HMS Agamemnon; Nelson's favorite...

. . . but maybe not mine, so much.  I found the "Eggs-and-Bacon" in a Langton boxed set for sale on eBay.  Since I need it, and all the other ships in the box for Trafalgar, I went ahead and picked it up. The Agamemnon was already painted and assembled (but not rigged); however, I wasn't happy with how the masts had been done.  So, I disassembled, stripped, repainted and reassembled the ship.

Rigging was where my problems really started.First I tried a different type of thread from what I normally use. Other people get good results with it, but I didn't, as it frayed and unraveled at the slightest provocation.  So, I cut all that out and went back to my normal thread.  Then, I discovered that I had rigged part of the stays incorrectly when using my normal thread , so had to cut all those out again.  No excuses here, this was completely my fault.  After all, "I've built almost a hundred of these things, so I don't need to look at the instructions."  WRONG!  I got that part redone, and all the ratlines on her.  That's when I dropped the ship.

Rather than let it fall, I tried to catch it.  That meant it bounced down my legs and THEN hit the floor.  Fortunately, the standing rigging worked like it is supposed to, and I was able to pull all the masts back into line without anything breaking.  There are no pictures of this, as I suspect my obscene language at the time would have turned any photographs a fine shade of blue.  There were some minor mistakes in the running rigging, but I was able to catch them before they were baked into the ship.  I guess the moral of this story is either:

1. No matter how many times you've done this, read the stinking instructions, or
2. if you're a beginner, don't be afraid of making mistakes.  We all still do, no matter how much experience we might have.

Now, with all that out of the way, let's get to some photos.  In my attempt to get at least one blog post up this month, I didn't set up my usual system of lights for taking photographs.  However, I still think they came out OK.

Looks like there might be some debris on the Captain's sternwalk.

Even with all the issues and my clumsiness, she's still a pretty good looking little ship.  Credit for that goes to the original design and the sculpting skill of the Langtons.

While it sounds like this Agamemnon might be a hard-luck ship, I'm hoping that isn't the case.  In fact, unlike many of my ships, she will make her first appearance on the game table next month in a "what-if" scenario that, had it occurred, she would have been a participant in.  I'm hoping she can extinguish some of the bad luck from her building on the game table.