Capstan and stairs

Don Case

Don Case

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This is a portion of John McKay's drawing of the Discovery1789. If you look on the QD you can see that the bars would clear the stairwell rails but down on the main deck you would have to pull the bars on every revolution to clear the stairs. Is it possible that they used the lower portion for the messenger and only used the bars up on the QD?
166ia.jpg
 
Hi Don. Is that drawing distorted. The capstan shaft is not square with the deck. The QD hatch is double. Swap the grating and the ladder around and it will work. I think that's an error.
 
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Thanks for the answer. Yes it's distorted. It's phone picture. I wondered about swapping them around. It would make the bars about 3' long. That's not much leverage.
 
G'day Don, maybe the stairs were made to be removed when using the capstan, i know that on the HMS Victory on the lower deck that they had support pillars around the capstan that they removed when using the capstan, just a thought,

best regards john,
 
Yes that's when they were converting her to a bomb. The green is proposed, red is existing(if I got that right). This is J022 which I think is a proposal drawing. There are two sets of deck drawings that kinda go along with that, J2024 which is the proposed and J023 which is the "as fitted". You can see on them that they decided not to move the lower deck/upper deck stair to the aft hatch. They left them where they were but it also looks like the QD to upper deck is right up against the capstan.
 
It was often much easier.
They used the capstan only for lifting very heavy things like boats, anchor etc.
They easily dismantled the stairs for the time using the capstan and after the assembled the stairs back - these things were trained and worked fast and very well.
The same with removing more or less all internal wooden walls - these were also dismantled before an action........
 
Very interesting guys. I'm wondering about alternate routes as this seems to be the only stairwell. There would be stairs down off the forward end of the QD but I can't see another route from the main deck to the lower deck. It took hours to raise the anchor didn't it? I'll have to go over the drawing yet again.
If they did remove the ladders it might explain why the stairwell is right against the capstan. It would give more/better room out toward the end of the bars where they would have more leverage.
I'm staring to realize that these people put up with a lot more inconvenience than we would have stood for:)
 
Some days ago we had a short talk about a similar problem with the Le Fleuron and the length of the bars
I guess it is also interesting for you

french 64-gunner LE FLEURON in scale 1:48 by Joachim

The cannons on the lower cannon deck are now rigged, nice hard work. Once again a foretaste of rigging the sails and masts . The capstan now also has the individual bars to rotate.
shipsofscale.com
 
Thanks for that. I guess things had to be multi purpose. I'm reading Vancouver's journal of his trip to the West Coast and because it was a survey ship they would anchor for a while, explore with the ships boats, and then move on to the next anchorage. While they were moving they had to anchor every night. I was just thinking that they would have set the ship up to accommodate this but I guess they had 100 sailors. The entries in the journal are all dated so I guess I can figure out just how often they would have to anchor. He seems to mention it a lot.
 
Don Case said:
Thanks for that. I guess things had to be multi purpose. I'm reading Vancouver's journal of his trip to the West Coast and because it was a survey ship they would anchor for a while, explore with the ships boats, and then move on to the next anchorage. While they were moving they had to anchor every night. I was just thinking that they would have set the ship up to accommodate this but I guess they had 100 sailors. The entries in the journal are all dated so I guess I can figure out just how often they would have to anchor. He seems to mention it a lot.
Click to expand...
the time period of using the capstan depends mainly on the water depth - so in shallow water
and maybe they used a lighter anchor for this short time anchoring - such ships had minimum 5 anchors of different sizes on board
 
In those times it was standard procedure of having to remove quite a lot on english ships. Stairs were taken out for turning the capstan - as they also were taken out for action cause being in the way for guns and being material for flying splinters - as were all bulkheads and deck beam stanchions (with the help of a jack). Hatches were covered either by gratings or flaps.
Anyway sailors always find their way to the other decks, might there be stairs or not ;-) In ready for action ladders were replaced by fighting ladders, a hint from a contemporary source but I lack information how they looked like. Perhaps these served too for turning the capstan.

800_Victory_capstan_0123.jpg


Victory-Capstan-210601_7930.jpg
Victory-Capstan-210601_7940.jpg


XXXDAn
 
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