Adventure galley

When following a build log your watching a builder progress along and you get feed back nice work or great built etc. what you don't see is when thing go bad and you really screw thing up.
WELL! I screwed up big time so lets fix it

when I measured the distance between station lines I used the 2 lines in the center shown with the black arrow, what i did not check was the fact all the other lines were farther apart the red arrow. The 2 closer lines indicate midship I should know that and I do BUT.

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when i cut out the bulkheads 3/4 thick it was perfect by placing them on the center of the lines.

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OOPS! the rest of the line space are 3/16 wider and left a space between the bulkheads. when i cut out all the bulkheads and glued the hull together i came up with a stubby hull a few inches shorter than my foam board prototype.

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so here I am looking at this stubby hull thinking what? hum something is very wrong here. That is when I compared it to the prototype and realized yup something is really, really wrong but what?
back to the drawing board as they say and that is when i discovered my mistake.

wrong hull.jpg

the hull is glued together so do i just scrap it and start over or fix it?

this is the cool part of the hobby no matter what your doing your learning and solving problems. This is how i fixed it i set it up on the bandsaw and sliced apart all the bulkheads, I know i need 3/16 more space between the bulkheads but the saw blade takes out 1/16 material so i need to take up the missing 3/16 + the material from the saw cut so that = 1/4 inch material between each bulkhead.
 
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the results and now it matches the drawing. This hull will be planked so even though my wife thought it was a good looking effect it will be covered by planking.
The cap rail line is not shaped and left higher. This detail will be adjusted when the hull is planked.
From the side it kind of looks like a drooping pot belly.

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So far this is the hardest hull I ever built because of the shape.
to start the hull has a pronounced tumble home which creates this budge a ridge all along the hull

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making it harder this ridge fans out as it approaches the bow and then takes a drastic flare as it reaches the top line and below the bow becomes concave. so here are all these complex curves all having to blend together.

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at the stern the bulging ridge just fades into the upper hull and goes from budging out to curving inward both above and below.

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the bow was really the most difficult and I thought no way is this going to all come together into a flowing curved shape. Looking at the hull from above you can see the rail line and how the hull bulged out.

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moving forward that bulge tucks under the rail line and disappears.

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when you turn the hull upside down and look at it from the bottom it takes on a weird shape.

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then looking at the bow it does all flow together.

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next I will add the stern and give it a final shape. Because this hull is solid it is heavy, but I think heavy is a good thing it won't be easy to bump and knock over.

Actually this hull has a classic shape with fine curves and a tumble home of the upper works. It is really a pretty shaped hull with its classic lines.
 
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for those following this as a build it is called the Adventure galley however because there are no know plans of the ship this is a reconstruction based on plans of the period and the Charles galley were used. The figurehead might change as well as location of gun ports. Carvings may be altered etc.
 
Hi Dave. Here is a photo of Alfreds forward cant frames and hawser timbers that is what the body plan is showing you. You are right there is a flare but should be more like Alfred. At the time of this vessel it probable had even more flare but since I am working in 1780 time frame its a little hard for me to say how much. The French also had this flare in their ships but do believe that it was more flare. You can see that flare in english ships and French. But I believe that the front of this one needs to be more refine before you can plank it. You did say you have water lines for it right. They should help to do this. I see if I can find a framing picture for you to compare with the body plan of the vessel above. I will be back. Gary

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Hi Dave
I dont like to correct you, but on plans of english ships always the left side show the frame lines from the stern to the main frame
and on the right side from the bow. You can see this on the sternpost, what not is shown on the bowframes.
But it is right that most smal ships like Yachts and sloops have flat tucks

regards
Willi (schifferlbauer)
 
now that I have a roughed out hull shape the next step is to refine the shape.

going back to the original plans I traced the lines I need for this step

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what I am making are templates for the height of the cap rails, the decks and location of gun ports and row ports
black lines are the profile of the hull from keel to cap rail, the magenta lines are the wales, the green lines are the decks

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I need to know the exact height and shape of the cap rails because once that is established I will take measurements from that to the gun ports etc. i cut my template at the main deck line and set it against the inside of the bulwarks. The cap rail is marked and the hull cut down to the line.
At this point i will not cut in the gun ports because it will make the upper works to delicate and the way the hull is handled at this stage they WILL! break.

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Aug 8, 2019

Hi Dave
I dont like to correct you, but on plans of english ships always the left side show the frame lines from the stern to the main frame
and on the right side from the bow. You can see this on the sternpost, what not is shown on the bow frames.
But it is right that most small ships like Yachts and sloops have flat tucks

regards
Willi (schifferlbauer)


i don't understand the "correction" you are referring to. if you are referring to post #29 i high lighted the bow station line on the right side of the bodyplan
 
first thing i did was to search for images, drawings, kits or anything to add research material to the subject. what i found in the way of kits was so far off they were worthless as information.
This project is a reconstruction of what the Adventure galley might of looked like, not how it was constructed just how it might of looked. This model is not how the Adventure Galley looked like it is a reconstruction of how it might of looked like based on historical evidence.

below you will find snipits from a topic here on the forum under a different title but it does add insight to the overall project at hand.

Captain Kidd, big name, sailed in the Adventure Galley, this was an unusually long and fast ship for its time, with sweep ports, ... it is also known she had a sister ship the Charles Galley that plenty is known about... (or that is one thought, some think the Adventure Galley was a re-fit of an old ship, others a new build, but along the same lines) ...but what do we get to represent Captain Kidd's ship

Out of interest, I've been doing some sleuthing on the Adventure Galley and came up with a very interesting discovery.
The Charles Galley was built in 1677 - some 18 years before the Adventure Galley. So one could say they can not be the same design etc.
But researching the Charles Galley it seems her history ends with her being rebuilt in 1693 at Woolwich. After that I can find no references to this ship.
Two years later in 1695, the Adventure Galley leaves nearby Deptford, one year later in 1696 the 'Kidd consortium' purchase her for the well known venture.
So I get to thinking, when the Adventure Galley is being built,

1. The Charles Galley is available to examine at nearby Woolwich

2. The Adventure Galley could in fact, be the Charles Galley.

Much more research to do, but I think that is what makes all this so interesting. Subjects that seem almost too far lost in the past have documented connections that become very interesting to ponder.

Adding to the mystery it is also known the Adventure Galley pretty much fell to pieces in the end. Badly built as has been presumed by some authors? Or simply a much older ship than anyone had ever realized before...

I've now found some evidence the Charles Galley did leave Woolwich with her identity intact, there is evidence she was rebuilt again at Deptford in 1710, being renamed the HMS Torrington in 1729.

Still fascinating though to see that she could have been a prototype for the Adventure Galley and I need to do much more digging around on the link between these two ships. It is just way too striking that authors always quote the Charles Galley as fitting the description of the Adventure Galley, somehow they are closely linked and a bit of researching has them at virtually the same place at the same time.

I think if she was down to the bare bones the Charles Galley could have been examined closely and measured to produce the Adventure Galley, perhaps large components could have been manufactured in pairs for both ships, one for the rebuild, one for the new ship.

Thanks so it could have been at Woolwich for some considerable time while the work was done. Has to be worth contacting some of the current researchers and asking if they ever spotted the coincidence of the Charles Galley being at Woolwich while the Adventure Galley was being built at Deptford. One way to get 'sister' ships, but built 18 years apart.

It's the similarity of the designs that suggests the link. The contemporary descriptions of the Adventure Galley suggest it is a sort of hybrid ship, as if it is not very 'typical' of the time. The description has been picked up by many authors as very similar to the Charles Galley.

Then it turns out that the Charles Galley is in Woolwich for a rebuild, right at the time the Adventure Galley is built just down the road at Deptford.

This is just a wiki cut and paste, regarding the AG but it is verified by my other research:

She had been launched on 4 December 1695 from Captain William Castle's dockyard in Deptford on the outskirts of London.[3] Her design combined sails and oars, an unusual combination for warships at that time, that incorporated three ship-rigged masts and two banks of oars.

This is also a description of the Charles Galley. So is it only coincidence that the CG is at Woolwich while the AG is built a few miles down the road at Deptford, or was it a case that the AG was built with direct reference to the CG?

It could be verified perhaps with purchase orders etc. It is speculative, but coincidences are not always so coincidental. Two ships fitting the same description, both somewhat unusual, and one is built right when the other is being rebuilt just a few miles away.

As far as I know exactly why the AG is built originally is not established, some sources stating it was a new build for the Navy (supporting the potential copying of the CG), others that it was a merchant ship in for conversion. I am convinced though it was not built to order for the Kidd consortium, as the evidence is they purchased it a year after its launch.

Just adding to this, there was some difficulty designing these ships with sweeps that were also pierced for cannon, the sweeps had to be in the right place for the draught of the ship, then there were considerations of the oarsman being accommodated while they rowed, whilst at the same time allowing the gunners to work and ship to be sailed. It does tempt one to think it may have been more prudent to copy an existing successful design, than start from scratch when building such a ship.

Thanks, some vital info there! Built as a privateer does make a lot of sense, she seems to have been built specifically as a 'pirate' hunter, fast and well armed, the sweeps to allow her to close in calm conditions.

It does now make me wonder what sort of relationship a private dockyard had with the nearby naval dockyards, one would image not a great one unless under contract with the recorded 'stiffness' of the Navy Board in the early Eighteenth century. I can still see a strong link with the idea that the design of the CG was in someway a direct influence in the building of the AG, but I need to find some evidence, else it is pure conjecture.

I think I found one reference that suggests the Navy hired her before the Kidd Consortium bought her.

But a speculative build does sound interesting, particularly if it was a speculative 'copy' of what appears to have been a very successful ship in the dockyards just down the road!
 
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I took the template drawing and cut it apart at the main deck and the lower deck

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once the cap rails are done I took the upper section and lined it up with the cap rails and drew along the bottom giving me the main deck.
Now I took the second section and alined the top of it with the main deck line.

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cutting out the ports in the template i can now trace them on the hull.

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a lot of pre planning goes on with model building and at this point of the build there are options as to how to proceed.
The purpose of the model is to show how the Adventure Galley might of looked like so the hull structure is of no importance.

the hull is solid to the main deck then the upper works. The quarter deck and fore castle decks can be added with no problem. the main deck can be completed and cannons added on deck.

The lower deck has 4 gun ports and 20 row ports.

to add the lower guns I would need to router out the hull down to the lower deck, in doing so I would have to go back and build the main deck. As you can see i already have the main deck all i need to do is plank it, so cutting it out will add a lot more work to the project. first i would have to router out the hull, set in deck clamps and install deck beams.

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a simple solution is to just close the lower gun ports. That still leaves the row ports and you just can't paint them on so here is an idea I was thinking about.

find the center of each port and drill a hole in the side of the hull. Then make up a frame the size of the port and install the frame into each hole. By doing this it gives an open area behind the port and the hull planking will cover the hole and frame structure.
I do not know if the row ports had a cover or not if so then just close all the row port openings.

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