Artesania Latina Bounty Rigging/Belaying Strategy

[mdpaulhus]

Greetings

I am a new member and am Building the Artesania Latina Bounty. I was very happy to find this forum, as I think it will be very helpful to me. I have searched for similar threads to the one I am posting here, but have not really found anything as direct as what my few questions are. So I apologize if repetitive.

I actually stated the build in 2001! but never had the time to finish until I retired last year. I have completed all the hull, masts, etc. and I have greatly enjoyed that. I am now starting on rigging. I know the Artesania Latina kit is not exactly as the Bounty was after modification by British Admiralty and is more like the Bethia or 1960s replica (for example: the mizzen topgallant), but I am still trying to rig this ship as close as possible to what was really done in the period. I am a Naval Architect by trade, and this is oddly very important to me. I wanted to ensure that I fully understood the rigging plans before starting so that I didn't make any mistakes and could plan what to do off vessel versus on.

I do have a lot of the books on rigging and general construction including the books by Lennarth Petterson, John Harland, Wolfram Zu Mondfeld, etc, so I am not completely without reference materials.

The general rigging is fairly straightforward, so the main focus for me was the belaying plans. I started by mapping out the belaying plan as provided in the A.L. plans, but in my mind, there seemed to be a lot of things there that didn't make perfect sense relative to what I understood common practice to be - or were perhaps just errors. I have subsequently noticed that the rigging plans aren't even included in the downloadable plans from A.L now, so I am not sure what that means. I decided that the best course of action was to just compare the A.L. plans with the rigging/belaying drawings in John McKays book on the Bounty, this gave me an almost completely different direction. I finally decided to compare to the Occre plans, and again something almost completely different. Below is a table that gives an example of what I am seeing. It is just for the yard lifts, but you can see the three sources never align and only twice (in yellow) do two sources even align. Also is some cases it just seems wrong to me - such as Main Top Yard and Topgallant Yard lifts being belayed to "Mizzen" fire rails.



I am very surprised by this as I would have assume much more consistency in the actual rigging. So, I am stuck with what direction to take here. It is really this random? Perhaps there is no straightforward answer here, but I am wondering if anyone that has built the A.L. bounty (or anyone else) can tell me if it is best to just try to follow the belaying plans as provided by A.L. or if another strategy is best?

I did also want to ask two specific questions that have confused me. I have tried to look at many photos of models, but never seem to find the right detail on these issues.

1. The A.L. plans sometimes indicate lines belayed to the shroud deadeyes, I assume this really means to shroud cleats (although none included in kit). Can anyone confirm this or was there some other rigging approach where lines tied off to deadeyes or shrouds? Also, when shroud cleats were used, where was the excess line held?
2. In many cases, lines are belayed at base of mast with double set of blocks. The A.L. plans are not very clear on what lines are done this way and there are many blocks and eyes attached to deck, but in any case, I am wondering how the lines are actually tied off after going through the set of blocks. I was always assuming to belaying pins on the fife rails, but this appears not to be the case as they are all assigned to other lines in the plans. I also see these lines attached to cleats on masts in some models, but again not on A.L plans. All the books I have just generally show the blocks with line hanging in the air , but no termination, so I am not sure what to assume here. I am asking this question as I think it would be easier to rig up all the lower block sets before putting in the masts rather than fiddling with threading lines in the space under fife rails afterwards.

Sorry again if these questions seem generic or basic, but any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Mark Paulhus

 

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

You have discovered with your detailed study what all new sailing ship modelers learn after rigging a few models. And the news is not good, unfortunately.

Finding information on belaying points is always hard. In almost all cases, the belaying plan (where you tie off all the lines) for a sailing ship is based on a very few guidelines and conventions. Each model kit's or scratch built model's belaying plan is mostly guesswork, based on a few of these conventions. The rules may be figured out if you read a lot of books on rigging, and they are based on ships which are more recent. So, you will find huge differences between models and rigging plans from kits. The sad fact is, you have to do a lot of rigging research, comparing many vessels, to decide where each line is belayed on your model. If you build a ship from the early 17th century, then belaying is almost 100% guesswork. This lack of historical information has always plagued modelers. Using rigging methods from 200 years later on early vessels from the 1630's is going to be incorrect no matter how you do it, because rigging styles varied between time periods, nations, and types of ships (merchant vs. warships).

What you can do is take a sample belaying points from several models and known vessels and use the same locations that appear to be the most common among them. If you want to do your best at getting the rigging correct, trust your research books over your kit plans. Kit manfacturers often simplify the rigging, or use rigging that is not from the correct time period if you are working on early ships such as the English race galleon Revenge c.1577. Your efforts in research will always yield more accurate results, but it takes lots of time and books. Most of us are limited on our book library and choose to make some changes to our models, but perhaps not all the changes that having more information would allow. How great would it be if someone like Frank Fox or some other reknowned ship expert were to write a book on belaying plan styles through the centuries? It would be a thin book, but it would be invaluable to us modelers.

 

[Don Case]

Welcome to the confusion. I'm up to my eyeballs in the same mess. Every source for belaying points seem to be different. Lees has five(I think) different belaying plans and they are quite different from one another. I'm getting the impression that, in the day, they would send a man up to the pertinent spot to see if he could see a spot to belay a line to. There really doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Anyway, enough griping . Lees' "Masting and Rigging of English Man of War" is very good. I think just about everything is there although sometimes you have to wade pretty deep to find it. Darcy Lever's "The Young Sea Officers Sheet " (available free on the net) is good. and of course David Steel's work available here https://maritime.org/doc/steel/index.php
Rigging is tough. You might also search my posts to see if I've already asked some of your questions.
Hope this helps.

 

[mdpaulhus]

Greetings Kurt & Don

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking that this was going to be the answer, I guess it helps some that there is no absolute right or wrong on this (at least from he perspective of what we know today). I always assumed the British Admiralty would be very rigid in the rigging approach, but perhaps this was really up to captain/crew more than I expected. I did literally laugh out loud when reading Don's note! I will probably add the Mondfeld and Petterson information and the information from John Harlands book "Seamanship in the Age of Sail" (which I think is a very good book) to my tables to see where the most commonality exists. The books do seem to be more consistent than the model instructions. I will also look for the books Don has suggested. I am thinking maybe I can find some information from HMS Endeavour also to add to the table as this seems as though rigging should be similar given similar age. I think planning in advance will be critical here, although I do understand that I will run into issues.

 

[Uwek]

Me personally I would follow in the main parts McKays information in his book, I guess he has done in principle more research than any kit manufacturer

Book review - Book Review: "The Armed Transport BOUNTY (Anatomy of the Ship) by John McKay

Book Review: The Armed Transport BOUNTY (Anatomy of the Ship) by John McKay Hardcover: 120 pages Publisher: Conway Maritime Press Ltd; 3rd Revised edition edition (10 Jan. 2002) Language: English ISBN-10: 0851778933 ISBN-13: 978-0851778938 Product Dimensions: 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 cm...

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