Headed for the Future

 First of all, let me say that I admire those of you who can keep their momentum up on projects, especially when there isn't much opportunity to do any gaming.  With the explosion of the Delta variant of Coronavirus in Texas I have been very hesitant to do any gaming, whether here at home or out in public.  While everyone in our home has been vaccinated, we've discovered that an amazing number of people we know are not.  This tends to make me a bit more circumspect about who comes by these days.  Now, I don't want this to be a political issue, so any partisan comments about what the Coronavirus "is" or "isn't" will be quickly deleted.  If I want endless ranting about politics, I can visit any number of other websites, or turn on my television.

OK, enough of that.  As you may remember, in my last post I showed you the next ship being worked on:

As a recap, she is the USS Franklin.  Launched in August of 1815, she was the first ship built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  She was in the Mediterranean from 1817-1820, and was Pacific Squadron flagship from 1821-1824.  She was then in ordinary until 1838, and served as a receiving ship in Boston from 1838-1852 when she was broken up.  Overall, nothing particularly noteworthy about her or her service.  So, what's the big deal?

Franklin was a member of the Independence class of ships of the line.  The class ship, USS Independence was launched in Boston in June of 1814.  In theory, she could have broken the blockade with USS Constitution, but never did because of the large British squadron outside the port.  Her first voyage was under Commodore William Bainbridge to the Barbary Coast in July of 1815 as part of the squadron sent to suppress piratical activities there.  After being razeed to a 54-gun frigate in 1836, she served in the Mexican War and other various roles before being a receiving ship at Mare Island Navy Yard in California.  She served in that role from 1857 to 1912 (!), when she was decommissioned.  She was sold, and left the navy yard in 1914 and lasted until 1919, when she was intentionally burned to recover her metal fittings.

USS Independence at Mare Island in the 1890s.

The Independence class was an interesting, and apparently flawed design.  The ships carried their lower gunports too close to the water once they were fully loaded.  In fact, Independence had only 3 foot, 10 inches of freeboard for her lower midships guns.  That's less than HMS Victory, which carried her lower ports about 4.5 feet above water.  Part of Independence's problem was due to her armament; rated a 74, she normally carried 87 guns, all of them 32 pounders.  Chapelle gives a breakdown of: 30 long 32 pounders, 33 medium 32 pounders, and 24 32 pound carronades.  In theory, that gives a broadside of 1,372 pounds.  For comparison, HMS Victory had a broadside weight of 1,148 pounds!  But, Independence would find it very difficult to fire her lower tier guns in most weather.  In fact, when she went to the Barbary Coast in 1815, "Her lower deck ports were caulked in to overcome the problem of her deep draft in crossing the Atlantic." (Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships)

So, a more realistic broadside weight (that is, not counting the lower guns) is 896 pounds.  That sounds impressive, but even a British 74 Common without carronades has a 781 pound broadside.  Replace some of the 9 pounders on that 74 Common with carronades, and now you can get up to around 950 pounds of broadside.  Naval Constructor William Doughty certainly thought that, "in blowing weather, she could not fight her lower lee guns and would therefore be liable to be captured by a ship of inferior force . . ."  Naval officers disagreed with his conclusion, and this was part of a political fight that I won't get into here. (Ibid.)  So, were these first generation American ships of the line unstoppable, or were they flawed and liable to be captured by lesser ships?  Well, I guess that's why we play naval wargames, isn't it?

That's enough history for the moment.  Now, on to some pretty pictures.

As I've said before, she will probably spend her life fighting under other flags, but was still a fun unicorn to get out of the way.

So, about the post title.  Yes, it's still a song title but it also fits this post extremely well.  As the first generation of completed US ships of the line, the Independence clearly points toward the future of these ships in several ways.  Firstly, the lineage seems pretty apparent when you look at Franklin, and my previous build USS North Carolina.

USS Franklin

USS North Carolina. Apparently both my US SOL are in a 
bit of a hurry!

The paint jobs also point towards the future of the very severe black/white schemes that we see in paintings of the transitional ships from, say, the Crimean War.  Take a look at these transitional ships from Red Eagle (formerly Skytrex).  Clearly you can't tell the players without a scorecard!

HMS Victoria

Retvizan

Like I said earlier, it is a song title.  "Headed for the Future" is the title song from Neil Diamond's 1985 album.  Now, my spouse is a huge Neil Diamond fan.  Be warned, then, that any comments disparaging him or his songs (except for "Heartlight") will be deleted as quickly as the COVID ones! 😁  Finally, here's a shot or two of the probable stars of the next post:

Another French 80 for Trafalgar

Some Spithead ACW ships that have been 
sitting around for a while.

Mister Mojo Risin' . . .

 It's amazing what a little time away can do for one's creativity.  I didn't touch a sailing ship from March 17, 2020 to December 15, 2020.  Then, from 12/15/2020 to the time of this post, I completed X of them.  That's how I thought this post was going to go.

Instead, it has become a story about how your mojo can vanish and return.  I was working quickly and had 4 ships under construction, with 3 of them either ready to be, or in the process of being rigged.  Then, I walked in one morning and found a scene of partial despair.  Turns out that our 16-year-old cat had decided to hop up on my painting table during the night.  She hasn't done that in years, so why now?  No idea. 🤬 cat. . . . 

Of course, the most complete ship was the one that took the worst damage.  The Russian 46 gun ship had all the standing rigging and most of the running rigging done.  This turned out to be a good thing, as while the masts were all knocked askew, I was able to pull them back into line using the standing rigging.  The brass ratlines didn't come out anywhere near as well, though.  I wound up having to replace 3 of them, which meant I had to order a new set (they aren't something that I keep an excess stock of lying around).  

Starboard lower mainmast, starboard and port lower mizzen
ratlines. Clearly after being cat-ified.

The other two ships weren't as badly damaged, since they were sheltered behind the Russian.  Only one ratline went missing from them, and that was my fault.  I went to glue it back in place, dropped it, heard it hit the tile floor. . . and it vanished.  So, time to order TWO spare ratline sets.

Once those arrived, I was ready to get started again.  Then, the hospital called.  I've been needing some kidney surgery for a while but it had been delayed several times by COVID.  Now, they were ready for me on the 14th of April.  I'll spare you the gory details, since 1) nobody wants to hear them, and 2) I don't know any of them; I was unconscious for the bloody, cutting parts.  After an overnight stay for observation, I went home the next afternoon.  Oddly enough, the experience left me in NO mood to do any hobby type work.  Who could have guessed? 🤷‍♂️  Also, I realized that operating knives, scissors and glue might not be a good idea while under the influence of painkillers.  After all that drama, I was finally able to get back to work and get the three ships ready for their debut here on the blog.

Now, to be fair, they weren't all done from scratch.  Instead, along with working on my Trafalgar project, I decided to do some more unicorn hunting.  It's one thing for me to say that I finally finished up my Russian 46 gun frigate.  It's another thing altogether when I tell you that ship has been "under construction" since September of 2014!  In that time, the overall collection has gone from 86 ships total to 114 as of April 24.  So, even though he (Russians call their ships "he," not "she") was not the first one finished in this group, mere seniority gives him the first spot in this post.

Yes, I know the headsails are missing. That will be corrected.

The Quarter of Comparison hasn't made an appearance
in a while, so there it is.

Now, this is not his first appearance on the blog.  Back in January 2018 this ship was featured in a post called "Unicorn Hunting" (https://mymodelsailingships.blogspot.com/2018/01/unicorn-hunting.html).  I ended that post with the quote, "However, no matter what their future careers may take them, I'm determined to cut down on the size of the unicorn fleet."  So, just three short years later, here we are! 🙄

Remember, this is how the ship first appeared 
on the blog.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this ship isn't painted in the usual black/white scheme associated with Russian and American ships for this period.  There is, of course, a reason for that.  As I said in the earlier post, the Russian Navy didn't start painting their ships black and white until about 1802.  One of two of the 46 gun ships might have been around then, but they were all retired by the time the Russo/Ottoman War of 1806 broke out.  So, this ship gets an earlier style scheme.

Next up is a French 74.  She only had a furled sail knocked off during the Great Cat-astrophe (you know the puns here are bad; too late to complain now) so was easy to fix.  Truth be told, I got a little lazy with this ship.  The hull and masts are the same shade of yellow.  I doubt that they were ever this exact a match.  According to Boudriot's The 74-Gun Ship, French lower masts were usually black in home waters, and white in the tropics.  His information is for the the-Revolution navy of 1780.  I suspect the regulations stayed much the same, but the disorder of the Revolution made them much harder to obey.  Well, that's my justification for it anyway.

The last ship of the three is a Spanish 74.  As mentioned in an earlier post, my Spanish navy for Trafalgar is complete.  Instead, she will take the part of Intrepide in the French fleet, as that was a Spanish ship in French service.  I decided to try a slightly different shade of yellow for this ship's hull, and it was successful but not in the way I thought.  Instead of a weathered yellow, what I got was a look that I think is very similar to the varnished sides of the 1770s and earlier.  I don't think it dates the ship too terribly, and it is a different look than unending variations on yellow.

At this point, there are two ships left to do (an 80, and a British 74 Common) and the Combined Fleet will be complete.  That, to be honest, is an odd feeling.  I will still need to build some frigates for them, but all of the ships of the line will be done.  After that, just eight more British ships of the line will complete that fleet.  I owe the British one frigate, instead of the three for the French.  Still, the end is in sight at last!

For sticking this out until the end, here's some bonus content.  At the beginning of the post, I said there were four ships under construction.  Well, here's a sneak peek at number 4:

She's the USS Franklin, one of the 74s that the US Navy launched at the end of the War of 1812.  She's called a 74, but was actually pierced for 87 guns (DANFS says 63 x32 pounder long guns and 24 x 32 LB carronades).  You can do a plausible "what-if" breakout style scenario for her and a companion, but it's more likely that she'll spend most of her life under another flag as needed.

Finally, after reading my gripes about the cat, it seems that she deserves a picture here too.  So, without further ado:

The breaker of ships.

How Do You Say "Unicorn" in Russian?

Today's unicorn comes to us courtesy of the Russian Navy.  In all honesty though, she's not so much a unicorn as she is an odd duck.  I nicknamed my unfinished ships "unicorns" though, so we're sticking with that.

When I first bought this miniature, it was listed as "50 gun (2 deck)," which led me to think it was a ship of the line, just like a British 50.  Some time later, I purchased the book Russian Warships in the Age of Sail 1696-1860 by John Tredrea and Eduard Sozaev.

I've said it here before, but it bears repeating: this is
THE English language work on the Russian sailing navy. 

Not only is this an excellent reference work, but it reminds us that nations do things according to their own logic, whether it makes sense to us or not.  This 50-gun two-decker is an excellent case in point.  To us, it's a small ship of the line, like the famous/infamous HMS Leopard.  To the Russians, it's a frigate.  "Oh, OK" I hear you saying. "So she's just an old two-deck frigate like HMS Serapis."  Problem is, it's just not that simple.

According to Tredrea and Sovaev, these two deck 50+ gun frigates  were a series of one-off designs (unlike the Pyotr Apostol class of 46-gun ships) that were designed for operations in the Black Sea.  Referred to as "battle frigates" or "frigates of the line," the idea was that they could perform the functions of a frigate and then reinforce the line of battle once the engagement started.  You can see this from the armament carried.  Whereas Serapis carried 18 pounders on the lower deck and 9 or 12 pound guns on the upper, these Russian ships tended to be armed with 24 to 36 pounders on the lower deck, and anything from 12 to 36 pounders on the upper deck.  A "frigate of the line" indeed!  To use a more modern analogy: If the USS Constitution and her sister frigates were like a WWI battlecruiser, then these Russian frigates are more like a WWII pocket battleship.

With that bit of design history aside, below are some pictures of my finished model.  After looking at those, I'll talk about some of the issues with this particular mini.

 At first glance, you'd certainly think that he (the Russians call ships "he," not "she") looks like a small ship of the line.  Looking at pictures of this 50 gun frigate together with a 66 gun ship of the line might make you wonder even more about this ship.  So, here we go.

The 66 gunner is on the right of the photo.

The 66 gunner is only about 12 feet longer on the waterline.  What gives?

Interestingly enough, this resemblance to a ship of the line is the best clue as to what ship this mini represents.  As I said before, all of the 50+ gun two-deck frigates were one-off designs, so it can't represent all of them.  So, the "typical" large frigate of the Black Sea Fleet might have looked something like the drawing below:

This is Grigorii Velikiia Armenii [Gregory the Great of Armenia], a 50 gun frigate built in 1791.  He carried 28 30 pounders on the lower deck, and 22 18 pounders on her upper deck.  Note though, that he doesn't have 2 complete gun decks like the miniature.  So what ship was the miniature modeled on?

Personally, I think the miniature represents Krepkii [Strong], a 54 gun frigate built in 1801.  He carried 30 36 pounders on the lower deck and possibly 32 36 pound carronades on the upper deck (Tredrea says the carronades are conjectural).  There are no drawings or pictures of him, but Krepkii is listed as "a sister to the Baltic fleet line of battle ship Skoryi [Fast] (62)."  On Skoryi, the upper deck armament is confirmed as 36 pound carronades, so that does seem reasonable for Krepkii as well.

If I wanted to be uber-picky, then I would go on about some problems with the Langton miniature; however, I'm not going to do that.  Quite frankly, Russian Age of Sail ships are damned hard to come by.  Langton makes 6: a 100, a 74, a 66, this 50, a 44/46 two decker frigate, and a 32 gun frigate.  Red Eagle (formerly Skytrex) make a 100, 74 and a 36.  Navwar makes a 66.  It would appear then, that Russian ships are probably not big sellers.  So, rather than nitpicking, I think it's probably better to be happy with the choices we have.  Besides, the more I look through the book, the more I am convinced that the Langtons designed the 44/46 gun frigate miniature so that it could also do duty as the single gun deck 50s.  I will explain that a little more when I finish building my 44/46 gun mini:  AKA, the third unicorn.

Oh, and the answer to the question in the title?  The word "unicorn" in Russian is единорог, and is pronounced ye-dino-rog.

UPDATE: December 6, 2019.  These ships came up on a recent thread at The Miniatures Page.  A person named NotNelson1 was looking for information about the miniatures, so I pointed him here.  After reading the blog post, he asked me if I had asked the Langtons about what ships these were.  I had not. 😞  He did, and they told him that the 50 and 46 gun frigates were not based on any specific class of ships, but were representative examples.  So there you have it; all my speculation above is just that.  The Langtons did say that my estimations were as good as any, so I guess I've got that going for me. 😌  If anyone is interested, here's a link to that thread at TMP:

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=520251

The First Unicorn

As mentioned in the "Unicorn Hunting" post, one of my goals for this year is to try and finish some ships that have been languishing for several years now.  The reasons are varied, but I've finally decided that if nothing else, they can serve in capacities other than what their hulls would indicate.  So, with that in mind, here are some pictures of the First Unicorn, the USS North Carolina.

According to Canney's Sailing Warships of the US Navy, the ship was laid down in June 1816, and was commissioned by 18 December 1824, so 8 years and 6 months before she was put into use.  By comparison, mine took from September 2014 to March 2018, or 3 years and 6 months.  If we use Canney as a benchmark, I flew through building my version. 😀  According to the Dictionary of American Fighting Ships (DANFS, the online address is: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs.html ), North Carolina was laid down in 1818, launched on 7 September 1820, and got her first captain on 24 June 1824.  That's only 6+ years, so even by those real world standards I'm still doing pretty good.  That's enough self-congratulations for right now I think, so let's move on to some photos of the new model.  First though, a plan of the original ship:

I saw an online comment that said this ship looks like the Constitution on steroids.  Maybe....

Remember, this is officially a 74-gun, 2 deck ship of the line.

The sails obscure just how flat the ship is.  No waist, or
stacking of decks here. Just one cabin above the spar deck.

This earlier photo gives a better idea of what I mean.

Pretty enough, but in a very practical, almost brutal, way.  I think it's
due to the ship being mostly black and white.

I did have a bit of a problem on deciding how to paint the masts.  Paintings and models show a number of different ideas.  There are white masts with black hoops:

Or, white masts with white painted mast hoops:

This model is at the USS North Carolina (BB-55) memorial
at Wilmington, NC (http://www.battleshipnc.com/)

And in some cases, black masts with white hoops:

The last picture was painted in 1827 and was probably commissioned by one of the ship's officers.  So, it's possibly the most correct.  However, I didn't think this looked very good on the model (too much black), so went with the white mast/black hoop combo.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, North Carolina wasn't commissioned until 1824, so will never fight under US colors except in some sort of "what if" scenario.  Given her paint job and distinctive appearance, it's almost certain that she will be impressed into the Russian navy as a 74 for various scenarios.  Either way, the first unicorn is finished, and others will be following