Building and adjusting Mantua’s Dutch Gunboat

[Hagar]

This is my first online build log.

I will try to post regular new updates about the process. First of all I got the kit from Mantua in octobre this year. It looks fine but the instruction manual is not what i expected, very simple and with faults. The included planking has different wides for example.

So I started to do some Research on the ship itself, I noticed that there are different types of this ship. Because there were build by at least 5 different shipyards in the first half of the 19th century. And had different designs, for instance the armament and the design from the upper deck.
- old big model
- Danish model
- small model
- new big model

The Mantua Kit is the new big model and therefore can’t be the ship from Van Speyk.

The gunboat number 2 was in fact a ‘small model’ and build between 1821 and 1823, out of a total of 13 ships (the ship numbers 1 to 13).

Big model. Measured : 18,50 x 5,80 x 1,40 m.
Displacement: 100 ton.
In the scale 1/43 the model would be around 43 cm long.

Small model. Measured : 14,71 x 5,80 x 1,30 m.
Displacement: 80 ton.
In the scale 1/43 the model would be around 34 cm long.

The Mantua model measures from bow towards stern little more than 44 cm.

While I keep searching the archives for more details, I started with the hull. Because there is almost no difference between the two big models.



In the follow up post, I will share some technical drawings from different Dutch gunboats that i found in the archives.

One interesting drawing that I found in the archives (Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam) is dated 1831 (year of explosion) and made by
Pieter Le Comte. Its depicting the upper deck and the captains quarters of Gunboat nr.2 from Van Speijk.


More to come….

 

[Hagar]

Follow up background history of the Dutch gunboat.

Van Speijk had received command of Cannonboat #2 on September 5, 1830.

This was a so-called fork gunboat, a small ship with a single mast, which was very suitable for use on rivers and had been used for this purpose since the end of the eighteenth century. Due to the shallow draft, the sailing gunboat was very useful for shelling the coast at a short distance. The fork harness (sail) and the side swords (to cross against the wind) gave it great maneuverability and during the firing a trench could be dropped in parts at the front.

In total, at the national shipyards in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Vlissingen and the private shipyard of J. Schouten in Dordrecht 102 sailing gunboats of this type are being built (see image, source Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).



Gunboat #2 was built in 1821 at the Rijkswerf Amsterdam and would be put into service immediately afterwards. The ship was 14.7 meters long, weighed 8o tons and was armed with a 18-pond front loader as a bow piece and two 8-pond caronnades as fence pieces at the rear as well as four rotary basses on the runion. So in total there were seven very specific pieces of ship's artillery on board. They were especially suitable for firing on short-range targets, on the coast (source: R. Preud’homme van Reine - Liever niet de lucht in. Page 92).​