Setting sail on the Batavia (a question of sailing ship mechanics)

Modeling Subjects Ships
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Hello to everyone on the forum with an interest in model sailing ship kits! I have been reading the forum for ages, but this is my first post. I have always found this forum to be the best source on the net for information about plastic kits of sailing ships. The information posted here has been immensely helpful to me in developing my interest in the hobby, and I’d like to take this chance to sincerely thank all the members who have contributed to making this forum such a valuable reference site for sailing ship modellers.

The reason I am making this post is to ask the forums advice about how best to “set the sails” on a sailing ship model. Let me explain from the outset that I model sailing ships because I am fascinated by their history and find them to be intrinsically beautiful. However I am a complete land-lubber and have not the slightest idea of the practical mechanics of sailing! To my way of thinking, the most intuitive way to mount the yards and sails on a sailing ship model is perpendicular to the main axis of the ship - this is how it is usually portrayed in instruction manuals. I did this on my previous model (the Revell Santa Maria), and although the end result was OK, I did feel that this setting of the sails looked a bit static and toy-like… not quite right in a way I couldn’t really put my finger on.

My question for those on the forum with sailing experience is; would it be more realistic perhaps to set the sails at a slight angle to the bow-to-stern axis of the ship? (say an offset of 5-10 degrees or so from perpendicular?) In real life, what would be the typical angle of the yards relative to the main axis of the ship when a sailing ship was racing along under full sail? Also (and I hope this is not a silly question) If I was to fix the yards and sails at such an off-set to perpendicular, am I right in assuming that any flags on the ship should also be off-set to exactly the same angle (because it would be the same wind direction behind both sails and flags?).

Note that the effect I am going for here is a naturalistic, dynamic impression of a ship cruising under full sail (i.e. I’m not trying to replicate the more static look of an antique timber ship model). I know a lot of people dislike the sails on plastic ship models, but I personally feel that they are an essential part of conveying the exquisite beauty and grace of the real thing. Each to his own eh?

The model I am ready to set the sails on is the Revell Batavia. I have posted a few photographs below of my work in progress so far. The Revell Batavia is a wonderfully detailed and beautifully engineered model of an interesting ship from an important era in the age of sail - for those interested in modelling historic sailing ships, I would recommend this kit without hesitation.

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The only times the sails would be perpendicular to the axis would be if the wind were directly from the stern, or for a small set of angles from either quarter. All other times the yards would be braced at some angles. With some sailing masters the upper yards would have a slightly greater angle than the main yards. Any flags that were flying should be displayed flying in the direction of the assumed wind.

BTW, if painted properly, I have seen some very nice vacuformed sails.

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Mr. Stauffer is right, as always. The bottom line is that the square-rigged yards are swung perpendicular to the wind. Fore-and-aft sails, such as the lateen mizzen of the Batavia, are a bit more complicated. But if you swing the fore and main yards to one side about as far as they’ll go, and the mizzen yard parallel to them, you should end up with a good representation of a ship beating to windward. Remember that the lateen mizzen yard is always on the lee side of the mast (i.e., the side away from the wind).

Take a good look at the vacformed sails. The well-designed ones are often shaped asymmetrically, so it’s clear that the wind is blowing from one side or the other. I don’t know about the Batavia, but the Revell *Golden Hind’*s sails are molded so she’s on the starboard tack (i.e., with the wind blowing from the starboard side),

Investigator, it sounds as though what you need is a good book or two about sailing ship technology. My top recommendation is "Seamanship in the age of Sail, by John Harland. Unfortunately it’s out of print, and used copies are expensive. Another good one is The Way of a Ship, by the great Australian seaman Alan Villiers (also out of print, but used copies are much cheaper). His primary subject is nineteenth- and twentieth-century merchant ships, but he covers the basic concepts of how the sails and rigging of a sailing ship work - the evolutions of tacking, wearing, beating to windward, etc. Those concepts haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. And a very basic, and inexpensive, source is George Campbell’s Neophyte Ship Modeler’s Jackstay It’s a terrific introduction to the whole subject. It’s easily available through www.modelexpo-online.com. (I have no idea about its availability in Australia, but I think Model Expo would ship it to you.) If you learn everything in that little book you’ll be well on the way toward being a knowledgeable sailing ship modeler- though the photo of your Batavia suggests that you’re on the way already. I’m sure we’d all like to see some more.

You’re right: sailing ship technology is an intriguing subject, and a rigged sailing ship model is a thing of fascination and beauty.

By the way, I’m a landlubber too. I once distinguished myself by getting seasick while lying on a water bed in a furniture store.

Good luck.

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Good suggestions. It’s also important to realize how important the fore and aft sails were too

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With something like the 1/96 Connie which I am currently working on, adding the sails just hides all that beautiful rigging, and there is a ton of it. But I agree that some ships just seem dead w/ out the sails. I built the 1/250 Pamir not too long ago and added the sails. At that scale the rigging details are pretty much lost and not as worthy of display. Here’s a pic of her w/ her sails canted about 5 degrees on a port tack. I painted them a flat white, then “accented” them w/ my airbrush using a light tan.This would have been a really boring model w/ out the sails.

From behind, you can see the angle a little better. In hindsight, I would have been happier to set a greater angle, but it still is enough to give it a sense of motion.

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To each his own. Personally I favor “bare poles” or furled sails - and I think a four-masted bark with furled sails would be beautiful. But there are strong arguments on both sides.

I do think it needs to be remembered that yards don’t just swing around; most of them also move up and down when the sails are set and furled. To the experienced eye a model with raised yards and furled sails, or no sails, just doesn’t look right.

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Wow, thankyou so much everyone for taking the time to write such informative replies! I have a much clearer understanding now - it sounds like the yard angle could even be greater than 5 to 10% from perpendicular in some situations.

Arnie60, thanks for posting those pictures of your Pamir, what a beautiful build! Your model shows very well the illusion of a ship in motion that is created by angling the yards.

Here are a couple more pictures of the Batavia that I meant to attach to my original post. My understanding is that no contemporary artwork of the original ship survives (recall she was wrecked on her maiden voyage) so my colour scheme is speculative. I did however try to base it on colours depicted in Dutch maritime art of the era. As most of you know, the Revell kit is based on a Batavia replica built in the Netherlands and completed in 1995. The replica is still on display today and there are plenty of pictures of it to be found on the net.

Cheers, John.

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The mechanics of sail propulsion are captivating.

All sails generate thrust by forming airfoils of one sort or another. In fact, that becomes the limiting factor for one’s speed under sail–you have to dedicate some portion of the wind speed to “inflating” the airfoil.

With multi-masted ships, you then have the problem of “wind shadow” the downwind masts. This is why the baest saling course is a broad reach, where the wind is brought across one of the quarters. This can vary for 5-10º away from the centerline, to 10-20º. (Ideally, you want a third of the each of the masts’ sails in clean air.

Now, if the course you need to steer is indie that 20º or 40º wide “sweet spot”; then you need to get clear air forward. So. you furl the cro’jack, and clew up the mainsail. (This configuration is what makes barques and barquentines so handy.) Note that stayysails are pretty useless until you get the wind around to a beam reach, where the wind is nearly perpendicular to the ship.

This has wandered off far too int the technical side–perhaps I ned to get some water under me and a sail inte wind.

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I have to disagree a little with CapnMac82. A square-rigged sail when the ship is running before the wind (i.e., with the wind blowing from directly astern) isn’t an airfoil. In fact I don’t think it functions as an airfoil under any circumstances. It’s just a big, more-or-less flat, more-or-less vertical surface with the wind blowing on it. (It’s worth noting that, as technology advanced, the designers worked hard at stretching the square sails tighter, so they couldn’t be blown into anything like an airfoil configuration. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, sails were deliberately cut and sewn so they’d be baggy, on the (false) theory that they’d “gather up the wind.” Photos of the last twentieth-century windjammers show that the square sails were set so they were almost perfectly flat.)

The airfoil phenomenon comes into effect in a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel (such as a modern yacht), which can utilize that effect to sail almost into the wind. The wind blowing across the sail creates an airfoil, which, if the yacht is well-designed, can make the hull move forward. But letting the wind blow across a square sail accomplishes almost nothing.

In a square-rigged ship, the only limiting factor in how far the yards can swing is the rigging below them. Investigator, you’ve got enough rigging on your Batavia to work it out. Hold the fore- or mainyard in its position and swing it around. It will swing a good bit before it bumps into the first shroud. (Ships often slacked off their shrouds so the yards could swing farther.) It wasn’t at all unusual, when the ship was working to windward, for the yards to be swung 30 degrees or more from the centerline. (In such a case, if the wind was really blowing, the ship would be heeling over with the water frequently breaking on her lee rail.)

Here’s a famous painting by the Dutch master Willem van de Velde the Younger: http://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d52594/d5259430l.jpg .

The Resolution In a Gale

This ship is beating to windward in a storm. The wind is blowing from a few points aft of the port beam. The topsails are in their lowered positions, with their sails furled, and squared to the ship’s centerline. The topgallants have been struck and sent down to the deck. The fore and main yards are swung around a long way from their “normal” positions squared to the keel, and they’ve been lowered several feet in an attempt to keep the center of the wind’s force relatively low. (This painting dates from 1678. A century later the topsails would probably be taken in after the courses.) The lateen-rigged mizzen is set so the wind is blowing directly into it.

The flags are blowing directly away from the wind, or nearly so. (The fact that the ship is moving forward, and the flags presumably are flapping, lets the artist show the designs of them more clearly.) He’s also painted them as though they’re almost transparent. Big flags were really big in those days, and were generally made of what we’d call a very coarse, heavy gauze. If they’d been made of canvas, they would have messed up the ship’s navigation.

It was perfectly possible for the same wind to drive two square-rigged ships in opposite directions. But a square-rigged ship can’t sail anywhere near directly into the wind. A fore-and-aft rig ship can come a lot closer to doing that.

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No, I did not mean to suggest that sails would be square to wind. They would be at an angle to wind unless a pure 180 degree wind. In that case the sail does not lift, it produces per drag. With any other wind angle the sail would be set to an “angle of attack” using modern aeronautics term (the Wrights invented the term, btw). In nineteenth and earlier centuries the theory of the optimum angle of attack was all wrong, but some good sailing masters learned by experience what the optimum angle was.

This earlier theory was the so-called “Newtonian lift theory”, valid only in extremely low air density, as in orbital altitudes. It called for wind to strike surface and bounce off like a mirror image with angle of wind leaving the sail opposite but equal to angle of attack. This theory called for excessive angles of attack. In actuality, lift drops substantially for angle greater than somewhere between fifteen and twenty degrees.

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I think there’s some confusion in terminology. If a captain of a square-rigged ship can set his sails so the wind blows directly into them, he does. If the wind is blowing toward due north and he wants to head NNE, he probably can swing the yards perpendicular to the wind. If he wants to go due east, he’ll swing the yards as far as he can and tell the helmsman to steer east, and the ship will sail east - though not as fast. The square sails will work unless he swings the yards so far that the wind blows into them from the front (in which case the ship will stop and, unless the helmsman is on his toes, start moving backwards).

The big advantage of having both square and fore-and-aft rig sails in the same ship is that they enable the captain to take advantage of a variety of wind directions. A Coast Guard officer who’d sailed on board the training bark Eagle told me once that her best point of sailing was the “broad reach,” with the square sails, headsails, staysails, and spanker [Later edit: when I originally typed this my phone refused to recognize “spanker” as a word and changed it to “spammer.” I’m getting sick of that…apparatus.] all full of wind and enough of an angle off the wind that the square sails on the mainmast don’t becalm those on the fore. I think the same could be said of square-rigged ships in general, though the best point of sailing varies a bit from ship to ship.

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Then there’s the matter of literally sailing up wind, which the square sails cannot do, and is a job for the fore and aft sails. But that’s not too conducive to a model unless it’s a diorama.

My own conclusion has always been that a model with set sails needs…sailors.

And that’s just too much work for me on a really big ship.

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Thanks again to all who have contributed to this interesting discussion of how sails should be set on a tall ship model to give the impression of a moving ship. I appreciate the effort made to explain it terms that an inveterate lands-man like me [sounds a bit better than “lubber” :slight_smile: ] can understand!

As a matter of related interest… may I ask the forums expertise on what sort of sailing conditions would a tall ship be sailing with all sails set? Since modellers who chose to include the sails on their build will typically model her with “every inch of canvas” on display, it would be helpful to know under what sort of conditions this would occur in real life.

I hope this is not to obvious a question! I’m guessing a ship in a good wind would want all sails set to go as fast as possible? But there must be a trade off here with the enormous mechanical strain this must put on the masts and rigging. In a previous post, Prof. Tilley posted a picture of a ship in a violent storm, which only had one or two sails set, which got me thinking about this. So would the spectacle of a tall ship in full sail be reserved for relatively calm seas, good weather and strong, but not violent winds? I’m curious to find out.

Cheers, John.

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Short answer: yes. Generally speaking, a ship only “hangs out every stitch”!in good weather, a light wind, and a relatively calm sea. The sequence of taking the sails in, as the wind blew harder, varied somewhat from century to century. In the sixteenth century, as in that Van de Velde painting, the last sails to be furled would be the lowest one on each mast: the fore and main courses and the lateen mizzen. In the late nineteenth century, the last ones in would be the lower topsails. Leaving a sail up too long is a recipe for disaster.

One exception that may or may not be relevant to the Batavia. If she has studding sails (sails set temporarily on booms extended out from the yards on the fore and main masts), they’ be set on both sides only in a light wind blowing from dead aft. In a light wind from either side, only the studding sails on the windward side would be set. I don"t imagine the Batavia did have studding sails, so if none of that makes sense don’t worry about it.

If you’re banning “landlubber” from your vocabulary, you might consider doing the same with “tall ship.” The term had an honest origin (in John Masefield’s poem “Sea Fever”), but in the past few years it’s become an advertising phrase. It doesn’t actually mean anything; sailors and serious ship modelers don’t use it.

Good luck.

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I have read All the answers here with fascination .

Now , one last point that no one mentioned . Look at the painting again .What else is going on ? Right , the ship is heeling or leaning Away from the wind . All sail craft heel Away from the wind force being received by the sails and rigging .Yes . even ships under bare poles in a gawdalmighty nasty blow will lean because of those masts and rigging being pushed by the wind and the shape of the hull acts like a wall to that wind , thereby getting pushed over by the same

. Rigging , believe it or not exerts a lot of drag on wind flow .Many times in a right nasty blow , the sea anchor would be deployed keeping her head to the wind . I will let Dr Tilley discourse on those .Remember now , the ship would not and should not sit level on the stand unless you are depicting it in a light offshore breeze at anchor ! Keep the wind off yer quarter and fair sailing , mate ! Oh , ya did a fine job of shipbuilding mate !

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This is one of the several reasons why I don’t care much for models with set sails. A full-hull model leaning over on its stand would look pretty ridiculous.

The most effective models with set sails that I’ve seen are small, and presented in dioramas. I’m thinking of the books by Donald McNarry and Phillip Reed.

Here’s a model of the British nineteenth-century merchant ship Port Jackson, by Mr. McNarry. It’s on the scale of 1/32"=1’, giving it an overall length of about 11": http://www.donaldmcnarryshipmodels.com/graphics/24-photo-med.jpg

She’s on the port tack, heeling slightly to starboard, with all sails set in a light wind.

Looking at a McNarry model in the flesh is simultaneously an inspiring and extremely depressing experience.

I’d recommend rigging the Batavia with the yards either squared or at a slight angle - say five or ten degrees - and with the hull vertical on the stand.