how the anchors should look??? The ones in the kit look too “modern”. Would the shipwrights of that period have used hearts and fiddle blocks? Seems to me that whatever fittings were used would be fairly crude considering the tools available at that time.

I’m having a good time with this kit. Due to my advanced age and the resulting vision and dexterity problems (a touch of arthritis in the hands) a fairly small subject in a large scale works well for me, especially when it comes to rigging.

Dr. Tilley once recommended this approach for novice ship modelers. It’s also a good way for us much older kids with some physical limitations to stay involved in the hobby. The larger scale, the better. I was thinking that building a cog on a scale that would work out to about a 6 foot long model would be easy on my eyes and rank highly on the cool-ometer but the wife says her baby ('66 Mustang) has to be in the garage at night. Women sure have some strange priorities.

2

Hi,

I’ll go ahead and reply, though I’m sure that Prof. Tilley will come in and fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

The anchors -

Hain’t seen the ones in the kit. They should be fairly angular, no real arch to them at all.

The rigging -

By the time that the Hanseatic cogs were coming into being, standing rigging was beginning to evolve to the point where it was more a ships’ structure. Not ratlines yet, but the shrouds spent more time up than down. Blocks would have been fairly simple affairs. The shrouds would have been rove through hearts, more than likely.

Hope this helps, or at least is a start.