After 45 years of model building I now limit my modeling efforts to sloops and schooners that can be built fairly quickly and don't take up a lot of space. In fact, I make all of my hulls about 12” long and set the scale based on this length. I'm always on the lookout for useable plans, and Howard Chapelle in several of his books presents plans for a Marblehead fishing schooner circa 1785 that caught my eye. It was reconstructed, as he admits, from very sketchy evidence. The plan also appears in V.R. Grimwood's book “American Ship Models” and was also the basis for the plans drawn by Harold Hahn for his model of the Hannah which has been copied many times. Hahn's model has been the subject of a number of posts on this site.
After almost completing the model, I came across a five part series of articles by Randle Biddle on the Nautical Research Guild website, originally in the Nautical Research Journal Vol. 65 Winter 2020, in which he reviews all the evidence for the likely appearance of Hannah, and by inference, the Marblehead schooner. He concludes that Chapelle's plans are based on flimsy evidence indeed and proposes a new set of drawings that better represent Hannah.
So it appears that I have made a schooner that never existed. But she looks nice, and I had fun doing it so have no regrets.
The model was built by the plank on bulkhead method with the center keel piece and the bulkhead patterns determined from the sheer plan and sections in the body plan. A 12”hull length worked out to be pretty close to 1/64 scale. After the framework was completed, the model was double planked with 1/16”basswood followed by 1/32”cherry. A subdeck of 1/32” plywood was then added which was later planked with 1/32” birch strips. I use blackened paper strips to simulate the gudgeons and pintles. The rudder was attached by drilling through the back of the rudder into the hull and inserting metal pins. After completing the hull all of the deck furniture was scratch built from a combination of
bass and cherry except for purchased hatch gratings.
I used the mast, gaff and boom lengths given by Grimwood. In my experience as a scratch builder, rigging plans for a particular vessel are almost never available and the best you can do is to use the rules of thumb in various references and see how models of similar vessels are rigged. The series of articles by Biddle had photos of numerous fishing schooner models which I relied on to compose a rigging diagram for my model.
After almost completing the model, I came across a five part series of articles by Randle Biddle on the Nautical Research Guild website, originally in the Nautical Research Journal Vol. 65 Winter 2020, in which he reviews all the evidence for the likely appearance of Hannah, and by inference, the Marblehead schooner. He concludes that Chapelle's plans are based on flimsy evidence indeed and proposes a new set of drawings that better represent Hannah.
So it appears that I have made a schooner that never existed. But she looks nice, and I had fun doing it so have no regrets.
The model was built by the plank on bulkhead method with the center keel piece and the bulkhead patterns determined from the sheer plan and sections in the body plan. A 12”hull length worked out to be pretty close to 1/64 scale. After the framework was completed, the model was double planked with 1/16”basswood followed by 1/32”cherry. A subdeck of 1/32” plywood was then added which was later planked with 1/32” birch strips. I use blackened paper strips to simulate the gudgeons and pintles. The rudder was attached by drilling through the back of the rudder into the hull and inserting metal pins. After completing the hull all of the deck furniture was scratch built from a combination of
bass and cherry except for purchased hatch gratings.
I used the mast, gaff and boom lengths given by Grimwood. In my experience as a scratch builder, rigging plans for a particular vessel are almost never available and the best you can do is to use the rules of thumb in various references and see how models of similar vessels are rigged. The series of articles by Biddle had photos of numerous fishing schooner models which I relied on to compose a rigging diagram for my model.
